📘 Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (assigned excerpts)

1. Telling Is Not Teaching

H. Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (1884), chapter 1, “The Teaching Process: Its Nature”, section II, “Telling Is Not Teaching”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

One of the commonest mistakes of a Sunday-school teacher is in supposing that telling a thing to a scholar is teaching that thing to the scholar. Telling a thing may be a part of the process of teaching; and again it may not be; but telling, in and of itself, never is teaching—it cannot be. Until a teacher realizes this truth he is not prepared to be a teacher; therefore I would like to tell this truth to all teachers and to all who want to be teachers, although I am very well aware that merely telling it in this way will not teach it to anybody.

If the scholar is deaf, and you tell him a truth by word of mouth, with your head down so that he cannot see the movement of your lips, it is very clear that you have not taught him what you have told him. If he has ears, but they are intent on something else than your words while you are talking to him; or, if you talk in a language which he does not understand,—it is equally clear that your telling is not teaching, so far as he is concerned.

Thus far all will agree; but the principle involved has a profounder reach than this. No person learns at once everything that is told to him; and no person is taught until he learns; nor more than he learns. To tell a child for the first time all the letters of the alphabet does not teach him his alphabet. To tell a scholar all the rules of grammar or of arithmetic, all the boundaries of all the states of the Union, or all the principles of natural or moral philosophy, does not, by any means, teach him all those things. Teaching would be a very simple matter, if telling were teaching; but no one thinks of counting the two processes identical—except in the sphere of purely religious truth; as in the church and Sunday-school. Who would think of teaching an apprentice to shoe a horse, or to set type, or to make a watch, by simply telling him how? Who would expect artists, or authors, or soldiers, to be taught in their profession by the mere telling of their duties?

If men and women knew all the valuable truths which have been told them, from the lecture platform, in social converse, and by direct personal instruction, how wise the world would be! If children had been taught all the good things that have been told to them at home and elsewhere, how much more they would know than their parents—who have not always been taught by simply being told! And what learned congregations we should have, if all that some of these wise and venerable preachers have told their people, had been learned by their people! That telling has not been teaching in every case, all will see at a glance, whether they are ready or not to agree that telling is never teaching, nor ever can be.

How common it is for a preacher who has been faithful in proclaiming the truth from the pulpit, to bemoan the fact that persons who have sat under his preaching for years are found to be in woful ignorance on points which he has pressed most plainly and earnestly, until it seemed to him that every hearer must understand them perfectly! A preacher of rare ability and of rare faithfulness, who was a pupil of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, and who remained the pastor of a single New England church during the period of nearly a full generation, gave me this testimony:

“There was in my congregation a woman of more than average intelligence, who seemed to me one of my most interested hearers, as, for years, she was one of the most regular attendants at our church services. I was often encouraged by her attentive and responsive appearance as I preached, although she was not a member of the church. But by and by she fell sick, and I visited her to press home the subject of her personal needs and duty as a sinner. To my amazement, I found her hardly less ignorant of the great fundamental truths of the gospel than if she had been brought up in a heathen land. I tell you, that as I stood by her bedside trying to make plain to her, in that late hour of her probation, those simple truths which I had repeated to her from the pulpit over and over again, and which I had supposed she knew all about, I had a new sense of the fact, that to say a thing explicitly and repeatedly is not necessarily to make that thing the possession of those who hear it.”

Or, in other words, that preacher had then and there found out, what many a preacher before and since has discovered, and what many another, unfortunately, has not yet perceived that telling a thing is not teaching that thing.

2. Knowing Whom You Are to Teach

H. Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (1884), chapter 2, “The Teaching Process: Its Essentials”, section I, “You Must Know Whom You Are to Teach”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

A wise Connecticut teacher illustrated the necessity of a careful study of each scholar individually, in order to his wise teaching, after this fashion: “Suppose that you were a worker in metals, and had a foundry and a forge in which you cast all manner of curious things, or at which you wrought all manner of cunning devices. Suppose a stranger should come to you, bringing sealed packages, and should say, ‘Here are various kinds of metals. Without unsealing them, put them at once into your furnace, run them into your mould, work them at your forge, treat them all alike, and produce for me a set of images, each the exact counterpart of the others.’ Would you not reply, ‘The thing is impossible. Let me know what I am working on. Brass will not melt as readily as lead. Iron is not as malleable as copper. Steel is not as ductile as gold. One process for one, another for another, is the rule of my trade.’ ‘But,’ he urges, ‘metal is metal, heat is heat, a forge is a forge, a mould is a mould. Is not that enough?’ Your answer is, ‘Metals differ. The heat that melts one would sublime another. The mould that is strong enough for one is too weak for another. The blow that would crush the one would rebound from the other.’”

And that wise teacher’s enforcement of this telling illustration is worthy of the attention of every teacher: “My brother teachers, are we not too apt to think that the iron will, the leaden insensibility, the brazen defiance, and the golden sincerity, which exist in our classes, will, if put into the same furnace of appeal, shaped in the same mould of instruction, and hammered at the same forge of argument, all conform to the same image? Do we take pains enough to learn the nature of the peculiar metal on which we are working? and to adopt wisely the means to the end, the process to the result?”

Dean Stanley says of the teaching-method of Dr. Thomas Arnold, “His whole method was founded on the principle of awakening the intellect of every individual boy.” And that ought to be the basis of every good teacher’s method. The distinguished principal of one of the New York state normal schools has said, that if he had a class of fifty scholars, he would try to be fifty different teachers, as he turned from one to another of those scholars to instruct them severally. In doing this, that principal would simply be doing a teacher’s duty; but it is a duty which can never be done intelligently until the teacher knows the differences which distinguish his scholars one from another.

No wise adaptation of instruction is possible, unless the teacher understands the peculiarities of each scholar whom he is to instruct. If the scholar is already a consistent church-member, he certainly requires very different teaching from that suited to a young reprobate. If he is of a tender, loving heart, and of a mercurial temperament, his share of instruction should be another than that for a lad of a cool and calculating disposition. One scholar is to be reached through his feelings; another through his reason. One likes pictures and stories; another prefers to follow a thread of new thought. Each scholar has his individuality; it is for the teacher to know what that is, as preliminary to any hopeful effort at teaching the scholar.

Jesus Christ, the Model Teacher, distinctly affirmed his recognition of different classes of hearers, when he discoursed to the multitudes; and he told his disciples plainly, that his manner of presenting truth was chosen in view of the fact that they were privileged to understand what his other hearers did not. His telling the truth in the form of parables, did not in itself teach his hearers; but afterwards he taught to his disciples, that which not even they had learned from its mere telling. “There were gathered unto him great multitudes; … and he spake to them many things in parables. … And [afterward] the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? And he answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. … Therefore speak I to them in parables. … Hear you [now] therefore [the explanation of] the parable.”

Paul, also, had regard to the individual peculiarities of those whom he would teach, and adapted himself to them accordingly. “To the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews,” he says. “To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak: I am become all things [by turns] to all [the different sorts of] men, that I may by all [these different] means save some.” Paul would never have attempted to teach all the scholars in one class after the same pattern.

3. Knowing What You Are to Teach

H. Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (1884), chapter 2, “The Teaching Process: Its Essentials”, section II, “You Must Know What You Are to Teach”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

It is obvious that we cannot intelligently cause another to know what we do not first know ourselves. The blind may, it is true, kindly undertake to lead the blind, but it is more than probable that both leader and led in such a case will, sooner or later, land in the ditch. There is a good deal of such leading, and a good deal of such landing, along our Sunday-school highways, at the present day; but that does not, by any means, increase the desirableness of the method or of its results; nor does it change the nature of either. An inspired writer said of some would-be teachers, eighteen centuries ago: “For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food.” And that suggestion would have as much force in the case of a great many teachers now as it had then.

In Boston Harbor there is a reformatory school-ship, on which boys are placed to learn the rudiments of navigation, and of mental and religious knowledge. One day, while the superintendent of that school-ship was on shore, a stranger visited the vessel, and, according to custom, he addressed the boys collectively. According, also, to a too common custom of talkers, if not of teachers, the stranger attempted to make use of illustrations with which he was unfamiliar, by indulging in nautical figures of speech, where he was at every disadvantage with his bright sailor-boy hearers. When the superintendent returned, he said to the boys, at their evening gathering for prayer, “Boys, I understand you had a stranger to talk to you to-day.” “Yes, sir!” “Yes, sir!” came up from a hundred voices. “Well, what did he talk to you about?” “About two things that he didn’t understand!” was the unexpected response from one sharp boy. “Why, what two things were those?” “Ships and religion!” was the witty answer, as giving the measure of that talker’s knowledge of the topics he attempted to handle deftly. It would be well if no one since that stranger had attempted to teach what he did not understand.

You are going to teach. Well, what are you going to teach? “To teach Bible truth.” But Bible truth is a large subject. You can hardly teach all of it at once. What part of it are you going to teach now? “Oh! to-day’s lesson, of course.” What is to-day’s lesson? “It is Mark 5:21–43.” I didn’t ask where the lesson is, but what is it? “It is ‘Power over Disease and Death.’” I didn’t ask what the lesson is called, or what it is about, but what is the lesson? “Why, the lesson is a number of verses out of Mark’s Gospel, telling certain facts in the life of Jesus, showing his power to heal the sick and to raise the dead, and including several points of interest bearing on his knowledge as well as his power, and on the spirit of faith which he approved.”

Well, now the facts of this lesson clearly involve some points of geography and chronology, and of Jewish manners and customs in the days of Jesus; are you thoroughly familiar with all of these? “Oh no! I look upon such matters as of minor consequence.” Very good, what do you look upon as of chief importance in this lesson? Do you propose to teach the mere words of the lesson, so that all your scholars can recite them? or, the facts? or, the involved doctrines? or, the practical applications of both facts and doctrines? “Oh! I wouldn’t confine my teachings to the mere memorizing of the words; nor to the mere facts; yet I should want both words and facts to have a place in the teaching. And I should have in mind the doctrines and their applications, and I should try to teach more or less of them.”

Well, have you now fully in your mind the facts of this lesson, and the implied doctrines, and their applications, which you propose to teach to your scholars as a class, and to one scholar and another of that class, as individuals? Until you have all this in your mind, you are not fitted to teach all this to your scholars. If you have it in mind, it is because you as a teacher have made wise preparation so far for to-day’s lesson teaching. One thing is sure, unless you know, before you begin to teach, just what you would cause your scholars to know by your teaching, they are not likely to know, when the class hour is over, just what you have caused them to know by your teaching.

4. Questioning Your Scholars

H. Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (1884), chapter 4, “The Teaching Process: Its Methods”, section III, “How to Secure Your Scholars’ Co-work in Lesson-teaching”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

In all your lesson-questioning, you must know before you frame each question just what answer you would have that question bring from your scholar, and you must so frame your question as to bring that answer, and no other, as its natural and proper answer. If, indeed, you do not know what answer you are after, how can your scholar know what answer he shall give to you? Of course, if you should be questioning your scholar about his personal feelings or opinions, or should be seeking information from him in matters beyond your own knowledge, the case would be very different. You could not then know what answer your question would bring from him. But, in lesson-questions which you are asking as a part of the teaching-process, you should always have the desired answer in mind, and shape your question for it accordingly.

If you find, in any instance, that a question which you have put can fairly bring any other answer than the one you had in mind in its framing, you must accept that answer, when it comes to you, as so far a proper one; and if you still seek the other answer, you must try again, and by another question, for its obtaining. Yet just at this point many a scholar is checked and discouraged in his answering questions, by a teacher who questions clumsily, and then refuses to accept proper answers to his questions because they do not happen to be the very answers he had in his mind when he gave his vague and indefinite questions.

Let me illustrate my meaning. I sat behind a teacher in a Sunday-school I visited. He had a class of bright lads, say from thirteen to fifteen years old. The day’s lesson was “Jesus before the Governor.” “What was Pilate?” asked the teacher. That seemed a good beginning. The question was a natural one. Why could not the scholars answer it? Its shaping had not cost the teacher much thought; he little dreamed how much its answering would tax his scholars’ powers. “What was Pilate?” “A Roman,” answered one scholar. That was right, but it proved not to be the answer that the teacher looked for, and instead of accepting it as correct, and asking another question to bring the answer he wanted, he replied with sharp emphasis, “No, no. What was Pilate?” The boy, who had done his best, and had given a correct answer only to be told he was wrong, did not try again. Why should he? Another answered, “A foreigner.” Right again, but the teacher’s comment was, “No, no. What was Pilate?” After some hard thinking, it seemed to strike one of the boys that possibly the teacher wanted to classify Pilate in the order of beings, and he answered, “A man.” This also was fair answer to the question, but the teacher received it as if it were a triumph of stupidity, and he snapped out his response as if he were calling the class a pack of dunces, “No, no, no. What was Pilate?” As simple answers did not seem to suit, the boys set their busy brains at work, and it occurred to one that the character of Pilate was perhaps to be passed on, so the answer came, “A coward.” The teacher was in despair. His scholars were hopeless. It was of no use trying to make them learn anything. He would answer the question himself, “No!” he replied to the suggested answer; “Pilate—was—the governor.” The tone in which he gave this information showed that he was ashamed of his scholars, and his scholars were apparently somewhat ashamed of themselves. It would not take that teacher long to have his scholars so that they would answer no questions in his class.

What was the trouble in this case? It certainly was not with the scholars. They did their best. Their answers were as good as could have been looked for. They did a great deal more thinking than their teacher. I followed them with my mind, as they were questioned, and I could not imagine what answer their teacher was after. The trouble with his question was, it was quite too indefinite; it did not indicate the kind of information which he wanted. But still he put the blame on the boys, which fairly belonged on their teacher. He would not learn from them. When he asked, “What was Pilate?” and they answered, “A Roman,” he should have replied, “Yes,” and then have asked farther, “And what office did he hold?” or some such question, to bring out the desired answer. If his original question was the best he could think of, he ought to have seen by its first response that another form was needed to indicate the information he sought.

Whenever a strange answer comes to a teacher’s question, the teacher should try to see if it is not a fair answer, even though it be an unexpected one. If it is fair, he should receive it as correct, and ask himself how his question can be improved on, or supplemented, for his special purpose. The average scholar’s answers are better, more thoughtful and appropriate, than the average teacher’s questions. Bear this fact in mind while before your class, and understand, when no answer, or a wrong answer, comes to one of your questions, that the trouble is probably not with your scholars, but with the question you have put to them. Re-shape that, and you may find your scholars brighter than you had supposed.

5. Helping Scholars to Christian Decision

H. Clay Trumbull, Teaching and Teachers (1884), part II, “The Shaping and Guiding of Scholars”, section V, “Helping Scholars to Christian Decision”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

Although a teacher may well be cautious in judging the spiritual condition of his scholars individually, on the imperfect knowledge which is his at the best, he has a right, and it is his duty, to seek to learn the truth concerning each scholar’s position with reference to the truth of truths, and to aid in bringing to the act of Christian decision those of his scholars who have not yet taken that important step. It is needful that every teacher know enough about the state of his scholars to understand whether or not they may be fairly counted as disciples of Jesus; whether, indeed, they are to be addressed as impenitent and unforgiven sinners, or as young Christians.

To ascertain the truth on this point in any particular case requires delicacy and discernment on the teacher’s part. He must know the scholar’s home surroundings and teaching. He must study to know the scholar himself through and through. And in all his questioning and observing he must ask and expect that wisdom which God is ready to bestow upon his representatives, to enable them to decide such a question wisely. Does the scholar realize that he is a sinner; that he needs a Saviour; that Jesus is the only Saviour—the Saviour of all who trust themselves to him in conscious need and in clinging faith? Does he trust Jesus as his Saviour? Is he evidencing his faith by his works—his belief by his daily conduct? The answers to these inquiries will give a great deal better evidence on the point in question than any recital of a religious “experience” on such a child’s part could supply. It is far more important to you to find out whether or not that child is in Christ, than to find out the story of his conversion. Even if the date of his new birth cannot be fixed, for an entry in your class record, or on your home diary, so long as he gives full signs that he is alive in Christ, you need never doubt that he was newly born into Christ. The proof of a soul’s life is better than the proof of a soul’s birthday.

If, indeed, a teacher is convinced that a scholar of his charge is not yet a believing disciple of Jesus, the question recurs to the teacher,—How can I best help this scholar to the step of Christian decision? or, How can I help him to believe in Jesus as his Saviour, and to give evidence that his faith is living and potent?

To bring a scholar to a prompt decision for the right, the teacher would do well to see the scholar by himself. He cannot commonly talk with him as freely as is desirable, in the class, before others. On this account there is sometimes a gain in a brief inquiry-meeting at the close of the Sunday-school hour, when the teachers can talk individually and familiarly with those scholars who need to be helped to a Christian decision. Some teachers visit the homes of their scholars during the week for the express purpose of being alone with them in conversation and prayer about a decision for Christ. I knew a teacher who had a class of twenty-five scholars. Two of them were already Christian disciples. She visited the others, one by one, in their homes, and within one year the entire twenty-three were led to take the step of Christian decision. And she was only one teacher among many I could name. Other teachers invite their scholars to their homes for a similar purpose. The teacher’s judgment as to the better plan in particular cases, is ordinarily a safer guide than any arbitrary rule would prove.

It is certainly not a good plan to stir the emotions of impenitent scholars by any earnest appeals, in the class or from the desk, or in a Sunday-school prayer-meeting, without giving the scholars thus aroused a specific and an immediate opportunity to decide at once for the right. If scholars are moved to strong feeling concerning their spiritual condition and needs, without being called on to take a stand at once on the side of duty, they are injured, rather than helped, through the involved strain upon their feelings. It is most unwise to be always calling on the members of a class, or of a school, to repent, to come to Jesus, and to accept of proffered salvation, without giving to them, at the time of the appeal, an opportunity of showing that they have a sense of need, and that they are ready to give themselves to the loving Saviour’s service.

In fact, a teacher ought to understand whether or not his scholars are Christians. For those who are not Christians he ought to look confidently for that grace from God by which they may be induced to decide for the right. He ought to understand what the step of Christian decision involves in their case, and then to ask and expect and help them to take that step.