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VOLUME II. OXFOIIU, N. C., AVEDNESUAY, MARCH 1, 1876. NUMBER 9. WHAT IS T’EACIIINH ! In the first place, teaching is not simply telling. A class may be told a thing twenty times over, and yet not know it. Talking to a class is not necessarily teaching. I have known many teachers who were brimful of information, and were good talkers, and who dis coursed to their classes with ready utterance a large part of the time allowed to instruction ; yet an ex amination of their classes showed little advancement in knowledge. There are several time-honored metaphors on this subject, which need to be received with some gi-ains of allowance, if rve would get an exact idea of what teaching is. Chiseling the rude marble into the finished statue; giving the impression of the seal upon the soft wax ; pouring water into an empty vessel; all these com parisons lack one essential element of likeness. The mind is, indeed, in one sense, empty, and needs to be filled. It is yielding, and needs to be impressed. It is rude, and needs polishing. But it is not, like the marble, the Avax, or the ■ vessel, a passive recipient of ex ternal influences. It is itself a living po-wer. It is acted upon only by stirring up its own ac tivities. The operative upon mind, unlike the operative upon matter, must have the active, voluntary codporation of that upon which he works. The teacher is doing his work, only so far as he gets work from the scholar. The very essence and root of the work are in the scholar, not in the teacher. No one, in fact, in an important sense, is taught at all, except so far as ho is self-taught. The teacher may be uselul, as an aux iliary, in causing this action on the part of the scholar. But the one, indispensable, vital thing in all learning, is in the scholar him self. The old Romans, in their word education (educere, to draw out,) seem to have come nearer to the true idea than any other pjeoplc have done. The teacher is to draw out the resources of tlie pupil. ATet even this word comes short of the exact truth. The teacher must put in, as well as draw out. No process of mei'e pumping will draw out trom a child’s mind knowledge which is not there. All the pow'er of the Socratic method, could it be ap plied by Socrates himself, would be unavailing to draw from a child’s mind, by mere question ing, a knowledge, for instance, of chemical affinity, of the solar sys tem, of the temperature of the Gulf Stream, of the doctrine of the resurrection. What, then, is teaching? Teaching is causing any one to know. Now no one can be made to know a thing but by the act of his own powers. His own senses, his own memory, his own powers of reason, perception, and judg ment, must be exercised. The function of the teacher is to bring about this exercise of the pupifs faculties. The means to do this are infinite in variety. They should be varied according to the wants and the character of the individual to be taught. One needs to be told a thing; he learns most readily by the ear. Another needs to use his eyes ; he must see a thing, either in the book or in nature. But neither eye nor ear, nor any other sense or faculty, will avail to the ac quisition of knowledge, unless the power of attention is cultivated. Attention, then, is the first act or power of the mind that must be aroused. It is the very founda tion of all progress in knowledge, and the means of awakening it constitute the first step in the ed ucational art. AA'^hen, by any means, positive knowledge, facts, are once in jjos- session of the mind, something must next be done to prevent their slipping away. You may tell a class the history of a cer tain event; or you may give them a description of a certain place or person ; or you may let them read it; and you may se cure such a degree of attention that, at the time of the reading or the description, they shall have a fair, intelligible comprehension of what has been described or read. The facte are, for the time, actu ally in the possession of the mind. Now, if- the mind was, according to the old notion, mereh^ a vessel to be filled, the process would be complete. But mind is not an empty vessel. It is a living es sence, with powers and processes of its own. And experience shows us, that in the case of a class of undisciplined pupils, facts, even when fairly placed in the posses sion of the mind, often remain there about as long as the shadow of a passing cloud remains upon the landscape, and make about as much impression. The teacher must seek, then, not only to get knowledge into the mind, but to fix it there. In other -words, the power of the memory must be strengthened. Teaching, then, most truly, and in every stage of it, is a strictly coijperative process. You cannot cause any one to know, by merely pouring out stores of knowledge in his hearing, any more than you can make his body grow by spreading the contents of your market-basket at his feet. You must rouse his power of attention, that he may lay hold of, and re ceive, and make his own, the knowledge you offer him. Y’'ou must awi’.kcn and strengthen the power of memory within him, that he may retain what he re ceives, and thus grow in knowl edge, as the body by a like pro cess grows in strength and mus cle. In other words, learning, so far as the mind of the learner is concerned, is a growth; and teaching, so far as the teacher is concerned, is doii-ig whatever is necessary to cause that growth. Let us proceed a step farther in this matter. One of the ancients observes that a lamp loses none of its own light by allowing another lamp to be lit from it. He uses the illus tration to enforce the duty of lib erality in imparting our knowl edge to others. Knowledge, he saj’s, unlike other treasures, is not diminished by giving. The illustration fails to express the whole truth. This imparting of knowledge to others not only does not impoverish the donor, but it actually increases his riches. teaching we learn. A man grows in knowledge by the very act of communicating it. The reason for this is obvious. In order to communicate to the mind of another a thought whicli is in our own mind, we must give to the thought definite shape and form. We must handle it, and pack it up for safe conveyance. Thus the mere act of giving a thought expression in words, fixes it more deeply in our own minds. Not only so; we can, in fact, very rarely be said to be in full jjossession of a thought ourselves, until by the tongue or pen we have commu nicated it to somebody else. The expression of it, in some form, seems necessary to give it, even in our own minds, a definite shape and a lasting- impression. Some teachers seem to be am bitious to do a great deal of talk ing. The measure of their suc cess, in their own eyes, is their ability to keep a continued stream of talk for the greater part of the hour. This is, of course, better than the embarrassing silence sometimes seen, where neitlier teacher nor scholar has anything to say. But at the best, it is only the pouring into the exhausted receiver enacted over again. AYe can never be reminded too -often, that there is no teaching except so far as there is active coopera tion on the part of the learner. The mind receiving must repro duce and give back what it gets. This is the indispensable condi tion of making any knowledge really our own. I’he very best teaching I have ever seen, has been where the teacher said com paratively little. The teacher was of course brimful of the sub ject. He could give the needed information at exactly the right point, and in the right quantity. But for every word given by the teacher, there were many words of answering reproduction on the part of the scholars. Youthful minds under such tutelage grow apace. It is a high and difficult achieve ment in the educational art, to get young persons to bring forth their thoughts freelj- for examin ation and correction. A plea.sant countenance and a gentle man ner, inviting and inspiring confi dence, have something to do with the matter. But, whatever the means for accomplishing this end, the end itself is indispensable. The scholar’s tongue must be un loosed as well as the teacher’s. The scholar’s thoughts must be broached as well as the teacher’s. Indeed, the statement needs very little qualification or abatement, that a scholar has learned noth ing from us except what he has expressed to us again in words. The teacher who is accustomed to harangue his scholars with a continuous stream of words, no matter how full of weighty mean ing his words may bo, is yet de ceiving himself, if he thinks that his scholars are materially bene fited by his intellectual activity, unless it is so guided as to awaken and exercise theirs. If, after a suitable period, he will honestly examine his scholars on the sub jects on which he has been so productive, he will find that he has been only pouring water into a seive. Teaching can never be this one-sided process. Of allthethings that we attempt, it is the one most essentially and necessarily cooperative process. There must be the joint action of the teacher’s mind and the scholar’s mind. A teacher teaches at all, onl}' so far as he causes this coactive energy of the pupil’s mind.—The Teacher. 'I'HSS CUKIE FOK (KOSSIP. Dr. Holland, in Scribner’s gives us the following: AA^hat is the cure for gossip I Simply, cul ture. There is a great deal of gossip that has no malignity in it. Good-natured people talk about their neighbors because, and only because, the}^ have nothing else to talk about. As we write, there comes to us the picture of a family of young la dies. AVe have seen them at home, we have met them in gal leries of art, we have caug-ht glimpses of them going from a bookstore, or a library, with a iresh volume In their hands. AVhen we meet them, they are full of what they have seen and read. They are brimming with questions. One topic of conver sation is dropped only to give place to another, in which they are interested. AVe«have left them, after a delightful hour, stimulated and refreshed; and during the whole hour not a neighbor’s garment was soiled by so much as a touch. They had something to talk' about. They knew something, and wanted to know more. They could listen as well as they could talk. To speak freely of a neighbor’s doings and belongings would have seemed an impertinence to them, and, ot course, an improj)riety. They had no temptation to gossip, be cause the doings of their neigh bors formed a subject very much less interesting than tlwse which grew out of their knowedge and t'leir culture. And this tells the whole story. The confirmed gossip is always either malicious or ignorant. The one variety needs a change of heart and the other a change of pastm-e. Gossip is always a per sonal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves fl-om all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivo lous, and too often a dirty busi ness. There are country neigh borhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces b;y it. Neighbors are suade ene mies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practi cally incurable. Let the young cure it while they may. AKTENGLISH EAKL’S ADVICE TO COLLEGE STUDENTS. In an address which he recently delivered at Liverpool College, Lord Derby told the students there were three great maxims of study—first, that mental labor never hurts anybody urdess taken in great excess ; second, that those who cannot spare time for physi cal exercise will soon have to spare it for illness; third, that morning work is infinitely better than night work. There has never been a time in the history of the world wlien an apprecia tion of these truths was more im portant than it is now. PUSH. AVhen Cousin AVill was at Lome for vacation, the boys always ex pected jjlcnty of fun. The last frolic before he went back to his studies was a long tramp after hazelnuts. As they were hurry ing along in high glee, they came ujjon a discoui-aged-looking man and a discouraged-looking cart. The cart was standing before an orchard. The man was trying to pull it up hill to his own house. The boys did not wait to be invi ted, but ran to help with a good will. “Rush ! push !” was the “Ta The man brightened up ; the cart trundled along as fast as rheumatism would allow it, and infive minutes thoj' all stood pan.- ing at the top of the hill. “Obliged to ye,” said the man; “you just wait a minute,”—and he hurried into the house, while two or three pink-aproned chil dren peeped out of the door. ‘Now, boys,’ said Cousin Will, “this is a small thing ; but I wish we could all take a motto out of it, and koep-itfor life.” “Rush !” it is just the word for a grand, clear morning. ‘If any body is in trouble, and you see it, don’t stand back; push ! ‘If there is any good doing in any place where you happen to be, push! ‘AVhenever there’s a kind thing, a Christ'an thing, a happy thing, a pleasant thing, whether it is your own or not, whether it is at home or in town, at church or in school, just help with all your might; push !’ At that moment the farmer came out with a dish of his wife’s best doughnuts, and a dish of his own best apples: and tliat was the end of the little sermon on Rush.—lix. ‘NOT BOHN TO GOODi LUCK.’ A correspondent, in bewailing his misfortune, says: “But I was not born to good luck, and so, I suppose, I must put up with the bad luck which has followed me all my life.” In the ordinary course of life. there is no such thing as luck. Indeed, it is a matter of absolute fact and demonstrates that great enduring success, as well as aver age prosperity, comes from the exercise of good judgement, backed up by industry, economy, patience, and self-denial. More over, experience has abundantly shown that, in the long run, nothing does a man any real, substantial good, for which he does not, in some way, pay a fair price. AVhat is called luck is usually a mere running in debt to fortune, and the greater the seeming luck, the heavier the real incumberance. To whom much is given much is required; and the eternal requisition is inex orable, and must be met. Unhappy the man who has had a fortune left him—dropped down upon him, as it were from the skies—which he does not know how to use so as to get any real advantage out of it—How often, in such a case, his “good luck,” as he calls it, is only “a heritage of woe,” and ultimately proves to be his own and his general ruin.
The Orphans’ Friend (Oxford, N.C.)
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March 1, 1876, edition 1
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