Seven Laws of Teaching

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1886. Excerpt: ... Chapter VIII. THE LAW OF REVIEW. I. Let us suppose the ordinary process of teaching to be finished. The teacher and pupil have met and have done their work together. Language freighted with ideas and aided with illustrations has been uttered and understood. Knowledge with its treasures of truth has been thought into the mind of the learner, and it lies there in greater or less completeness, to feed thought, to guide conduct, and to form character. What more is needed? The teacher's task seems ended. But no! The most delicate, if not also the most difficult, work remains to be accomplished. All that has been done lies hidden in the learner's mind, and lies there as a potency rather than a possession. What eye shall penetrate the understanding to determine the clearness and accuracy of the pupil's cognitions? What hand shall nurse into larger growth and into permanent force the ideas he has been led to conceive? What process shall fix into active habits the thought-potencies which have been evolved? It is for this final and finishing work that our seventh and last law provides. This Law of the Test, of the confirmation and ripening of results, may be expressed as follows : -- The completion, test, and confirmation of teaching must be made by reviews. 2. This wording of the law seeks to include the three chief aims of reviews: (1) To perfect knowledge. (2) To confirm knowledge. (3) To render knowledge ready and useful. These three aims, though distinct in idea, are so connected in fact as to be secured by the same process. It would be difficult to overstate the value and importance of this law of reviews. No time in teaching is spent more profitably than that spent in reviewing. Other things being equal, he is the ablest and most successful teacher who secures from his pupils the most ...