The following is chapter seven of The Seven Laws of Teaching (unabridged) by JOHN M. GREGORY, LL.D. The Seven Laws of Teaching (Unabridged) is available at Logos School Materials for $10.00 along with our popular study guide Practical Applications for the 7 Laws of Teaching

CHAPTER VII.
THE LAW OF THE LEARNING PROCESS.

1. We must now pass again from the side of the teacher to the side of the learner. It has been seen that the teacher’s work consists essentially in arousing and guiding the self-activities of the pupil. The pupil’s work, which now demands study, is the use of those self-activities in getting his lesson. The laws of teaching and learning may seem at first to be only different aspects of the same law, but they are quite distinct—the one applying to the work of the instructor, the other to that of the instructed. The law of the teaching process involves the means by which the self-activities are to be awakened ; the law of the learning process determines the manner in which these activities shall be employed.

2. If we watch again a child at his studies, and mark carefully what he is to do, we shall easily see that it is not merely an effort of the attention, nor a vague and aimless exertion of his mental powers, that is required of him. There is a clear and distinct act or process which we wish him to accomplish. It is to form in his own mind, by the use of his own powers, a complete and truthful conception or notion of the facts and truths in the lesson, in all their parts, relations, proofs, and applications. This is the result to which all efforts of teacher and learner must be bent. The Law of the Learning Process may therefore be stated thus: — The learner must reproduce in his own mind the truth to be acquired.

3. The laws before discussed have addressed themselves chiefly to the teacher: this comes home also to the learner. It brings into sight the principles which must guide the student in his studies, and which it is the business of the instructor to emphasize and enforce. While telling the teacher how to teach, it also tells the learner how to learn. This will appear more clearly in the discussion which follows.

The Philosophy of the Law.

4. As that is not true teaching which simply pours out before the pupil the treasures of the teacher’s knowledge, so that is not true learning which merely memorizes and repeats the teacher’s words and ideas. Vastly more than is commonly understood or believed, the work of education, of acquiring knowledge, is the work of the pupil and not that of the teacher. This- truth has already been affirmed in other connections. It is reaffirmed here as the fundamental notion in the present discussion. Learning is the formation by the learner in his own mind of the conceptions contained in the lesson learned.

5. We must distinguish between the original discovery of a truth and the learning it from others. Discovery is made by processes of investigation which are commonly slow, tentative, and laborious. Learning comes by processes of interpretation, which are often easy and rapid. Still there is much in common. The learner rediscovers in part the truth he learns. No discovered truth is wholly new. No true learning is wholly a repetition of other men’s thoughts.’ The discoverer borrows largely of truths known to others; the student must add much to the lesson he studies. His constant aim should be to rise from being a learner at other men’s feet, to become an independent searcher of truth for himself. Both discoverer and learner must alike be truth-seekers. Both must aim to gain clear and distinct conceptions of it. Both must needs employ in their work the truths already familiar to them, and both must put their learning to use, to find its full power and value. It is indispensable that the learner shall become an investigator.

6. Learning has several stages of progress which need to be carefully noticed in order that the full meaning of the law shall be seen and understood. They are the following: — First. A pupil may be said to have learned his lesson when he has committed it to memory, and can recite it word for word. This is all that is attempted by many pupils, or required by those teachers who count their work well done if they can secure such verbatim recitations. Education would be cheap if such learning could be made to stay; but it passes away like the images from a mirror, unless fixed by almost endless repetitions. Second. It is an evident advance over the memorizing of words when the pupil adds a clear understanding of the thought. So much better is this learning than the other that thoughtful teachers are tempted to say to their pupils : ” I do not care for the words of the lesson; give me the thought.” But in many cases, especially in Bible lessons, it is important to know and remember the very words. Third. It is a higher stage in study when the thought is so mastered and measured, as it were, that the pupil can translate it accurately into other words with no loss of meaning. He who can do this has advanced beyond the mere work of learning, and has begun the work of discovering. He is dealing not merely with another’s thought of the truth, but with the truth itself. The wise teacher will recognize this, and will pardon the crudeness in expression, while he encourages the pupil to more accurate thinking as a means to more correct language. Fourth. The learner shows higher work still when he begins to seek the evidences of the statements which he studies. He who can give a reason for the faith which is in him is a much better learner, as well as stronger believer, than the man who believes, he knows not why. The true investigator seeks proofs, and a large part of the work of a student of nature is to prove the truths which he discovers. So also ought the Bible student to ” search the Scriptures ” to see for himself if these things are so. Even the youngest learner takes a stronger hold of the truth if he can see a reason for it. In hunting for proofs, the student comes in sight of a hundred other truths, just as one who climbs a mountain finds the landscape always widening around him. The little lesson he is learning is seen to be a part of the great empire of the all-truth; its truth grows clearer in the reflected light of other truths, and the heart, like that of the mountain traveler, revels in the splendid outlook and in the consciousness of growing power. Fifth. But there is a still higher and more fruitful stage in learning. It is found in the study of the uses and applications of knowledge. No lesson is learned to its full and rich ending till it is traced to its connections with the great working machinery of nature and of life. Nature is not an idle show, nor is the Bible a mass of old wives’ fables. Every fact has its uses, and every truth its applications, and till these are found the lesson lies idle and useless as a wheel out of gear with its fellows in the busy machinery. The practical relations of truth, and the forces which lie hid behind all facts, are never really understood till we apply our knowledge to some of the practical purposes of life and thought. The boy who finds a use for his lesson becomes doubly interested and successful in his studies. What was idle knowledge, only half understood, becomes practical wisdom full of zest and power. Especially is this true of Bible knowledge, whose superficial study is of slight effect, but whose pro- founder learning changes the whole man. ” The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life.”

7. No learning is complete till these five stages are passed. They are like five windows of increasing size, each of which pours its fuller light in succession upon the lesson. The first shows it in dim outline only, like an object seen at twilight without distinctness of form or color. The others give increasing clearness to the view, till the gathered illumination of them all makes the truth to stand forth in all its grandeur and beauty, a landscape complete and rich, in colors, forms, and life. Such is the reproduction of the lesson which our law demands, and to this must the efforts of teacher and pupil be steadily bent.

8. The earnest student will find in these five stages of study the clearest directions for the work he has to do. Let him ask himself: (I) What does the lesson say, word for word ? (2) Exactly what does it mean? (3) How express this meaning in my own language ? (4) Is the lesson true; in what sense and why? (5) What is the good of it—how apply and use the knowledge it gives? It is along these five steps that the learner must mount, if at all, to a broad and clear conception of the full significance and value of the truth learned.

9. It is true that not many lessons are learned with this comprehensive thoroughness, and it may be that only the briefest and simplest lessons can be so mastered at a single sitting; but this does not change the fact that no lesson can be counted as fully learned till so mastered and understood. Better one subject so learned than a whole curriculum skimmed with lighter study. “Better to know one thing than not to know a hundred.” “It is worth more,” said the wise Seneca, “to be possessed of but few of the lessons of wisdom, but to apply these diligently, than to know many but not to have them at hand.” Such knowledge, and such alone, is power. Truth so studied cleaves to the memory, quickens the intellect, fires the heart, shapes the character, and transforms the life.

The Two Limitations.

10. Two limitations to this law of learning need to be considered. First. That of the age and powers of, the learner. Each of the five stages may be climbed by the youngest as well as by the oldest pupil, but on a path answering to the pupil’s active powers. (i) The mental activity of young children lies close to the senses. Their thinking is a sort of mental seeing. It pictures rather than thinks. Their knowledge of a lesson will be confined chiefly to the facts in it which appeal to the eye, or which can be illustrated to the senses. Many subjects are, of course, beyond their comprehension, but in the subjects which can be taught to them at all, the expression, the meaning, the proofs, and the uses can be shown to their understanding. (2) From ten to fourteen years of age, the imagination is the most active power, and the lesson will be best and most easily learned which can be pictured to the fancy or turned into a plan for some active effort or enterprise. (3) Later the reason begins to assume sway, and the lesson will appeal most to the mind if it asks reasons and gives conclusions. Each great subject of human knowledge will be found to have these three stages of truth in it, and to offer, therefore, some lessons for all ages of learners. Second. The other limitation is that which comes from the kinds of knowledge. Science, history, art, and Scripture, each has its own evidences and its own uses and applications. In each case the law of learning or study varies to meet conditions. Let the intelligent teacher take a simple example of each sort, and he will easily note the differences and find the true conditions of successful study of each. The student whose powers or methods of study best meet the conditions of learning in any branch of knowledge, easily excels in that branch. Examples are common.

11. Hermann Kriisi, one of the most sagacious of teachers because one of the most sympathetic students of childhood, said: ” Every child that I have ever observed, during all my life, has passed through certain remarkable questioning periods which seem to originate from his inner being. After each had passed through the early time of lisping and stammering, into that of speaking, and had come to the questioning period, he repeated at every new phenomenon the question, ‘ What is that ?’ If for answer he received the name of a thing, it completely satisfied him; he wished to know no more. After a number of months, a second state made its appearance, in which the child followed its first question with a second: ‘What is there in it?’ After some months more, there came of itself the third question: ‘ who made it?” and lastly, the fourth: ‘ What do they do with it ?’ These questions had much interest for me, and I spent much reflection upon them. In the end it became clear to me that the child had struck out the right method for developing its thinking faculties. In the first question, ‘ What is that ?’ he was trying to get a consciousness of the thing lying before him. By the second, ‘ What is there in it ?’ he was trying to perceive and understand its interior, and its general and special, marks. The third, ‘ Who made it ?’ pointed toward the origin and creation of the thing; and the fourth, ‘What do they do with it ?’ evidently points at the use and design of the thing. Thus this series of questions seemed to me to include in itself the complete system of mental training. That this originated with the child is not only no objection to it, but s a strong indication that the laws of thought are within the nature of the child, in their simplest and most ennobling form.” Kriisi’s questions belong chiefly to the first period of growth and education. In the second and third periods other questions follow.

Practical Rules for Teachers and Learners.

The rules which follow from this law arc useful for both teacher and pupil. 1. Help the pupil to form a clear idea of the work to be done, in its several parts and stages. 2. Warn him that the words of his lesson have been carefully chosen ; that they may have peculiar meanings, which it may be important to find out. 3. Show him that there are always more things implied than are said in any lesson. 4. Ask him to express, in simple words of his own, the meaning as he understands it, and to persist till he has the whole thought. 5. Let the reason why be perpetually asked till the pupil is brought to feel that he is expected to give a reason for his opinion; but let him also understand clearly that reasons must vary with the nature of the truth taught. 6. Aim to make the pupil an independent investigator—a student of nature, a seeker for truth. Cultivate in him a fixed and constant habit of research. 7. Help him to test his conceptions to see that they exactly reproduce the truth taught, in its widest aspects and relations, as far as his powers permit. 8. Inculcate constantly a profound regard for TRUTH as something noble, enduring and divine — something that God loves and all true and good men revere. 9. Let it be seen and felt that truth in facts, truth in feeling, truth in words, and truth in action all come under the same eternal and divine law, and that the hone’st truth-seeker will seek them all alike earnestly. 10. Teach the pupil to hate all falsehoods, sophistries, and shams as things that are odious, hurtful, dishonoring, shameful, cowardly, and intensely mean and wicked. Make him to dread a false answer to a problem as a lie from the lips.

Violations and Mistakes.

The violations of this law of the learning process are perhaps among the most common and most fatal of any in our school work. Just because this work of learning is the very center of the school work, — that for which all else is undertaken, — therefore a failure here is a failure in all. Knowledge may be placed before the minds of the young in endless profusion and in the most attractive guise ; teachers may pour out instruction without stint, and lessons may be learned and recited under all the pressure of the most effective discipline and of the strongest appeals ; but if this law is disobeyed, the teaching is fruitless and the attainments will be short-lived and delusive. Some of the more common mistakes are these : — (1) The pupil is left in the twilight of an imperfect and fragmentary knowledge by a failure to think it into clearness. The haste to get forward often precludes time for thinking. (2) The language of the book is so insisted on that the pupil is forbidden to try his own power of expression. Thus the student is taught to feel that the word is every thing, the meaning nothing. College students have been known to learn the demonstrations of geometry by heart, and never to suspect any meaning in them. (3) The failure to insist upon original thinking by the pupils is one of the most common faults of our schools. A really thoughtful scholar is the rare exception in most schools. (4) Commonly no reason is asked for the statements in the lesson, and none is given. The pupil is taught to believe what the book says, and because the book says it. Thus the reason is dwarfed by disuse, and gives no help in study except in following the book. Not knowing how to prove his thought true when it is true, he is unable to detect its falsehood when false. (5) The applications of knowledge are persistently neglected. That his lesson has a use, and that he can apply it to some practical purpose, is the last thought to enter the minds of many pupils. The examples of this fault are too many and too common to need further detail here. Nowhere are these faults in teaching more frequent or more serious in their consequences than in the Sunday-school. ” Always learning, but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth,” tells the sad story of many a Sunday-school class. Let that class be taught for six months as our law prescribes ; let the pupils penetrate beyond the letter to the deep meaning of the texts; let the splendid truths of religion in all their breadth of meaning be pondered, proved, and applied, and its whole character would be changed. Faith would follow hearing; frivolity would give place to the deepest earnestness, and the truth of God would vindicate its divine origin by the exhibition of its transforming power.