Many teachers of science spend all their spare time in reading scientific literature and in posting themselves upon the latest achievements in their specialty. It might be to them a less delightful occupation if they traversed fields of investigation already well explored for the purpose of seeing how the student can be led over these most expeditiously and with minimum expenditure of time and effort. Thought bestowed upon the best way of imparting the elements of science would have a most beneficial effect upon their methods of instruction, and would greatly increase their skill in teaching. Many of the most abstruse and complex ideas can be resolved by analysis into their elements, and thereby be made intelligible to people of ordinary training. An eminent teacher of theology felt called upon to impart to a promiscuous audience an idea of the doctrine of total depravity as taught by the Church. He started by referring first to the popular mistake that the doctrine teaches the utter depravity of the human race, then to the ancient heresy that the depravity of human nature resides in the body, and not in the soul, and, finally, to the meaning of total as signifying not that man is as bad as he can become, but that he is depraved, or has a tendency towards sin not merely in his physical body, but in the totality of his being. Analysis prepared them to see that by total depravity is not meant that men are as bad as they can be, nor that they do not have in their natural condition certain amiable qualities or certain laudable virtues; that the doctrine means that depravity, or the sinful condition of man, infects the whole man,—intellect, feeling, heart, and will,—and that in each unrenewed person some lower affection, and not the love of God, is supreme. Such analysis of a complex concept into its elements, the explicit setting forth what it is and what it is not, followed by the synthesis of the parts into a thought-unit, is the plan pursued by the best teachers in teaching difficult subjects. By analysis we resolve complex concepts into their elements, which may be simple percepts or their relations. Things are separated in thought which go together in time, space, motion, force, or substance. Every essential attribute or constituent can then be viewed by itself until the mind has gone around it with the bounding line of thought, grasped its nature and essence, and explored it in its different aspects and relations. In this way the most abstruse subjects are shorn of their difficulties, the most complex problems are solved and elucidated.
Value of analysis.
The bearing of all this upon the art of teaching is easily shown. A teacher of geometry, whose mind was quite logical, failed, through lack of power, to make things plain. If the class did not grasp the demonstration of a theorem, he invariably started at the beginning, tried to throw light upon every link in the chain of proof, and by the time he reached the point of difficulty the members of the class were thinking of something else. A younger colleague pursued a different plan. Starting some pupil upon the demonstration, he detected the difficulty, and by a few words of explanation, or by a well-framed question, he focussed attention upon the simple elements, into which he resolved the difficulty, and frequently surprised the class by showing the simplicity of what had puzzled their minds. Under the clarifying light of analysis half the difficulties and half the sophistries of human thinking vanish like dew and mist before the morning sun.
The moral nature.
For the purpose of making an impression upon the moral nature word-painting is sometimes very helpful. All the text-books on physiology and hygiene intended for use in the public schools seek to teach the evils of strong drink by showing the effect of alcoholic stimulants upon different parts of the human system. Yet the most exhaustive lessons on how whiskey is made, and what are its exhilarating and its pernicious effects, cannot equal the effects of the word painting of Robert Ingersoll and the paraphrase by Dr. Buckley. In making a gift to a friend the former penned the following eulogy on whiskey:
“I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey that ever drove the skeleton from the feast or painted landscapes in the brain of man. It is the mingled souls of wheat and corn. In it you will find the sunshine and the shadow that chased each other over the billowy fields, the breath of June, the carol of the lark, the dew of night, the wealth of summer, and autumn’s rich content, all golden with imprisoned light. Drink it, and you will hear the voice of men and maidens singing the ‘Harvest Home,’ mingled with the laughter of children. Drink it, and you will feel within your blood the starlit dawns, the dreamy, tawny dusks of perfect days. For forty years this liquid joy has been within the staves of oak, longing to touch the lips of man.”
This was Dr. Buckley’s statement of the other side:
“I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey that ever brought a skeleton into the closet, or painted scenes of lust and bloodshed in the brain of man. It is the ghosts of wheat and corn, crazed by the loss of their natural bodies. In it you will find a transient sunshine chased by a shadow as cold as an Arctic midnight, in which the breath of June grows icy and the carol of the lark gives place to the foreboding cry of the raven. Drink it, and you shall have ‘woe,’ ‘sorrow,’ ‘babbling,’ and ‘wounds without cause.’ Your eyes shall behold strange women, and ‘your heart shall utter perverse things.’ Drink it deep, and you shall hear the voices of demons shrieking, women wailing, and worse than orphaned children mourning the loss of a father who yet lives. Drink it deep and long, and serpents will hiss in your ears, coil themselves about your neck, and seize you with their fangs; for at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. For forty years this liquid death has been within staves of oak, harmless there as purest water. I send it to you that you may put an enemy in your mouth to steal away your brains, and yet I call myself your friend.”
The languages.
There comes a stage of development of the learner at which the word itself becomes the object of thought. Words are then classified as parts of speech, and their function in sentences is studied. Their properties and endings must be learned and compared. There is abundant room for thought in the eleven hundred variations of the Greek verb. The variations of words by declension and conjugation can be made the material for thought, and as these are always at hand in the text-book, no excursions to the field being needed to secure specimens, and no preparation of difficult experiments being required on the part of the teacher, the ancient languages have held their own in the schools with most wonderful tenacity. The study of language has not merely the advantage of supplying material for thought in the words, grammatical forms, and sentences which are always at hand in the text, but through the classics it brings the learner into intellectual contact with the best thoughts of the best men in ancient and modern times. To translate an author like Virgil or Demosthenes is to think the thoughts of a master mind, to weigh words as in a most nicely adjusted balance, and finally to arrange them in sentences that shall adequately convey the meaning of the original text.