The Law of the Teaching Process

 The Sunday School Teacher 14

We turn now to the fifth law or principle of good teaching, namely, this: tell him nothing he can learn himself.

In a quotation variously attributed to Maimonides, Lao-Tzu, Anne Ritchie, and the Navajo, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." As a teacher, you can metaphorically hand him the truth, and he will be helped. If, however, you get him excited about acquiring truth, you can lead him to discover truth on his own, to find the riches of God's grace for himself.

I do not mean here that you never teach him anything, nor do I mean that all you do is direct his self-study. Rather, I am expanding on something I referenced earlier in Chapter ?. For truth to actually change his life, he must take mental ownership of it by rethinking that truth, compiling and arranging it in a way that makes sense to him on the bookshelf of his mind. It is just this very process that a good teacher instills in the mind of his student. Tell him some aspect of truth, or point out the way to truth. Develop his capacity to ask questions, but don't answer them directly. Instead, give him enough information to keep him heading in the correct direction.

John Gregory said it this way: "True teaching, then, is not that which gives knowledge, but that which stimulates pupils to gain it. One might say that he teaches best who teaches least; or that he teaches best whose pupils learn most without being taught directly." You want them to explore, to question, to discover, to range ahead of themselves, to feel for the next step on this stair of knowledge for themselves.

As we consider the practical implications of this, let us turn first to the types of things we ought to do along this line, then I will try to balance that with things we should avoid.

First, try to build the student's interest in the subject at hand as much as possible. You want them to look forward, to peer down the road and try to see what is coming. Although homework is not simple in a Sunday School setting, if you can grow them to the place where they will do it, assign some work that provokes them to search for something, to gain a better grasp on something you have only thus far hinted at.

Second, ask your students numerous questions. Lectures inform, at least where they do not bore, but questions make people think. Gregory said, "The object or the event that excites no question will provoke no thought. Questioning is not, therefore, merely one of the devices of teaching; it is really the whole of teaching. It is the excitation of the self-activities to their work of discovering truth."

I generally teach from laboriously prepared notes, but in those notes, I prepare questions, opportunities to pause, to launch an inquiry into something that I taught. "Why do I say that?" is a fairly frequent one. "If we take this course of action, what happens next?" is another. It helps to hold attention, but it accomplishes much more than that; it makes the student think.

Third, control your impatience with their answers. Of course, you know the answer! Of course, you could word it better! But that is not the point, is it? The point is rather that she is thinking her way to a clearer apprehension of truth. Johann Comenius, a 17th-century Czech educator, said, "Most teachers sow plants instead of seeds." Resist the urge to tell them everything you know, even when it would get them where you want them to be faster.

Fourth, cultivate a classroom that, in turn, asks questions of you. The important thing is not necessarily the individual question. The important thing is the ask, the thought process that stretched itself forward and then paused for a moment, asking for a little outside light. Indeed, so critical is this that I would posit the more questions per hour flying around in your classroom, the more actual teaching and learning is being done.

Fifth, help your students understand that your explanations and answers in response to their questions will only ever contain some of the truth. Theologically, this is true because you are human and thus finite. Philosophically speaking, this is the case because there is always something more that can be learned about any subject. Do not leave the impression you have the answers; leave the impression that you have some of the answers, but that there are more out there waiting to be discovered.

Lastly, sometimes, in answer to these questions from your students, restate the question and open it up to the entire class. Alternatively, but almost as good, respond to their question with a question of your own. This has nothing to do with your inability to answer or your desire to dodge the question. It has everything to do with developing their thought process, their ability to handle intellectual inquiry, and wanting to do so.

In my opinion, the typical teacher talks too much. The pregnant pause is useful in more than theatre. Allowing the silence to stretch also broadens the student's mind. If you are the only one who ever talks in your class, then how do you know if any thinking is happening on their part? Even their ignorant questions or replies are helpful in this context. To reference Gregory again: "It is only the unskilled teacher who prefers to hear his own voice in endless talk rather than to watch and direct the course of the thoughts of his pupils."

One of the reasons a lecture can develop into a monologue is the pressure teachers often feel to cover their prepared material. I have taught and/or preached thousands of times. I feel this most keenly. I have good stuff and I want to get it into them. If they would just hush, I could do so. But if I have somehow managed to get them onto thinking ground – a rare thing indeed in this screen-addicted, book-avoiding age – then there is wisdom in camping on that ground. Another lesson opportunity will present itself eventually. Do not speed by in haste when good things are happening where you are.

I am conscious as I pen this that I may be coming on too strong. Let me add a bit of water to the wine with two thoughts.

First, there will be a temptation to go overboard with this, to throw lesson plans to the wind, to sit on your desk and see what conversation you can develop. Some teachers imbibe too deeply here and think a syllabus or a set of lecture notes holds students back from becoming their best selves. I am not saying the teacher does not need to prepare a lesson. I am not saying the lecture method is wrong. I am not saying your classroom should be chaos. To the contrary, often the teacher will be the only one communicating for entire stretches of a class period. But often our best teaching is done in the future, as a student we developed to think for herself proceeds to do so in years to come.

Second, as with many aspects of teaching Sunday School, do not get discouraged here. If your class is composed primarily of younger children, or what we gently term today, the under-privileged, their intellectual immaturity might prevent you from putting most of this into action. If your students attend once every four weeks, you are unlikely to ever get them to develop enough spiritual or intellectual momentum to move forward as I have described here. Accept these things, and find encouragement with most in any forward progress, and with the few as they bound ahead of the rest.

You will know when you have accomplished or are accomplishing what you aim at here. Your student will be self-motivated and excited about what is coming next. In time, the knowledge you impart and the process you develop will deepen the informational life. They will retain much more of what you impart than many of their peers. They will often become teachers in turn, in an informal sense, talking to others around them about all that they are learning. Eventually, if you start young enough, go deep enough, and live long enough, you will see a generational expansion of your influence as what you taught that student overflows from their lives into the lives of their children and students in turn.

True education only comes by thinking, not by simply being told. Cultivate, at all hazards, that thinking process.