EFFECT OF THE OBJECTIVE ON OUR TEACHING

Not only will this point of view vitalize our teaching for the pupils, but it will also save it from becoming commonplace and routine for ourselves.  This truth is brought out in a conversation that occurred between an old schoolmaster and his friend, a business man.

The true objective saves from the rut of routine.—­Said the business man, “Do you teach the same subjects year after year?”

The schoolmaster replied that he did.

“Do you not finally come to know this material all by heart, so that it is old to you?” asked the friend.

The schoolmaster answered that such was the case.

“And yet you must keep going over the same ground, class after class and year after year!” exclaimed the business man.

The schoolmaster admitted that it was so.

“Then,” said his friend, “I should think that you would tire beyond endurance of the old facts, and grow weary beyond expression of repeating them after the charm of novelty and newness has gone.  How do you live through the sameness and grind?”

“You forget one thing!” exclaimed the old schoolmaster, who had learned the secret of the great objective.  “You forget that I am not really teaching that old subject matter at all; I am teaching living boys and girls! The matter I teach may become familiar.  It may have lost the first thrill of novelty.  But the boys and girls are always new; their hearts and minds are always fresh and inviting; their lives are always open to new impressions, and their feet ready to be turned in new directions.  The old subject matter is but the means by which I work upon this living material that comes to my classroom from day to day.  I should no more think of growing tired of it than the musician would think of growing tired of his violin.”

And so the schoolmaster’s friend was well answered.

Unsafe measures of success.—­It is possible to lodge much subject matter in the mind which, once there, does not function.  It is possible to teach many facts which play no part in shaping the ideals, quickening the enthusiasms, or directing the conduct.  And all mental material which lies dead and unused is but so much rubbish and lumber of the mind.  It plays no part in the child’s true education, and it dulls the edge of the learner’s interest and his enjoyment of the school and its instruction.

It is possible to have the younger children in our Sunday schools from week to week and still fail to secure sufficient hold on them so that they continue to come after they have reached the age of deciding for themselves.  The proof of this is all too evident in the relatively small proportion of youth in our church-school classes between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

It is possible to offer the child lessons from the Bible throughout all the years of childhood, and yet fail to ground sufficient interest in the Bible or religion so that in later years the man or woman naturally turns to the Bible for guidance or comfort, and fails to make religion the determining principle of the life.