The Law of the Learning Process

 The Sunday School Teacher 15

We turn now to the sixth law or principle of good teaching, namely, this: the student must reproduce in her own mind the knowledge she needs to learn.

In other places, I have seen this referred to as the deep learning process. I like that. Each of us knows what it is like to learn something superficially. A name. A number. A fact. Young people often do it to pass an exam. The old do it often to function in the immediate. But neither of these is an example of what we are trying to accomplish when we teach Sunday School. We want the truths we explain, illustrate, and emphasize to work their way deep into the inner man, as Paul would say. We want that knowledge to become part of their DNA, to borrow another illustration.

What does that look like, or perhaps I could ask, how does that happen?

At the most basic level, the student must be able to repeat the main statements in the lesson word for word. As a pastor now for nearly thirty years, I have often used fill-in-the-blank outline sheets in teaching formats. At the conclusion of the lesson, I will work my way through that sheet and wait for verbal confirmation that they listened. It is at once both a review and the first step in the process of seating that information more firmly in their mind.

Second, a student must be able to articulate the thought process behind the main statements or truths of the lesson. This is obviously an expansion of the former one. No longer is regurgitating the words enough; there must be some explanation of what those words mean, and of how the main points of the outline flow from one to the next.

Third, the student needs to be able to express the larger thought that forms the foundation of the outline, and to do so without losing any of the teacher's original intent or meaning. In other words, she needs to demonstrate her understanding of the importance of both specific words and thoughts, and can explain that she does without leaving out anything important.

All on its own, this is an enormous accomplishment. It is at this point that the student can become a teacher herself. Taking the truths she learned in your Sunday School class, your student can now help her classmate at school who is struggling with the very issue you taught about in Sunday School. This is exponentially leveraging your time and work as a teacher. It is your influence expanding outward in ripples. It is not directly due to you, but it is absolutely indirectly tied to your success as a teacher.

It may seem that you have accomplished your goal as a teacher at this point. After all, your student has internalized not just your words but your thoughts, and done so clearly enough that they can convey those thoughts to others in their orbit. What else could you hope for in a student?

Fourth, the student who continues to deepen her ownership of truth will begin to seek out proof or evidence of the knowledge you are teaching her.

As a young man recently surrendered to ministry, I began reading the Bible and listening to preaching with an entirely new interest. No longer was I listening for myself alone, but I grasped I was listening also for those who would, in turn, listen to me in years to come. And if I was going to help them, I needed to establish on my own, or at least for my own satisfaction, the veracity of the knowledge I was being handed in school, Sunday School, and church. So I began.

For example, I remember at fifteen coming across Mark 16.16 in my daily Bible reading. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. I had been taught all my life that salvation was by grace through faith alone, that it did not require baptism. I believed that. I understood it. I was already at that age witnessing to others and telling them the same thing. But here was a verse that seemed to say differently. I walked to the school library, found a concordance, and over the next few weeks looked up every use of any form of the English word baptize in the Bible. I came away convinced that what I had been taught, what I understood, and what I had been telling others was entirely true – salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone.

One could argue that my entire life since has been that process repeating itself without end. I have been taught thus and so. I understand it. I must teach it to others. I dare not simply repeat what I have been told. I must research and study it for myself. I do so. Then, once I have internalized it to my satisfaction, I turn around and hand it on to others. The thousands of books that fill the shelves of my library prove this. It is why those books are there.

I realize there is some level of risk here, a risk that a fair number of teachers and mentors do not want to run. The risk is that the student will find something that disagrees with what you have taught her, that gives her an entirely different viewpoint, and one she finds compelling. I believe this is a risk that must be run in order to soundly establish the faith in the hearts and minds of our young people. In the long term, people love liberty. They resist being fenced in. Gradually and carefully, perhaps, but just as certainly, we must allow and even encourage our students to investigate the truths we teach them, no matter where that investigation leads them.

There yet remains one more step in this deep learning process, one more necessary accomplishment. Fifth, the student must practice the truths you are teaching them, applying them to her own life, changing from image to image as by the Spirit until Jesus Christ is formed in her. Of course, this is an ongoing process, one that begins when she is just a student and will continue her whole life as she, in turn, teaches others. Like all ongoing processes, it is never quite finished this side of eternity. But if you are like me, you want to see it begin when she is still sitting in your classroom. You want to see her life begin to change while she is still under your immediate influence.

In a sense, this is the test of your teaching, is it not? It is not her head you want to reach as much as her heart, her life. You want to edify her, to see her built up in Christ, not at some future date, but beginning now and continuing into the indefinite future. This is your paycheck. This is your reward. Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men. (II Corinthians 3.2) Your student's changed life is all the thanks and response you desire.

It is for this reason that you, as the teacher, dare not think your job is done when the bell rings for the end of class. Nor do you have the luxury of forgetting your students at the end of the enrollment period. Your heart and your hand and your time must be continually open and available to them. While their learning process may no longer be under your direct supervision, it should still be under your influence. You should welcome that, indeed, seek to continue it as long as possible. Long-term influence is deep influence.

There is risk in this, too. You risk the heart and mind you have offered them being rejected. You risk seeing a student who has made a great start run right off the rails and crash. You risk becoming discouraged when they grow at a different rate than you did, or when you think best. You risk them becoming something you did not intend and would not wish.

Risk it anyway. Risk the love and the tears and the prayer and the emotional investment. Risk the rejection. Risk the sorrow. If they are going to buy the truth in sufficient quantity as to change their life and others, you are going to have to continue to pay.

Learning is not an event. It is not a class period. It is a process. Lead them, support them, and encourage them through the entire process. When it works as intended, there is no greater joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. 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 the edge of 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, usually 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 being told. Cultivate, at all hazards, that thinking process.