Of course, experience refutes both contentions.  It is admittedly true that great teachers are born to their work—­that some individuals just naturally impress others and stimulate them to high ideals.  And yet there is no one so gifted that he cannot improve through a study of the game he is to play.  Most great athletes are by nature athletic.  And yet every one of them trains to perfect himself.  The best athletes America sent to the Olympic games were wonderfully capable men, but they were wonderfully trained men, as well.  They had studied the methods of their particular sports.  Great singers are born with great vocal potentialities, but the greatest singers become so as the result of thorough training. Methods elevate them to fame.  What is true of the other arts ought also to be true of teaching.

As to the class of teachers not born to the calling, it seems perfectly clear that here is the great opportunity for a study of the fundamentals underlying good teaching.  Sound pedagogy is just a matter of good, common sense.  Any normal person by studying how to do anything ought in the end to come to do that thing better than if he ignored it.  I may not know how to operate an automobile.  But if I study how to operate one, if I observe those who do know how, and if I practice operating one—­surely I shall come to be more efficient as a chauffeur.

But while many will admit that this law of development applies in the mechanical world, they hold that there is something mystic about teaching for which only a pedagogical birthright is a solution.  The fallacy of such a contention seems too evident to call for argument.  At least the only sensibly hopeful view to take in such a Church as ours, in which so many members must perforce be called to be teachers, is that power in teaching can be developed as it can in any other field of endeavor.

The other bit of warning applies to the kind of teacher who is unalterably committed to a single method, not only as the best method, but the only one worth following.  Method depends so essentially on the personality of the teacher, on the nature of the pupils taught, and on the subject matter to be presented, that it is a very dangerous thing to say that, in spite of circumstances, one method is invariably the best method.

Let us, then, turn to the different methods and consider their relative values.  Five possibilities immediately suggest themselves: 

1.  The story method. 2.  The “reading ’round” method. 3.  The special topic method. 4.  The lecture method. 5.  The discussion method, built up through questions and answers.

1. The Story Method. The story is the method for childhood.  “All the world loves a story.”  Children certainly are a part of that world.  How they thrill in response to the appeal of a good story.  Their little souls fairly seem to open to receive it.  What an opportunity—­what a sacred