CHAPTER IV.

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING.

Thought-stamps; not Argument.

THE teacher preparing for his work has passed by; now let his class stand up and give some account of themselves. There are four main facts brought out by experience in dealing with the young mind.

First, the reasoning power of the young, the power, that is, to follow a logical chain of reasoning, is non-existent.

Secondly, the young have no power of attention. Attention has to be learnt as much as any other lesson.

Thirdly, the memory of the young is very good, if they care for what they are doing.

Fourthly, there is no power in a young boy to master a subject thoroughly.

Thoroughness requires a strength which does not exist. These four facts, for facts they are, are

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PICTORIAL KNOWLEDGE.

the four first problems to be dealt with by the teacher. The complete absence, practically, of the reasoning faculty, so far as learning by means of it goes, determines at once the whole character of good teaching at the beginning. There must be simple statements, and simple explanations. The early stages require the new ideas and facts to be put like little pictures before the pupil, without any attempt to show the mechanism, as it were, by which the effect is produced. Logical progression is out of the horizon. The all-important factor of the mind to be taught must be the starting point. If processes are shown, it must also be, so to say, pictorially, in some subject already very familiar. The inside of common things is intensely interesting to the curious child, witness the number of toys that have been the victims of scientific research, and broken, to find out what was inside. But then they were toys, thorough property, entirely in the power, manual and mental, of the owners. Wherever there is the feeling of thorough property, there is also the wish for thorough knowledge, and the child delights in having the structure of the familiar thing laid bare. But even then, much as they like to know all about what is their own, the knowledge is a knowledge by sight, not a matter of reasoning. This then is the principle of all early work, either eye-sight, or mental sight.

ADULLBOY'S MIND A WISE MAN'S PROBLEM.157

Either actually show the bit of teaching, which often can be done; or let the bit be a little, plain statement, a kind of stamp, which the mind can see without trouble. Trouble enough will come in due time. This principle requires the teacher to lay aside the fascinating shapeliness of a clear-cut system, and submit himself to the yoke of the boymind. Rigid, formulated, square statements, cannot find their way with their corners into the little tortuous windings of the little mind, with all its blind mazes, passages that lead to nothing, obstructions of previous ideas, mobs of small idolatries, idolatries of play, idolatries of day-dreams, combined with absolute incapacity to bear the unyielding thrust of logic in its fine tissues. The teacher must indeed have a logical plan of his own, which he does not lose sight of; but the actual teaching has to be imparted bit by bit, as the learner is fitted to take it, with many illustrations, and digressions, which are not digressions, but roundabout ways of arriving at points, where the direct path is blocked. A dull boy's mind is a wise man's problem. Mind is the teacher's real subject; and how to excite thought, and arouse interest, without making much demand on the logical faculty, the first aspect which the work of mind presents. Perhaps, considering what is almost universally done, the first rule to be laid down is a prohibition.

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THOUGHT NOT DISTASTEFUL.

Never try to fill the little mind with lumber, under colour of its being of use by and by. Lumber does not excite thought, lumber does not interest, lumber does breed disgust; nothing should be put into the mind which is not wanted immediately, and which is not also the easiest way of meeting the want. The pupil ought to be made to feel that thought is a pleasure, and a power; and that learning means being taught to think by easy steps. For example. He knows that the having learnt to read and write has opened up to him treasures, which he would not now give up, and therefore he can be made to believe that the new tasks, however distasteful, are going to do the same thing in a still higher degree, and land him in unknown empires. But why should they be so distasteful? Thought in its true sense is not distasteful. When mind enters into the works of mind, and receives life from them, the new life is not distasteful. The whole mighty realm of imagination is thought, whether it be the imagination, which creates the Midsummer Night's Dream, or the imagination, which sets the baby child in the nursery on the floor, and surrounds it with a living kingdom in the guise of broken toys, and makes it lisp to a much-battered doll, "You are the Queen." Imagination is not distasteful. There are plenty of thought-pictures in common things for any one who knows how to paint them, or,

THOUGHT IN LITERATURE.

159

better still, make his pupils paint them. And thought is the beginning, thought the middle, and thought the end of a learner's work. Let not the teacher pile in lumber that is not thought. The learner can be made to see without difficulty that new thoughts, and the power of receiving thoughts and thinking thoughts, are a gain and a pleasure in the long run, because he has already found them to be a pleasure, or ought to have done so. The next step is easy. The learner can be made to understand the obvious truth, that language, and literature are the great exercise ground of thought, and mind; inasmuch as all thought passes through language. Words are the every-day and all-day messengers of common life, as well as the varied and intelligent expression afterwards of the thoughts of the greatest thinkers. There is no reason in the nature of things why the child in the nursery should not understand, aye, and feel gratefully the meaning of Teaching; and be taught through the familiar sights and words the pleasure of being taught, and led on to work with interest in collecting new material, and in thinking over what has been collected. This truth is not impaired by the fact that much has to be taken on trust at first, much to be learnt on faith, which cannot be fully explained at the time. It only means that there are grounds for this faith; that these grounds