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What is the end of education generally? Of religious education?

What is the meaning of the command, "Train up a child?"

Define civilization, and enumerate its gifts to the human race.

How does religion relate itself to the other great institutions of civilization?

When the pupils are ours to educate, what is the end we should keep constantly in mind?

Does every lesson you teach count mightily for the final purposes of life?

In what way does the aim of the Sunday-school differ from the aim of the secular school?

Does the secular school give a complete education?

XIV

SOME LAWS OF TEACHING

AMIEL tells us "Never to tire, never to

grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic,

tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always, like God; to love always, this is duty." It is also a figuring of the process of teaching.

I commend his words as a wise guidance for the teacher. This process of teaching is conditioned by the end set in the soul of the teacher. If that end be the training of the individual to right relations to the great institution of our civilization, the individual may then be said to live completely. To the achievement of this end we must seek to give intellectual, moral, and physical training to the pupil. Yet even in the Sunday-school our training is over-intellectualized. We seem to be more zealous in developing the intellect than we are in developing the moral or religious life. We have a craving for results that may be measured. We have learned how to measure knowledge. We have not so fully learned how to measure the products of the emo

Training Over-
Intellectualized

tional and of the volitional life, and where we cannot measure we do not try so carefully to build. The necessary soul equipment includes. not only knowledge, but also skill and power. Our emphasis is placed upon what the content of the soul is, rather than upon what the soul becomes under the training of the teacher.

There was a time when the pedagogic thought of the day was colored by the philosophy of John Locke. Then the test of service was the answer to the question, What do you know? We then passed to a conception of teaching that demanded an answer to the question, What can you do? Now, we must exact as the standard an answer to the question, What are you? For we teach more by what we are, than by what we know or do. Each advance has been a valued one. We shall at last come to the standard set by Jesus, "Be ye." When we are what we would have our pupils become we can best teach others.

In education culture is worth more than knowledge. Not what we know, but what we are capable of knowing, is of first importance in the process. True teaching never fails to recognize

that the culture acquired in Value of Culture learning anything is worth more than the knowledge of the thing. A fact as knowledge is frequently of small value; but as the developer of skill and power its value

may be great. There is an abundance of religious knowledge fashioned by skilled workmen and ready at hand. The fountains of religious culture are running low. The soul craves drink as well as food. We really need a culture of the religious spirit,-a culture that will give grace, dignity, and humility to all our deeds.

The fine art of teaching aims to develop in the human soul knowledge, power, and skill. To the attainment of these ends it is essential that the mind of the teacher be organized in harmony with fundamental educational laws, and that the teaching process be conducted in harmony with the enlightened methods that have gained current use because of their intrinsic worth.

Three Great
Aims

Paul, in writing to the Hebrew brethren, points out the fact that strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age. He also says that babes, unskilled in the word of righteousness, must use milk. Here is a recognition of the fact that the food of the soul varies in kind with the age of the pupil; that, in fact, the capability of the pupil to grasp truth varies in the successive stages of his advance. To what may we attribute this

The Law of
Capacity

constantly varying capability?

1. Evidently not to the varying energy of the soul as a whole; for if this were so, primary

pupils and Bible-class pupils could be taught the same kind of knowledge by the same method. The only variation in the grades would be in the amount of knowledge taught. Small doses for small pupils, large doses for adults, would be the formula. But there is a difference in kind and in method as well as in amount. The teacher has thus a threefold change to provide for.

2. Evidently not to the absence or nonactivity of some of the powers of the soul in young pupils, and their presence or activity in older pupils. If this were the true theory of soul growth, we would have the theory of successive creation of new powers for the soul through the years of educational advance. We cannot think of this theory of soul creation and retain our idea that God makes each soul complete from the beginning.

3. It follows then that all the powers are present at the beginning, but that there is marked. change in the relative activity of these powers as the child moves through the successive stages of his educational advance. This change in the relative activity explains the fundamental quality of instruction in the different grades. Early in life it is for the most part the presentative powers that are active. Later on, the representative powers dominate, and after adolescence, the

The True
Theory

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