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LESSON XV

THE PUPIL AT WORK

The true class, we have seen, is cooperative. The teacher will not do all the work. He will enlist the activity of the pupil. In this lesson we shall think of the pupil's work. What can the teacher get his pupils to do?

1. Three principles underlie the work of the pupil:

(1) There is no learning without mental activity on the part of the pupil. This is the principle of self-activity, already familiar. You cannot think for your pupil. He must make his own ideas. The point we need here to emphasize is that learning requires mental activity. The pupil must think, not simply do. A class may be very active, yet learn little. They may answer every question-looking it up in their lesson leaves-and at the end know nothing. They may make beautiful maps and portfolios, even write out careful and correct answers in the blank spaces after the questions in their textbooks; yet do it all so unthinkingly that they fail to lay hold of the truth. You must arouse the mind, not simply mouth and hands.

(2) To insure definite mental activity, the pupil must in some way express its results. This is one meaning of the oft-quoted pedagogical maxim, "No impression without expression." To make sure that the pupil gets the truth, you should have him express it. “We learn by doing." We never really know a thing until we give it to someone else. You experience this every Sunday that you teach. After the class hour is over, you know the lesson as you never could know it before. The teaching has reacted upon yourself. Thoughts that before were vague have taken shape as you sought to express them; your mind has moved with sureness of purpose; your convictions are aglow. You feel that you would like to teach the lesson over again, and that you could now do it much better.

The pupil's expression of what he has learned is thus much more than a mere test. It is not simply for sake of letting you know what he has gotten and what he has failed to get. The expression is itself a means of impression. It helps him to learn. It moves his mind to act. It gives him a motive to think. It impels him to clear up his ideas and to make thoughts definite which might otherwise remain

vague and formless. The expression is a revelation to the pupil him self of just what he really does know.

We often hear people say, "I know that, but I cannot express it" -meaning that they cannot put it into words. It is undoubtedly true. We all know many more things than we can put into words. Words are only arbitrary symbols; language is but one of many forms of expression. Much of our thinking is in mental pictures rather than in words. We express ourselves in intonation, gesture, action, as well as in language. Indeed, the real meaning of an idea is better expressed in the action it leads to than the form of words that it calls up. It is the man of action rather than the man of words that we should rely upon if we had to choose between them.

Yet it is language that makes knowledge socially usable. Thoughts that we cannot put into words may be our own inner sustenance; but they can be shared with no one else. We may apply here what Paul said to the people of Corinth about the value of mystical babbling in "tongues": "He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. . . . I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.' If one cannot express in words what he knows, he does not yet know it in the way that he ought. While it is not our business to tell everything that we know, we ought to know everything so definitely that we could tell it if there were occasion.

(3) There is no expression without a social motive. It is to other persons that we tell things, and for others or for recognition by them that we do what we do. Without them, we should have no motive to express what is within us. We do not speak just for sake of speaking, or write merely for the pleasure of feeling a thought form itself at our finger-tips; we speak to somebody and write for some reason. So with a pupil. Bid him simply to tell what he knows, and you will dry up the springs of thought and speech within him. He has no vital motive. But arrange a social situation such that he may tell it to somebody and for some reason, and he will express himself in a natural and spontaneous way. Public school teachers have found that the girl whose compositions are formal and stilted may yet write a simple and natural letter to a girl in another town; that the boy who cannot write an essay worth looking at may hand in an excellent article for the school paper; that a pupil who seems tongue-tied when called on to recite may be able to tell to another pupil the very thing he * 1 Cor. xiv. 4, 19.

could not in class find words for. It is your business as teacher not merely to demand expression from your pupil, but to furnish motives and material, to provide social situations such as naturally call u forth.

2. In the beginners' department we must provide for and use the child's physical activity and play. The department should have a separate room, if possible; if not, it should be screened off from the rest of the school. It should have little chairs that can be arranged in a circle about the teacher. The program of the hour should be informal, the instruction periods short. Better have two short periods than one longer one, and a time between for rest, change of position and physical activity.

The use of physical activity and play in the Sunday school can be objected to only by those who do not understand children. It does not mean that the department is to be in constant turmoil, each pupil doing what he pleases and moving about where he will, while the teacher distractedly tries to keep all busy. It does not mean that the atmosphere of reverence and worship is lost. It means rather that the teacher recognizes that there is sure to be physical activity, for children are so made; and plans to use and direct it and so confine it within proper bounds, instead of trying to repress it and only succeeding in spreading it over the whole hour in form of mischievous interruption.

Marches, drills and motion songs and plays have both a recreative and an educational value for children of this age. They may be used to illustrate and impress the truth of the lesson, as well as to engage active hands and feet and little bodies full of play. And it is often wise to use them just for rest and recreation. After five minutes of such bodily activity, with fresh air, the children are ready in perfect quiet to give eager attention to the lesson story. Care must be taken, of course, not to lose the quiet spirit of the hour. Jig-time music and violent exercises are out of place. There is no need, moreover, of a physical material for play, such as the kindergarten gives.

The little child's play, we have seen, is imaginative and dramatic. You need nothing more than simple little plays that enlist at once the body and the imagination. Let the children represent trees or birds or flowers, snow or rain, and go through appropriate motions to the accompaniment of piano or song. A little child's play instinct is easily met. It demanas nothing elaborate or boisterous. The one requirement is that you satisfy the imagination. You must enter with him into the land of make-believe.

3. In the primary department, the work of the pupil centers about his reproduction of the story. If the lesson story has been well told, nothing will give the children greater delight than to reproduce it for themselves. And nothing can be of more educational value. It is real self-expression, socially motived. It makes the truth the child's own. There are three ways in which the children may reproduce the story:

(1) Telling it. "It is such fun to listen to a good story that children remember it without effort, and later, when asked if they can tell it, they are as eager to try as if it were a personal experience which they were burning to impart. Each pupil is given a chance to try each story, at some time. Then that one which each has told especially well is allotted to him for his own particular story, on which he has an especial claim thereafter. It is surprising to note how individual and distinctive the expression of voice and manner becomes, after a short time. The child instinctively emphasizes the points which appeal to him, and the element of fun in it all helps bring forgetfulness of self."'*

This is an account of story-telling by children in the public schools, where the interest of the teacher was not primarily in the content of the story itself, but in the development of the child's power of expression. It applies as well to the work of the Sunday school teacher, who is interested in having the child lay hold of the truth of the story. Let not the word "fun" mislead us. The fun of story-telling is not amiss in the Sunday school. It is the joy of the creative imagination, the happiness of inwardly seeing and feeling what one tells and of putting one's whole self into the telling. It is the delight of making others see and feel, and sharing with them the truth that seems so real. What matter if the story is old, and the child tells it time after time in the same words, and often with the very inflections that the teacher first used? That, for children, only adds to the pleasure of the telling. They do not want different words. They like to recognize the old forms, and even to join in the refrain when certain striking phrases are reached. It is a blessed boon to the teacher-this natural love of repetition. It makes easy the permanent implanting of the truth.

(2) Drawing. Every child likes to draw, and every child should be allowed to. It is not that we hope to develop artists, but simply that drawing is a natural form of expression. The child who tries to tell a story in a picture must have a definite and clear mental picture.

* Bryant: "How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 112. The quotation is slightly abridged by the omission of local references. ¡

"In the simplest and most unconscious way possible, the small artist is developing the power of conceiving and holding the concrete image of an idea given, the power which is at the bottom of all arts of expression.' ." The story afterward is more vivid and real to his mental vision. He can tell it better in words just because he has tried to tell it in pictures.

The most convenient forms of drawing for the Sunday school are: (a) Drawing with pencil or black or colored crayons upon fairly large sheets of paper. "No tables are needed, as it takes less time and is more convenient to place the papers in the seats of the chairs, and let the children kneel before them to work." † (6) Drawing upon the blackboard. Children like this, for the novelty of going to the board, and for the prominence it gives to the one chosen to draw a picture for the class. It also permits cooperative drawing-one child making part of a picture and others completing it—which engages the hearty interest of the whole class if you do not have it too often. (c) Cutting out silhouettes from paper. This may be called drawing because it, too, is outline work. Children take a great deal of pleasure in it, and produce far better illustrations than one would at first think.

The drawings will be very crude, but that does not matter. You are not teaching drawing, but Bible stories. Do not waste time trying to get a perfect picture. It is but a means by which the child may express his own ideas and get the benefit that comes from such expression. Of course, in so far as the drawing reveals a misconception of the story, you will correct it, just as you would one revealed in the child's telling the story. You will take care never to suggest a drawing when the story is one that would be hard for a child to illustrate, or when his attempt would be apt to lead to misconceptions.

(3) Playing the story. Children are naturally dramatic. They take keen delight in acting out a story. It is the spirit of makebelieve play. Each little actor, creating his own part, himself lives in the story and expresses in the most natural way possible its meaning to him. He has the most concrete of social motives for his expression of the truth, for he feels the motive that the one in the story himself felt.

Teachers in the public schools are just beginning to understand what an instrument is afforded them by this natural instinct for dramatic expression. It is plain how it lends itself to the teaching of reading

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Bryant : How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 115.

↑ "International Graded Lessons: Beginners' Teacher's Text-Book, First Year, Part I.," p. 24.

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