#64.# If the teacher allows the pupils to consult the text while reciting, his method is likely to produce little permanent good. To fix the lesson in memory, to lay aside all books, to face the anxious and earnest teacher, is to secure the best results. Of course, there are times when the text is to be studied and when it is necessary to refer to the printed lesson, but a wise teacher will remember that when soul looks into soul the greatest possible good comes from teaching.
2. What is meant by the _analytic_ method?
4. What is meant by the _inductive_ method?
6. Why is the _question_ method a good one?
8. What kind of question is better than that which merely draws out a fact?
9. What is the topical method, and with what pupils should it be used?
10. What is the gain in using illustrations? What the danger?
11. Should the lesson text be consulted by the pupil when reciting? Why?
#65. Value of the Concrete.#--The world is made up of concrete things; that is, things which can be recognized by the senses. The first impressions the soul gets of this world are concrete. We call them individual or perceptual notions. The soul compares, classifies, generalizes these concrete notions into general or conceptual notions. These thought products are abstract. But all knowledge begins in these individual notions and hence all first presentations of a new lesson or a new object of thought must be in the concrete. The richer and more varied the concrete data, the more valuable is the mental result in abstract thought. When an abstract notion is presented to a class it is of no educational value unless it can be referred back in the mind of each pupil to some concrete experience in his own past. The teacher, knowing this, will always aim to interpret general truths, which are abstract, into terms of experience, which are concrete. When David wishes to express the thirst of his soul for God he says, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." To a people familiar with Palestine and the habits of the hart this language at once made vividly real, in a concrete image, the great longing the pure soul has for its Creator.
#66.# All the tentacles of the soul seem to find in the concrete thing great sources of nourishment. Note the crowds that throng the zoölogical gardens, the flower expositions, the picture galleries, the museums of one sort or another, to see the potency of the concrete as a great teaching power. Explore a boy's pocket to learn what the concrete is worth. Why all these "scraps," broken glass, rusty nails, old knives, buttons, peculiar pebbles, colored strings, parts of a watch or clock, odd sticks, bits of chewing gum, ends of pencils, broken buckles, speckled beans, colored papers, bits of fur, and other things that he treasures? Because in a most potential way they are nutrition to his yearning soul. One will never fathom the real depths of the concrete as teaching data until he can appreciate why the son of a President of the United States gladly traded rare exotic flowers from the White House conservatory for the discarded paper caps of common milk bottles.