Preparation is not only the beginning of teaching but also a considerable part if not the first half of it. Conscientious preparation is of the best as well as of the highest aspect of the teacher's work. If one knows a subject thoroughly one needs must speak or write about it or teach it. One cannot hide one's light under a bushel when it is really bright. Self-expression is a psychological need and if the mind is full, self-expression becomes a necessary. Teaching whatever it may not be is self-expression which when it springs from an honest mental urge is generally so warm and shining that there is rare self-satisfaction no less than rare influence. It is, therefore, difficult to exaggerate the importance of preparing a lesson before it is actually uncovered in the class. This might at the first blush seem a pretty stiff thing to say but as teaching is an easy and at the same time an excellent means of self-expression the teacher might prepare a lesson to teach and grind as axe of his own into the bargain.
If a lesson should be what it ought to be a thing that informs the head and feeds the heart it must be fresh spontaneous real and sincere. These qualities are the same that give distinction to every variety of effort that give art its timeless appeal that inspire the hard and humble labours with shy and simple litanies of joy. Work is exalted because no work whatever be its nature is unfit or incapable of attaining these qualities and work is also hated because the worker not minding them enough often misses them in his work. These castles is the air might not seem to be connected with the bourgeois business of class-room practice if preparation is denied its counsel in the sum of its quality. It however needs little reflection to see that even to teach what one knows well one must know better so that one may teach it best, which is almost the same thing as saying that even to teach what one knows best one must know a little better than bust so that one may teach it well.
Take, for instance the following rhyme :-
When I'm a man
I'll be a farmer, if I can
I'll plough the ground, and the seed I'll sow;
I'will reap the grain, and the grass I'll mow;
I'll bind the sheaves, and I'll rake the hay,
And pitch it up on the rick away:-
When I'm a man.
It must almost seem an insult to the intelligence of any teacher to say that any
sort of preparation is necessary to teach it. The meaning is too pain to be
lost, `When I grow I will try and become a farmer and do all the agricultural
labours from ploughing the field to making the hay stack. No preparation is
apparently necessary to teach a young class what it means. And yet if the
teacher thinks about it before hand he is likely to see that it can open some
new prospects. The rhyme is a little one's dream, a dream of coming joy. He is a
born tiller of land. He is already tilling in fancy and feeling the quivering
seed in his hand. He sees with the zest of a prophet of soil the agriculture
grow and the harvest ripen. His imagination is strong and he reaps the harvest
and binds the sheaves and carries the shocks home. Meanwhile, the grass is grown
tall and he mows it and makes it into hay when the sun shines, and look how he
pitches it up on the rick when he is a man! The little boy is playing the farmer
better than many farmers plough and sow and reap the corn and pile up the hay.
There is the tingle of ecstasy in the dream. It is utterly sincere. The rural
sense has him and he dances to its voice. There never was a more enchanted
gospel of the land. In an agricultural country such as India, the little boy's
dreaming joy can easily assume a practical fervour and the opportunity of
reading education in terms of life comes to the teacher. The agricultural
children of whom there must be a considerable number of almost all Indian
schools will thank the teacher for a chance to become vocal and
autobiographical. "Have you ever ploughed the ground?" "How is
the seed sown?" "What is a rick?" "How is the rick
made?" "Have you ever raked hay?" such inquiries must coax the
children to empty their confidences self-obliviously and the hour is overflown
with the piping voices, and should the teacher also have a contribution of his
own to fare forth with the poem imperceptibly becomes a festival of fond
memories. All which goes to show that one cannot know any thing too well to look
at it carefully for a space before he takes it to the class.
It is true that the best lesson is that which grows in the class. Transplantation is the enemy of spontaneity. But every creation is twice-born. The play is written before the footlamps are lighted. The house is drawn before brick and mortar are called. The lesson is prepared before it is taught. It cannot grow in the class from a void. As the plant grows from soil the lesson grows from a congenial collection of apperceptions and the more congenial the apperceptions are the more spontaneous natural and vivid the lesson rises. The class may be said to be a small and intense kingdom of big and unexpected surprises and the teacher cannot be too resourceful to manage its affairs. If he be not a ready teacher, he can hardly be a ready anything else while the needs of the kingdon require him continually to be a ready so many things. The secret of ready teaching is preparation and the weakest link in the chain of preparation is the measure of the teacher's strength.
The presentation of the lesson, whenever it is good is a mingling of more than one line of procedure. Roughly these lines of procedure are the grammatical and logical and the psychological. Grammar is concerned with modes of expression. It may be said to be the etiquette of things. Grammatical teaching has its value but it is apt to take an ell where only an inch is due or given. The grammatical view of life, once it gets a foothold, generally touches are atmosphere pretty heavily with its superficial and obtrusively symmetrical solemnities and it is easier to render education grammatical than even to teach grammar strictly so called. The logical procedure is more logical than the grammatical although both are concerned more or less with externalities. Abstract reasoning, which is logic is a much too equivocal and unpractical a drug to be administered to the young. The High School need not be too consciously averse from the matter of reasoning processes but should attempt in vain to impress the higher pleasure of pure reason on its juvenile population. The psychological method is by far better than either the grammatical or the logical for adoption at least in the lower forms in the High School in other words, there had best be a heavier ingredient of psychology than of logic or grammar in school lessons.
It is therefore, necessary to say what is here meant by the psychological method. The science of the mind is the seeker of the meaning of things. It tackles the life tissues and although these often lie deep they are not out of the reach of even the youngest understanding. The function of education is to give life, more life and still more life and the teacher must pour life forth to the children, good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over and then he shall have himself overflowing abundance. It is the meaning of plants and animals of elements and atoms of the call of the mountain and of the sea of river and city of picture and song that the teacher is there to interpret. In the true lesson the trappings and shows fade beyond the margin of the day.
Let us take a poem in illustration :-
A Farewell
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.
Flow softly flow by lawn and lea
A rivulet then a river.
No where by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver
And here by thee will hum the bee
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns will stream on thee
A thousand moons will quiver.
But not by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.
I have selected this poem for the illustration for what appeared to me good reason. A twelve-year-old boy reading in the Second Form came to me for some poems to learn by heart. I gave him a simple anthology with an equal appeal for young and old. With the unerring instinct of most young boys, he found out for himself what was best in it and came to me again with this poem swathed in praise and zeal. I asked him why he liked it and he let loose a world of reason why he liked it by assuring me again and again with the all powerful artlessness of children that he liked it more than he could tell. It is wornderful how wise children often are and how deep is their understanding. May not it be the truth that while children are able to understand the elders, the elders are often unable to understand children! This is probably the reason why men and women are never sometimes so absurd as in their relations with children.
The boy asked me who Tennyson was. "Why do you want to know that? I inquired.
"This is a very nice poem. I have learnt it by heart. I like to know who wrote it. Please tell me something about him."
"Your poem" I said, "was written by a great Englishman, Alfred Lord Tennyson. He lived to the grand old age of eighty-three years and died in 1893. He was the son of a country priest and when he grew up and began to give his poems to the world he become so beloved of all who read them that he became one of the most famous Englishmen of his time. The Queen made him her court poet and also a peer. That is why he is called Lord Tennyson."
"Tell me something about his poems," said the boy ruminatively."
"But you have not read them, and is it not useless to tell you of things you do not know?"
"But I'll read them if you can tell me that they are all so fine as this, `Farewell'"
"You must find that out for yourself. It is no good telling they are, although I think there are a good many such nice poems in Tennyson. Most of them are longer and some are finer, too. His poems tell of all things to all men. When you grow up and know enough English to read him you will perhaps find that "You can never open Tennyson at the wrong page."
The boy gave a puzzled look and I explained, "You will find that most of his poems will please you in one way or another. But it is little good telling you these things beforehand. You will find them out for yourself when the time comes."
At this my interlocutor was clearly anything other than pleased. He looked as if he felt like telling me that I was trying to keep him from his own.
"Please explain this `Farewell' to me," he demanded as if liking to see a specimen of the mature wisdom which I was placing so far away from him.
"You said you liked it."
"I do," retorted the boy. "He is bidding farewell to the rivulet and I was about to cry."
"That's enough. There's nothing more to explain. The rivulet will flow bearing its tribute of waters to the sea for ever. It will flow softly, as it does now, though green meadows, under tree of trembling leaves and beautiful waving branches, and happy bees will hum on its sparkling stream for ever. It will flow first a small stream and then a little river to join the sea and a thousand suns will shine on it and a thousand moos will pour amber light to quiver on it and twinkle on it. The stream will go on for ever but I am going never to return to loiter on its banks and to see it flow."
I apostrophized at this horrible length more for the sake of mature wisdom than for the sake of the boy, who meanwhile had begun to shine with the discovery that I could not explain the poem more than he knew. Yet the apostrophe was not altogether useless. I asked him to recite the poem before me and I was satisfied that it had sunk into his inner world of perception and feeling. I asked him no questions, and left him to his joy.
It is wrong to suppose that the psychological method which deals directly with the marrow of both mind and matter is either difficult for the teacher or above the young pupils. The psychological method is the thing. The garment of grammar discreetly laced with logic is often very serviceable but the soul of things dwells in their psychology and teaching must concern the soul to educate the boy or girl.
There is all the difference between preparing a lesson and writing correct notes of lessons. Obedience to the rule and evasion of the substance is a hoary human habit, and the rule is often stiffened to the greater evasion of the substance. Neither the rule nor the evasion is worth the candle. The true lesson is above `notes of lessons' because it is prepared and it is prepared because it is the only way to teach it well and teach it with pleasure.
In the preparation and presentation of a lesson it is possible to be exactingly analytical. Analysis, though unexceptionable is liable to be overdone. To split gossamer is as futile as to paint the lily and as bad. To think to tell a pea from a pea is to miss the mystery of peas. Whatever the subject a too generous use of needle and knife ends as the enemy of self-expression on the part of the pupils. The possibility of teaching a subject excessively will have, therefore, be borne in mind in the preparation of lessons. The purpose of explanations is to quicken thought and wonder. They must pause directly the purpose is gained; otherwise the mind instead of the explanations pauses. This is the educational `checkmate' arising from the examination instruction so widely practised in these days.
Intensive teaching rigorously pursued often cribs the mind. It fills the mind by taking from it its hunger and appetite. Digressive teaching on the other hand opens out new vistas expanding the mind. It feeds the mind by increasing its bunger and appetite. The open air is always better than the bedizened antechamber. Ventilation is the water of life in teaching. The anecdote armed the parable hearing the story laden wanderer has often a truer sense of teaching than the methodical instructor steeped up to the eyes in the grammar and dictionary and discipline of the lesson in hand. For the class lesson is not a museum piece but a life-process a free excursion rather than a dull and enforced encampment. The preparation will therefore involve other things than the lesson itself and the larger the number of these other things the richer the subsequent teaching.
Take for instance the following lines from "Ulysses"
" Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains : but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more
A bringer of new things ; ."
Explanation, however extravagant of quantity, is often more likely to obscure the mind than to enlighten it. The old Hindu parents yearning for children preferred a `short life' son but worthy to a hundred `long life' children of inferior timbre. The story of Markandaya, of Achilles of Alexander is the story of how our hours are saved from silent time. While many days often fail to make a life one day is often enough to make it. The spirit of the lines is one of heroic adventure that would stir every sand in the hourglass with the life bringing gales of new things. It is certainly better to throw the lines into light and air than to adjust them nicely under the magnifying glass.
There is a sparkle in everything a glamour and a romance. A call. Earth gleams.
Water adventures and the sky and air are filled with whispering mysteries. The wanderings of oil on land, water and wind applied science as it is, could not be witnessed unless the soul awakes. And in preparing a lesson what sever be the theme, it is the inner aspect exceeding from that holds the keys of teaching.