3.16.1 Danger of Entire Disregard of Method

Two of the most practical questions that a teacher ever has to solve are:

How shall I go about to prepare a lesson?

Having prepared a lesson, how shall I set about to teach it to my class?

The first of these questions has already been discussed in preceding chapters; the second now calls for our consideration.

Is there a one best method? If so, what is it? What steps does it involve? Instead of answering these questions directly, perhaps it will be better to point out the various methods of the recitation, set down their characteristics and relative values, and then formulate a conclusion.

At the outset it may be advisable to sound two notes of warning. One is against an entire disregard of methods. There are those persons who believe that teachers are born, not made, and that therefore a discussion of methods is useless. The born teacher, say these persons, just teaches naturally according to his own personality. To change his method would be to destroy his effectiveness. If he isn’t a teacher then the study of methods will not make him one. In either case work done on methods is lost.

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.

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