Principles of TeachingBennion, Adam S. (Adam Samuel)
Religion
Principles of Teaching
Bennion, Adam S. (Adam Samuel)
Religious education
Not only is review thus essential in the beginning of the learning
process with children, but it remains a vital factor as long as men and
women undertake to learn. Review guarantees recall, and recall
re-establishes "nerve connections" to the permanent fixing of
impressions. Very little of our knowledge remains ours to a purpose
unless it is gone over and over until it is thoroughly established. A
truth that is taught in a Mutual lesson on a particular Tuesday night,
but which is never referred to again, and therefore never recalled, very
likely will soon be gone out of consciousness and usefulness. Those
truths and facts which are of greatest functioning value to us are those
which we continue to run over in our minds and ponder. The reinforcement
of review is what establishes our permanent working stock of truth.
Not only is review valuable as a matter of recall, but it makes for an
enrichment of mental content which is altogether desirable. The real art
of review lies in calling up an old truth in a new setting. Upon second
perusal it is seen in skilful review from a slightly different angle so
that each recall adds a reinforcement that makes for a clinching of
thought which makes it permanent. It very often happens that the first
time an idea is called to our attention it means but little, because our
mental reaction is limited in the particular field of the presentation;
the same idea in a new setting more in keeping with our experience may
take on an entirely different significance. That teaching is best,
therefore, which presents truth from the greatest number of angles
possible, thereby guaranteeing the richest kind of associations in the
minds of pupils.
Another value that attaches to the review lies in the fact that it makes
possible proper connection between new material and old. It is axiomatic
in teaching that pupils learn new truths and take on new experiences, in
terms of the old. Teaching that unfolds--that develops new ideas that
are built upon those already understood--is the kind of teaching
attended by best results. In our organizations, meeting as we do only
once a week, we must appreciate the fact that in the intervening time,
between meetings, hundreds of ideas have crowded into the mind and have
displaced those that may have been there as a result of our teaching. By
calling to mind those ideas of a week ago, we not only reinforce them,
but we start a chain of thought to which it will be very much easier to
add the link of today's work than to proceed as if forging an entirely
new chain.
No farmer goes out and plants grain on the unplowed field. He plows and
harrows that the soil may be prepared not only to receive the seed, but
to make generation possible.
A review simply turns over the stubble field of the preceding week's
work, making ready for the planting of new seeds that they may generate
and develop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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