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PART TWO

THE TEACHER

PART II. THE TEACHER

LESSON XII

GRADES

We have finished our study of The Pupil, and turn now to the work of The Teacher-its principles and methods.

1. It is first of all essential that we lay fast hold upon the conviction that the Sunday school is a school. It is not a prayer-meeting or a social or philanthropic organization; it is not the "children's church." Its work is educational. It is a place of instruction. We are put here to teach; the pupils to learn. Our sessions center about the lesson.

There will be devotion, of course; but we do not meet for sake of worship. There will be giving; but we are not organized to raise and bestow money. There will be social fellowship; but the Sunday school is not a club. These things have place in our work just because they, too, are educational. As training, they supplement instruction, and are essential factors in the spiritual development of those we teach. But they are means to an end; and they are subordinate to the chief means which the Sunday school employs—definite instruction in the Bible.

"Such a conception of the work of the Sunday school recognizes the peculiar relation of our religion to the Bible, and the necessity that underneath worship and devotion, ethical instruction and the persuasion of the will, missions and philanthropy, there shall be a firm foundation of knowledge of that preeminent revelation of God which is the source and support of Christianity. It recognizes the need of one service, which, having the same ultimate aim as that which is sought in all the activities of the church, shall seek that end specifically and mainly by instruction in the Bible."*

2. The Bible is the chief text-book of the Sunday school. It is God's Word-the record of His life with men and His revelation of Himself to them. It is more than history; it is a divine interpretation of history. Its poetry and prophecy breathe the Spirit of the living God; its letters of counsel and comfort were written by men who were moved from on high. It shows us Jesus, “the Way, the *Burton and Mathews: "Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 6.

Truth and the Life." For a score of centuries, men of every nation have found in it inspiration and help, strength and peace. There is no other such book.

Two misconceptions of the Bible's pre-eminence are possible, which we must be careful to avoid :

(1) The Bible is not the sole text-book of the Sunday school. You need helps for its interpretation-the best that scholarship can afford. There is no class more barren than one that accepts too literally the well-meant but misleading statement that "the Bible is its own best commentary." You must supplement its teaching, again, with lessons drawn from human life, and, especially in the lower grades, from God's other book of nature. There should be definite lessons and courses in applied Christianity—in missions and in social betterment. Catechetical instruction in the history and doctrines of the Church should be a part of the organized work of the Sunday school, not something extraneous to it. There should be a normal course, fitting young people to become teachers.

(2) The fact that the Bible is God's Word does not relieve us from using our minds to understand it. It is no magic book, with a message that miraculously imprints itself upon idle souls. It is true that spiritual truth must be spiritually discerned. Yet the Bible is to be understood as is any other book-by earnest and patient study in light of historical conditions and literary form. It calls for the best that there is within us-for reason as well as for heart and will. God never contradicts Himself. His miracles do not abolish the natural laws which He has ordained, but use them for higher ends. The Spirit does not do away with human reason, but gives to it a higher light and power. The laws of the mind abide. We shall understand the Bible just in so far as we use the powers which God has given us to understand anything, and so make ready for the Spirit's enlightenment. We shall teach the Bible rightly just in so far as we follow those principles which the nature of the mind itself sets for the teaching of any subject. The spiritual nature crowns and completes the intellectual and the moral; it is no substitute for them.

3. Four fundamental principles underlie all teaching. They are implied in what we have learned concerning the development of personality. We need only bring them together here, and give them definite statement.

(1) The principle of self-activity. Not what you tell a pupil, but what he thinks as the result of your words; not what you do for him, but what he does for himself; not the impression, but his reaction

upon it-determine his development. You cannot put ideas into his head; your words are but symbols of the ideas that are within your own. He must interpret the symbols and from them construct his own ideas. Teaching succeeds only in so far as it enlists the activity of the pupil. He must think for himself. It is your business to wake him to thought, to engage his interest, to get him to want ideas, and to set before him the material out of which he can make them.

(2) The principle of apperception. The pupil never makes an idea wholly of new material. He understands the new only by relating it to the old. The body of any new idea, therefore, is old; it is made of material that has come from his own experience, reshaped and altered only enough to take in the new item. The pupil's instincts, his habits, his old ideas determine the very meaning for him of any new impression. If you do not know what they are, you cannot be sure that he is getting the meaning you intend.* The teacher must present the truth in terms drawn from the pupil's own knowledge and experience.

(3) The principle of adaptation. The pupil is growing and developing. As life goes on, experience widens, powers mature, instincts ripen and petrify into habits, interests come and go. We remember Professor James' striking statement of these facts, quoted in a former chapter, and his conclusion that "in all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come." Teaching must appeal to what is within the pupil; its matter and its method, therefore, must constantly be adapted to his changing powers and interests.

(4) The principle of organization. No bit of teaching, whether that of an hour, a day or a year, should stand alone. It must be coupled up with what went before and what comes after-and it must be coupled up, remember, in the pupil's mind, not simply in our own. Further, the teaching as a whole must head up into something; it must have a goal and work steadily toward it. The one-sidedness of the principle of adaptation is here corrected. We must do more than simply feed the changing interests; we must feed them to some purpose. The goal of education cannot be left to the child's spontaneous instincts, however largely they determine its matter and method at

* Dr. McKinney tells the story of a boy who seemed repelled by the thought of God's fatherhood. The teacher was much puzzled until he called one day at the boy's home, to find out that the father had kept him and his mother out in the cold the whole of the previous night, threatening in his drunken frenzy to kill them.-" Bible School Pedagogy,” p. 60.

any particular stage. Teaching aims at an organization of ideas and powers within the pupil; and it must work toward this in an orderly and consistent way.

4. If we are to follow these principles the Sunday school must be graded. "One of the chief problems before the Sunday school to-day is how to make of it a real school."* In late years, this problem has centered definitely about the question of a graded curriculum.

Practically all Sunday schools have recognized the principle of grading in organization and method. They have at least separated the "infant school" from the "adult school," and, though both schools have had the same lesson, have made some attempt to suit the method of teaching to the maturity of the pupil. From this simple beginning there have developed graded organizations of all degrees of elaborateness, with a corresponding differentiation of methods.

The great question has been: Should the lessons themselves be graded? The plan of uniform lessons, adopted in 1872 by what then became the International Sunday School Association, did not recognize this principle. The lessons were uniform in two senses. The material to be taught was the same (1) for every class in the school, as well as (2) for every school cooperating in what soon became a world-wide movement. Uniformity between schools is eminently desirable. It means practical cooperation in the enlistment of resources that single schools could not begin to command. We owe to this cooperation the present development of the Sunday school. Uniformity between classes was once desirable for the same reason. But with the widening of resources and the growth of educational ideals in late years, its value has come more and more to be called in question.

The advantages of uniformity between classes cannot be better stated than they have been by Burton and Mathews:

"It secures unity in the school, enabling the teachers to cooperate in the study of the lesson, and giving the superintendent an opportunity to direct and stimulate the work of instruction throughout the school. It secures unity in the home, making it possible for the father or the mother to assist and guide in the study of the lesson at home by the whole family from youngest to oldest, and facilitating the association of family prayer with the study of the Bible in the Sunday school. It immensely facilitates the preparation and publication of helps *Coe: "Education in Religion and Morals," p. 287.

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