Sunday-school teacher-training

SUNDAY SCHOOL
TEACHER-TRAINING

H.M.HAMILL

REVISED EDITION

Book JH 35

r

Copyright N°

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL
TEACHER-TRAINING

By H. M. HAM ILL, D.D.

Superintendent of Teacher-Training Work in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Chairman
of the Educational Committee of the International
Sunday - School Convention ; author of " Legion
of Honor Normal Course of Study," "The Sun-
day-School Teacher," " International Lesson His-
tory," "The Bible and Its Books," etc.

PHILADELPHIA

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES CO.

^ *p

xc\0

fV

JISBRARY of CONBRESSI

\ Two Codes Received

JUl 24 90 r

Copyright Entry

ClASS ci~ XXC, NO,

COPY t»

Reprinted from The Sunday School Times, and
Copyright 1903, 1904, 1907,

BY

The Sunday School Times Co.

/BEG pardon for a personal word. I begin this
series of chapters vjith no small embarrassment*
I have neither sought nor shunned the call to vorite
them. I have been a teacher most of my life* I have
been trying to train Sunday-school teachers for twenty
years. Mr. B. F.Jacobs laid hand upon me, and gave
me charge of teacher-training in a great Sunday-school
state. In the larger International field I did vohat I
could to solve this greatest of all Sunday-school problems.
I am harder at vjork upon it novo than ever, in the
service of the church of my fathers. I long ago began
to knovu the difficulties in the voay, but I have seen
most of them overcome. I love the vuork. I shall at
least put my heart into these chapters. If I can only
make them hopeful and helpful to those voho may read
them, I shall be happy indeed.

H. M. H.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Is Teacher-Training Needed? i

Who Should Do It? 13

What It Should Be? 27

Ways of Doing It 43

Teacher-Training Agencies 59

Interdenominational Teacher-Training ... 71

Denominational Teacher-Training 89

A Specimen Teacher-Training Lesson ... - 99

IS TEACHER-TRAINING NEEDED?

IS TEACHER-TRAINING NEEDED ?

BY DAY and by night it is the thought of the great
host of American Sunday-school teachers, many
of whom I know and all of whom I love, that comforts
and cheers me in my work. If one can help at all to
solve the problem that confronts and hinders them, it
will be labor well spent. And behind these teachers
now teaching is another even greater host. It is the
young people of the church who are to teach and train
when we are gone. What can be done for them ? If
teacher-training means much to the teacher at work,
it means much more to the young man or woman
whose life work is yet to begin.

The first reason why I believe teacher-training is
needed is that our teachers, and our young people who
are willing to teach, sincerely and generally desire it.
In fifteen years of Sunday-school work I have met
very many of both classes, — in Canada and the
United States, in the big cities and little villages, in
the finely equipped schools of modern pattern and
in the log and sod houses of the frontier, in conven-
tions great and small, individually and collectively.
Comparatively few of them were really indifferent.
Some of them teach perfunctorily, because they know
nothing better. Most of them sincerely desire to
become better teachers, if only the way would open.

I have watched them at conventions, some of

3

4 How to Become a Trained Teacher

them coming long distances at large expense. I
have seen them scanning the program anxiously
to see if it had anything to help the teacher. I
have noted their eager, upturned faces, always pa-
thetic in their keen desire to find something in the
speaker's words that would help them teach next
Sunday's lesson. Name a teacher- training book,
and quickly would come the inquiry, "Where can
it be bought?" "What will it cost?" Whoever
taught a lesson from the Bible to these teachers and
young people as a teaching model but noted the
quick flash of the eye and flush of the cheek if his
work was skilfully done? I know the meaning of
that flushed cheek. I have seen it so many times
when Jacobs and Schauffler and Miss Harlow taught
It means, "I want to be a better Sunday-school
teacher. How can I learn to do it?"

I have two recent letters lying on my desk. One is
from Columbia, South Carolina.

Dear Sir :

I am anxious to take up the teacher-training course ot
our church. I feel a little afraid to undertake it, as I am just
a young girl with little time or experience to help me along •
but I am very much interested in Sunday-school work, and,
with God's help, I will try and do the very best I can to become
a good teacher, Hoping to hear from you very soon.
I am respectfully,

a b.
The other is from Lynchburg, Virginia.

Dear Dr. Hamill :

Your letter received, stating that I was the first to
complete the full teacher-training course. I am glad to know
that the old Dominion's representative came out first, and

Is Teacher -Training Needed?

'£>

that the honor fell on one of old Centenary's teachers. I have
eighty-one scholars in my Sunday-school class, and am also
superintendent of our Home Department, numbering several
hundred, which is the largest in Virginia. Every teacher in
our church should complete the full training course.

M. M. G.

In these two letters extremes meet, and prove my
point. The Lynchburg teacher was already one of
the best in the South, a degree man from several
schools and colleges, but among the first to respond
to the teacher-training call of his church. The girl
from South Carolina speaks for many thousands
like her, with little time or experience to help,
but wanting to "try and do the very best to be-
come a good teacher." And because I am sure
of my ground, I say that, wherever teacher-training
fails, it is not the fault of the teachers or the young
people.

WHAT THE AGE DEMANDS IS ELECTRIC

It is the "electric age. At ten years of age, I
reveled in a stage-coach ride of sixty miles a day.
Last month I covered the same route and distance in
an hour. At twenty, I was guest in a hotel that
burned gas, and was mindful "not to blow it out."
At thirty, I marveled over my first electric light.
"The old order passeth." The youth of the day sees
more, hears more, and often knows1 more things, than
came to his grandfather in a lifetime. If he is not
as wise, it is not for lack of knowledge: The multi-
plying cities, the great railroad systems, the long-
distance telephone, the public library, the lyceum,
the Chautauqua, the "little red schoolhouse, " the

6 How to Become a Trained Teacher

penny daily, the Sunday-school "lesson-leaf," are
Aladdin's lamp to our boys and girls. If he is a
country lad, the rural route rider lays the big
world daily at his door. I heard a boy of fifteen
recently, in a country day-school, classify and sum-
marize the news of the world from his father's
daily in a way that would have made Thomas Jef-
ferson gasp.

What does this mean to the Sunday-school teacher ?
It means that this boy, alert, wide awake, insistent,
seeing and hearing many things, and always on the
lookout for more, is his Sunday-school scholar. It
means that he is taught by the finest day-school
teachers in the world, and is not averse, as I am, to
drawing odious comparisons between the teachers of
his public school and the man or woman who teaches
him on Sunday. It means that he knows good teach-
ing from bad, and whether the Sunday-school teach-
er's Bible knowledge is genuine and thorough or
mere "make-believe." The other day I saw from
my car window a wagon-load of darkeys, big and
little, drawn by an old gray mule, trying to race with
our Limited Express. The public-school teacher is
the "Limited," and the Sunday-school teacher who
makes mock of his work, and sneers at teacher-train-
ing, is the gray mule. Spilman, our Baptist field
man, tells of the young North-Carolinian who refused
to go to Sunday-school, though one of the best learn-
ers of the village day-school. "They teach a feller
something down here," he protested, "but up there"
— with a look of disgust towards the village church —
"they just mess with me."

Is Teacher -Training Needed? y

THE CHURCH IS CONCERNED ABOUT IT

And well it may be. For a hundred and fifty years
of American Protestantism the church has concerned
itself chiefly over the message from the pulpit, and
paid little heed to the lesson from the pew. Big
preachers, high-priced evangelists, costly choirs,
luxurious "auditoriums," were the accessories of
public worship. Subterranean "basements," bare
floors, dust, smoke, niggardly equipment in the way
of books, libraries, maps, blackboards, etc., have
usually been good enough for the Sunday-school —
a sort of juvenile purgatory through which the child
might work his way to the church heaven above-
stairs. The stanch old Catholic Church, in spite of
what we don't agree with in it, might well be our
example. That church's concern for the child, and
for the teaching of the child, as against the churchly
needs of the adult, is as three to one. The morning
mass is good enough for the one, but the finest Jesu-
itical teaching is not too good for the other. I think
I know a hundred of our fine city churches whose
quartets and choirs cost more money per annum than
would hire the finest teacher- training experts for their
Sunday-schools. Within four years I know of one
great denomination, that counts its Sunday-school
scholars by the millions, voting down an appropria-
tion of only three thousand dollars a year to keep an
expert in the field at the service of its teachers, though
lavish in its expenditure for the salvation of the
heathen.

I am glad to note, however, the breaking up
of the old idea that great sermons, adult conversions,

8 How to Become a Trained Teacher

and "go-as-you-please" Sunday-schools, is the scrip-
tural order. When a state constitutional convention,
as the papers inform us, can spend an entire week
debating how to improve its public schools, church
synods, convocations, and conferences may well take
hint Denver — Chicago — Winona ! Of what are
these three names the sign ? At Denver, in June
of 1902, two thousand picked representatives of
American churches came together into their triennial
International Sunday-school Convention. At first it
was a question of many opinions as to what kind of
Sunday-school lessons should be taught At the last,
after days of discussion, as one voice it was the judg-
ment that, whatever the system of Bible study, the
Sunday-school teacher, rather than the Sunday-school
lesson, should hereafter be the chief concern. At
Chicago, eight months later, the " Religious Education
Association," with four hundred pastors and college
men, met to consider the whole field of related re-
ligious education. Their final word, as at Denver,
was the need of trained Sunday-school teachers. At
Winona, in August of 1903, the elect men and women
of the management of American Sunday-school work
were in council for a week, and the making of Sun-
day-school pastors and the training of Sunday-school
teachers were the dominant themes.

Already I could name six or more of the greater
churches which have recently erected, or are begin-
ning to erect, teacher-training departments, and are
putting training-courses and men into the field.
fn a later chapter in this book I shall have some-
thing to say of the great work they are doing. And

Is Teacher -Training Needed? 9

of the nearly sixty inter-denominational state and
provincial Sunday-school Associations which consti-
tute the International Convention, several of them
have been doing systematic and efficient teacher-
training work among the churches, while all ot them
have formally approved, and most of them have
entered upon it.

Sixteen years ago, when I began my Sunday-school
rounds as an itinerant teacher-trainer, I can recall not
a few humiliating experiences in the presence of the
dignitaries of the church, as I pleaded for an ex
cathedra endorsement of teacher-training. Brethren
whose divinity had been well doctored would eye me
askance under the rims of their gold glasses as if I
were vender ot some sort of pious popcorn or patent
medicine. Times have changed, and the doctors
have been changed by them. I am not as lonesome
nowadays, and the "popcorn" business has grown
and prospered.

THE WAY IS OPENING

Whether through denominational or interdenomi-
national agency, the time must come when the un-
trained Sunday-school teacher will be without excuse
or standing. The growth of public sentiment is slow
but sure, and when fully aroused it is resistless. I
have tried to show how that sentiment is crystalizing
about the work ot the Sunday-school teacher. Years
ago, when Horace Mann was opening the way, poli-
ticians and legislators made mock of his plea for
thoroughly trained secular teachers. We all know
how that battle was fought and won. The teachers

C

io How to Become a Trained Teacher

wanted it, the patrons of the schools began to favor it,
the taxpayers finally demanded it. Now a costly
normal school, within reach of and free to every pub-
lic-school teacher, is taken for granted. But it took
more than fifty years to bring it to pass. I can re-
member when a Methodist bishop took his fling at
college-bred preachers and preaching, and carried the
laugh of the conference with him. Look for him
now, and you will find him — in the cemetery. Every
plea that was made, every battle that was fought for
a trained ministry, is now upon the side of trained
Sunday-school teachers. We are heirs of all the
promises as well as the achievements of secular or
religious educational history. My field of labor is in
a section rightly looked upon as conservative and a
little old-fashioned, particularly in religious habits
and opinions. I only wish the readers of The Sun-
day School Times could make my rounds with me,
and see something of the graciousness, for my work's
sake, of my bishops and ministerial brethren. And
what is true of my own field and work is true of other
fields and men.

There is no trouble about the opening of the ' • way. ' '
Lying on my desk is the report of a college professor
who is using his spare hours to organize and conduct
class after class in teacher-training, with a roll of
probably two hundred students in one city. Letters
come to me from pastors wanting to know how to go
about forming teacher- training classes. Here is what
a plain country superintendent writes : "My school is
small and away from the railroad. But I have been
reading of teacher-training plans, and I think we

Is Teacher -Training Needed? n

can do as well in the country as in the city. I am
sure we need it. My hardest trial is to get good
teachers. I send you twelve names, including my
officers and teachers and some young people who I
believe have the making of good teachers in them.
We propose to go through with it to the end, and I
intend, as superintendent, to keep in the lead."

Here is another from a young pastor : "Nothing
has so stirred up my Sunday-school and helped my
teachers as the training-books we are now studying.
I can see the change coming over them." In nine
out of ten such letters there is not a hint of expert
leadership. Much as they would like to have that
they are not wasting time looking for it. Here and
there is a good Christian public-school or college man
who can be had as leader for the asking, but in the
main it is like a young man who wrote : "I need it,
and I am going to have it. I would like to join with
others in a class. I intend to try to get others in the
school to join with me, but, if I fail, you can count on
me single-handed and alone." This last letter struck
the keynote. The "way" is always open to one
who has a "will" to do it. It is the teacher who
says "You can count on me single-handed and alone"
that I am counting on.

WHO SHOULD DO IT ?

II

WHO SHOULD DO IT?

I HAVE a bunch of five teacher- training keys, each
thoroughly fitted and trusty. They are ' ' skeleton * *
keys, which means that they fit any teacher-train-
ing lock, wherever and whatever it may be. Take any
one of the keys, try it upon any lock, and the door
will open. You may have to use it upon a succession
of doors before you come upon what you are seeking,

but, if you fail, the fault is not in the key. I have
given to each of my keys a name, and I believe I can
put the five keys at work in such a way that not a
door of hindrance to teacher-training will continue
closed. If I could be allowed to use them all at once,

15

1 6 How to Become a Trained Teacher

every key turning and every door opening, the prob-
lem of teacher-training would speedily be solved.
You will notice, however, that three of my keys have
been little used and are growing rusty. Whatever
has been done in ways of teacher-training is to the
credit of two keys only, and even these have been
sparingly and awkwardly used. Let us take up the
keys one by one, and consider what each, in order,
might do.

THE CHURCH KEY

The Church Key comes first. The
CHURCH jjjj \ training of Sunday-school teachers

will continue to be an incident until
the churches, per se, shall grapple with it.
More than a score of denominations, small and great,
constitute the International Sunday-school Convention.
Some of them count their schools by the tens of thou-
sands. Most of them have money and men at com-
mand for every possible problem. All of them are
beginning to see that a grave question affecting their
future growth is that of trained Sunday-school
teachers.

Yet for nearly fifty years, since the Rev. John H.
Vincent as pastor at Joliet, Illinois, in 1857, organized
the first teacher-training class known to church his-
tory, the Church Key has been hanging rusty on
an unopened door. The trouble was that the church
unwisely handed over the key to the Chautauqua
movement in 1874, and the one hundred or more
summer assemblies which sprang from that move-
ment, after vainly trying to do for the churches what

Who Should Do It? 17

the churches ought to have been doing for themselves,
have about lost the teacher-training key.

Along with the Chautauqua, as early as 1888, came
the teacher-training work of the stronger inter-denomi-
national Sunday-school associations, Illinois and Ohio
leading the way ; and I shall later try to show how,
under serious difficulties and with inadequate means,
they have essayed to do for the church what the
church was bound by its divine commission to do for
itself. In the nature of the case, an inter-denomi-
national agency can only supplement the denomi-
national, and can never supplant or displace it.
Inter-denominationalism is at best a servant, not a
master. With its eye upon the entire field of the
churches, it can gather what is best in all and serve
the needs of each.

But its best service is done when it has reinforced
and encouraged the denominations severally in doing,
each for itself, its own proper work. It is the duty
and right of each church to organize, maintain, and
direct its own teacher-training. It owes this to its
teachers, who serve it without pay and often without
thanks. It owes it to the Sunday-school scholars that
they shall have the best Bible training the church can
supply. It owes it to the Bible itself as a book not
easily handled by even the trained teacher, and often
travestied by the untrained. The church can speak
with authority to its own pastors and people, who will
heed what it says if only for the sake of loyalty to it.
Blood is thicker than water, and it is no reproach to
inter-denominationalism to say that it can never com-
mand such loyalty as a worthy churchman will render

1 8 How to Become a Trained Teacher

to his own denomination. If I see one thing plainer
than another, it is that each church must take up its
own burden of teacher-training, and by every honor
it can confer and every authority it can rightfully
exercise inspire its teachers to prepare themselves for
their high vocation. It is a comfort to know that
some of the churches are beginning to do this, and
that the lost "church key," that opened doors for
outsiders and left its own doors hard and fast, is being
recovered and freed from rust.

THE SEMINARY KEY

It is a question whether church
^seminary u | key or theological seminary key is

the more effective. The church
has the final word of authority, but the church,
in these days, is largely what the seminaries make it
Let the seminary magnify a principle or method, and in
a few years, among the laity, it will be reflected in a
thousand pastoral fields. I have an easy and con-
vincing illustration. A few years ago the Louisville
Baptist Seminary had at its head a prince among
preachers and scholars, Dr. John A. Broadus. He
was a devoted friend of the Sunday-school and its
teachers, and impressed his students with the value
and dignity of Sunday-school work. Beginning with
Sunday-school "practice work" in Louisville, and
extending it throughout the entire South, the old
"Broadus boys," and their worthy seminary suc-
cessors, have become the aggressive organizers and
teacher-trainers ot a great and growing church. A
"pastor's Sunday-school institute" has become the

Who Should Do It? 19

big annual event of the seminary calendar, and a chair
of Sunday-school pedagogy has been established for
the training of Southern Baptist preachers.

Recently I was asked to contribute to a symposium
upon *«What can be done by our seminaries to ad-
vance our Sunday-school work ? ' ' My first plea was
for a better Sunday-school "spirit" in the semi-
naries, an esprit du corps like that at Louisville. The
••seminary key" has too much of the smell of
"ology" and dogma about it, and too little of the
scent of the living flowers that grow, or ought to
grow, in the pastor's garden. The young men are
too busy digging for Hebrew particles and Greek
roots, and are not enough concerned for the plain
people in the Sunday-school pews. So far as the
writer knows, there is a Sunday-school chair, or
the provision for it, in only three theological semi-
naries, though professors abound for everything else,
from Sanskrit to sociology. With (in round num-
bers) 150,000 American Sunday-schools, 1,500,000
officers and teachers, and 15,000,000 enrolled mem-
bers, all depending for skilled leadership chiefly upon
the output of our seminaries, it is a little singular that
only four or five of these seminaries include a Sunday-
school text-book in their curricula, a few more hold
Sunday-school ••lecture courses," not always by ex-
perts, and most of them depend largely upon a student
practice-work in neighboring Sunday-schools, usually
without official direction and revision.

Theology is good and necessary, but Sunday-school
soul-winning and teacher-training are better. West
Point drills its cadets thoroughly in science, mathe-

20 How to Become a Trained Teacher

matics, and language, but does not stop with theory.
The West Point graduate is nothing if not master of
detail and trainer of others. From filling a cartridge
to maneuvering an army corps he knows how to do
things, and is never so happy as when transforming an
awkward squad into well-disciplined soldiers. A young
pastor just out from the seminary, who is not a type
of the better class of our seminary men, said to me
recently, upon urging him to conduct a training-class :
"I haven't time, — if I had, I wouldn't know how.
Let the superintendent train them — it's not my busi-
ness." I can well believe it was of this man's semi-
nary examination a Sunday-school wit remarked,
"They asked ten questions about angels, and not one
about the child." I beg pardon for insisting that it
is the " business" of the ex-seminary pastor to train
his Sunday-school workers, and of the seminary to
cause him to "know how." My "seminary key"
ought to *be the most serviceable, but I am sorry to
say it is the rustiest of the bunch.

THE PASTOR'S KEY

The pastor of a church has been
pastor u" jj defined as "the eye, the ear, and

the last word." He ought to see
and hear everything that makes for the welfare of
his charge. His word ought to be, and usually is, the
final word of authority. There is nothing more beau-
tiful, and at times more pathetic, than the upturning
of the hearts of the people toward their pastors. It
is like the flowers that turn their faces toward the sun.
Even the children give their brightest smile and word

Who Should Do It? 21

to the pastor, and the stalwart men of the street in-
stinctively pay him honor when he comes among
them. In many years of Sunday-school work I have
noted this singular respect for men of the cloth. I
pray God it may never be less. It has been my con-
stant habit, in every teacher-training endeavor, to lean
heavily upon these men of God, whom he has called
to be " overseers ' ' of his church. I count a hearty
word of advice and encouragement from a pastor to
his Sunday-school workers as worth more than all my
letters and speeches. Many times, when discouraged
over attempts to start a teacher-training work, a touch
of the pastor* s hand, a word from his lips, has scat-
tered indifference and secured success. I think I
owe as much to this gracious pastoral word as any man
living, and I have come to rely upon it when every-
thing else fails.

I take my appeal to these men. If the church has
failed to put into your hands a teacher-training plan,
if the seminary failed to give you a Sunday-school
training, your "pastor's key," brethren of the cloth,
can open the door and solve the problem. By virtue
of their work, your teachers are your under-pastors,
and can help largely to make or unmake your minis-
try. How well or poorly they teach, it is for you
chiefly to determine. No other man can do with or
for them what you can do. The good shepherd ' ' put-
teth forth his sheep, he goeth before them, and the
sheep follow him ; for they know his voice, and a
stranger will they not follow."

One of the earliest and tenderest recollections of my
teacher- training work is of a gray-haired Presbyterian

22 How to Become a Trained Teacher

pastor, a man of rare scholarship and of well-rounded
pastoral efficiency, whose ministry of nearly fifty years
had brought honor to himself and his church. I had
tried to set forth the need and practicability of teacher-
training, but met with seeming indifference. The old
man took me to his home, called in his workers, took
the points of my plea and made them his own, and
with scarce an effort, in ways that only a loved pastor
could use, organized a class, heading the roll with his
own name. When I praised his good work, he said :
" I get more out of it than I put into it. It renews
my own youth, and will be about all I can leave
behind."

THE SUPERINTENDENT' S KEY

I have asked many superinten-
iPfRifffpffiDff^n dents, "What is the one hardest

thing you have to do ? ' ' And their
uniform answer was "To get teachers." The
question of " supply teachers " invariably comes to the
front in Sunday-school conventions. I am not surprised
that it does, and I have not found that the usual ready-
made devices from the platform meet the difficulty.
The cashier of a Southern bank, superintendent of a
Presbyterian Sunday-school, confronted me recently
with this old and vexed question. When I had put
before him my stock alternatives of a "supply class"
keeping a week ahead of the school in lesson prepa-
ration, or of pledged "emergency" volunteers, his
countenance fell as he pronounced them a "snare
and a makeshift" I heartily concurred, and my
parting word was : "You will have to grow your own

Who Should Do It ? 23

crop of teachers. It is the one thing to do, and you
are the one man to do it."

I tried to tell him how he could pick from his
school the most hopeful subjects for teacher- training,
put them under his most competent teacher in the
regular session of the school, select for them a teacher-
training course, taking the place, for the time being,
of the International Lesson ; make much of them in
honor, and pledge them in advance to the ministry
of teaching when the course was completed. Any
other way out of the difficulty is at best a « « make-
shift," and many superintendents are beginning to
find it out.

Whatever the pastor may or may not do, the prob-
lem of teacher- training, in its last analysis, is "next"
to the superintendent. The failure of his teachers,
or his failure to get more teachers, is his peculiar
burden, and involves his own good name. The
churches generally look to the superintendent to
choose his teachers, and lay the direct blame of their
failure upon him. Getting consent of somebody to
teach a class is not his main difficulty. It is finding
those who know what and how to teach.

The superintendent has found by hard experience
that piety is one thing, and skill to teach is another.
He needs a combination of both, and his trouble is
largely on the educational side. His call to those
already spiritually equipped is usually met by such
protests as these : "I am not a teacher ;" " I do not
know the Bible well enough;" "I can't manage
boys and girls ;" " If I knew how, I would be will-
ing." I find no fault with these excuses. They

24 How to Becofne a Trained Teacher

come from a conviction that Sunday-school teaching
is a serious and delicate work, and that piety alone,
without specific preparation for it, should disqualify
the candidate.

No man is closer to his teachers than the faithful
superintendent. No man, not even the pastor, should
try to come between him and them, if the superinten-
dent is doing his duty. No true superintendent is so
wanting in influence over his helpers as to be unable
to lead them into ways of improvement. I like the
superintendent who magnifies his office and leads his
school, and does not hand round his problems to be
solved by others. Let him try the key of his great
office upon this problem of teacher-training. His
success will depend upon three things, — his pride,
his pluck, his persistence ; his pride in his standing
as a superintendent, his pluck in striking out into
new ways, his persistence in stubbornly holding to
his purpose until success is achieved.

THE TEACHER' S KEY

I make much of my "teacher's
teacher"1^"! key," and the key itself shows

how well the teachers have begun
to use it. It is like the old fable in y£sop of
the lark and the wheat-field. As long as the farmer
waited for his neighbors to cut his wheat, the little
larks might make themselves at home. But when
the farmer decided to do his own cutting, Mrs. Lark
and family went visiting. I believe strongly all I
have written about "church," "seminary," "pas-
tor," and "superintendent's" key. But I studied

Who Should Do It ? 25

inertia in my school days, and learned that large
bodies move slowly. Perhaps the new metal, ra-
dium, which they say is to revolutionize the old order
of nature, may help to hurry them up. Meantime
Farmer John would better cut his own wheat.

The teacher's key, in the teacher's own hand, is
slow but sure. It would turn far more easily if the
other keys were constantly in use, but without them
it has proved its effectiveness in the hands of at least
ten thousand American Sunday-school teachers.

At Cold Harbor, under General Lee, a brigade of
us — raw recruits from the "brush country" — waited
several hours for General or Colonel Somebody
to come along on horseback and lead us into our
first charge. Becoming a little excited by bursting
shells and buzzing minie-balls, and ignorant of the
conventionalities of such an occasion, we finally
popped out from our hiding-place like so many jack
rabbits, and made the charge on our own account.
It was done with roughness and despatch, but it won
the day.

Individually or collectively, with or without leaders
or orders, the Sunday-school teachers who are really
concerned about the matter should quit waiting and
begin work for themselves. A self-trained teacher
may lack a little in finish, but, like a home-made
shoe or coat, wears well. If a company of teachers
can come together and make a success of a teachers' -
meeting, they have already learned to do as hard a
work as maintaining a teacher-training class.

In a little city some years ago, I advised a small
teachers' -meeting that wanted to broaden the scope

26 How to Become a Trained Teacher

of its study, and make its sessions more profitable
to read and discuss by chapters, for twenty minutes
of each session, Dr. Trumbull's "Yale Lectures on
the Sunday-School." The advice was taken, and
with a single copy of the book in hand a course of
teacher-training was begun, and continued through
other books, with the result of revolutionizing the
antiquated methods of the school, and making it
one of the foremost in the state. It was a crude,
homespun way of getting at it, but it won, and that
is always the main point

I remember, when a boy, chasing a bird through
ten acres of meadow to put salt on its tail. I
was advised by a kind friend that this was a sure
method of bird-catching. I have not lost faith in
the method, — for other boys. The trouble with me
— or with the bird — was in not finding the "point
of contact" I had not then read Mr. Du Bois's
fine book on that subject

My experience, however, leads me to counsel the
teachers who may read these lines to quit chasing the
bird in the meadow, and put salt on the bird in hand.
It does not pertain to this chapter to show how this
may be done. The question is first whether the
teacher, if a way can be opened to him, has the
faith and courage to attempt for himself, unaided, a
work which he has been vainly waiting for others to
aid him in doing. The " teacher's key" is both sign
and test It points the way, and it tests the nerve
of the teacher.

WHAT IT SHOULD BE

Ill

WHAT IT SHOULD BE

FIRST, and chiefly, it should be the study of a
course of teacher-training books. I am some-
times met at the outset by the objection that "train-
ing comes by experience, not by books." My answer
is that a book itself may be the finest exposition of
teaching experience. On my table lie two little books.
In one is the clear-cut statement of teaching principles
by one who worked his way from a district school
to the presidency of a great state university ; in the
other is the broad common sense of one who was easily
the Nestor of American Sunday-school teachers. The
objection would sweep away all educational training,
whether religious or secular. Books are mainly the
working-tools of state normal college and common
school. The young student in training for the state's
license to teach, or the schoolboy trudging home with
well-filled satchel, illustrates the training value of
books. The Sunday-school teacher has no friend so
near at hand and capable of serving his ambition as
a well-chosen training-book.

I am met by another objector who cites the old
maxim that "a little learning is a dangerous thing,"
and challenges any system of teacher-training as of
necessity elementary, and therefore superficial. But
elementary learning is not of necessity superficial.
The multiplication-table and the correct spelling of

29

30 How to Become a Trained Teacher

words are the simplest elements of learning, but they
run through the entire gamut of scholarship. It is
not so much the quantity as the quality of one' s learn-
ing that gives it value. If teacher-training does no
more than serve as a guide-post in pointing out the
way to future effort, it will have done a noble service.
Personally I can testify to the invaluable help I re-
ceived from a little book which gave me my first real
view of the Bible and my first impulse to its sys-
tematic study.

One other objection worth considering is the lack
of expert leadership to organize and conduct teacher-
training classes. "Training needs a trainer," they
say. But trainers are being evolved out of the very
processes of training. From a little company, with-
out skijled leadership, faithfully studying together,
one who has the training instinct will be developed.
There is a natural and inevitable development of
leadership for every new movement. When the
steamboat was invented, the flatboatman became its
pilot or captain. When the scythe was displaced by
the reaper, the scytheman began to drive the reaper.
With seven hundred training- classes and ten thousand
students in my charge, nine out of ten are doing the
required work under untrained leaders, who are learn-
ing to cross bridges as they come to them.

Summing up what a teacher- training course should
be, I would say : It must largely be elementary,
for the many to whom an advanced course is im-
possible. It should be flexible, allowing for ad-
vanced work for those who are capable. It should
consist of a few choice books, small in compass, not

What It Should Be 31

expensive, written by undisputed masters of both
theory and practice. It should require honest study
from the students, and not tempt them to pious fraud
in a contest for its honors. It should have a definite
objective, in the way of examinations, a diploma for
those who have done conscientious work, and public
recognition locally and generally, wherever both are
practicable. It should be comprehensive, including
in well-proportioned parts every department of learn-
ing in which a Sunday-school teacher needs to be
trained.

What are these several parts ? First, the Bible, as
the one book the teacher must teach. Second, the
scholar, who is to be taught and trained in the knowl-
edge and use of this book. Third, the teacher and
the art of teaching. Fourth, the school, in which the
teaching and training are to be chiefly done. Last,
the church, under whom and for whom should be all
religious teaching and training.

DO YOU KNOW YOUR BIBLE ?

I shall not indulge in platitudes about the Bible,
— its divine origin, its infallible doctrines, its mar-
velous achievements. I can easily take these for
granted. I am more concerned for the Bible as a
text-book in the hands of an untrained teacher.
The old illusion still widely holds, that any pious
man or woman, Bible in hand, is competent to teach.
A certain indefinable " afflatus," the promise or
proof of which I could never discern, is supposed to
hover over the good man who teaches with pious
motive and bungljng method. I can find no warrant

32 How to Become a Trained Teacher

in the Bible for this ancient illusion. David' s prayer
was, "Make me to understand the way of thy pre-
cepts ; so shall I talk of thy wondrous works." Paul's
last plea was that Timothy might " rightly divide the
word of truth." Perhaps no two men were more
honored of God in the use of the Bible than Mr.
Moody and Mr. Jacobs. Each said of the other,
'•He knows the Bible better than any man living."
I happened to know something of the intense and
methodic Bible study of these two men. Here and
there God may have made use of sanctified ignorance,
but it is his rule to honor men only as they "rightly
divide " his Book.

I know I shall be met by some who will say that the
Bible is a hard book, and that it can never be truly
learned except in the languages in which it was writ-
ten. If it be hard, it is a comfort to think of the in-
numerable lights converging upon it As to its
Hebrew and Greek originals, my English Bible is not
to be despised. Every word of it has been threshed
over and over by the scholars of many centuries, and
I can even presume to face the man of Hebrew and
Greek with my Revised Version and a standard com-
mentary in hand. Indeed, I have been made to
question at times, in the presence of pretentious and
"liberal" scholarship, if the modicum of Hebrew
and Greek behind it was not the "fly in the pot" of
Bible ointment.

I am not a stickler for particular methods of Bible
study. " One man's meat is another man's poison."
I would rather know one well-defined principle un-
derlying its sixty-six books than to become expert in

What It Should Be 33

the use of a score of methods. The three qualities in
Bible study which I exalt are : First, a spiritual
grasp of the truth, which comes only through slow-
wrought experience to those who ■ ' will do the will of
God ; ' ' the intellectual grasp, which comes only by
hard study, as with any other book ; the educational
grasp, which comes only of systematic study. The
trouble with much of our Bible study is its aimless-
ness and lack of educational system. Here is the
testimony of one of the foremost Bible students of the
age : " It is a mistake to suppose for a moment that
Bible study consists in the study of isolated texts, or
in the study of single chapters, or even in the study
of entire books. A man might study verses all his
life, and know comparatively little about the Bible."
It is the difference between knowing the world about
us through microscope or telescope. When a boy, I
was given the former, and reveled in wing of gnat
and eye of fly. Later, I saw the heavens through the
telescope, and entered at once into comradeship with
the universe.

Let me test you as a Bible student by a few perti-
nent questions. Have you a purpose in your Bible
study ? Or are you drifting from Sunday to Sunday
over the few hurriedly scanned verses of your Sunday-
school lesson ? Are you content with the opinions of
others, or are you trying to find a way to the truth of
the Bible for yourself ? Have you a plan of Bible
study ? Can you call up from memory in order the
salient events in the history of God's chosen people,
through theocracy, kingdoms, and exile, thence on-
ward through Christ and the apostles ? Can you call

34 Haw to Beco7ne a Trained Teacher

the roll of Hebrew prophets, and assign to each his
place and message ? Can you give me a "character
sketch" of Bible heroes and heroines? Can you
pass a simple schoolboy examination upon the life
and ministry of our Lord ? Can you think your way
through any book of the Bible, chapter by chapter,
knowing that you know it ? Can you tell me how the
Bible came to us, or give me the story of your Eng-
lish Bible from "Wycliffe' s rude copy to the noble
version from which you teach ? If you say you are
too busy to learn this, I can point you to thousands
of young people who have done or are doing all this
and more. But it was done under a pia7i of sys-
tematic study, from some such small book as Dun-
ning's "Bible Studies," — my little teacher-training
" standby."

HOW TO KNOW YOUR SCHOLAR

It is an era of books and lectures on pedagogy,
" child psychology," " paidology," which have a
classical sound, and are much in evidence. I prefer
to write about plain boys and girls. "If he means
human natur," said a countryman at a convention,
while a lecturer was unfolding his paidology from a
chart, " I know something about that myselt" In
the multitude of child-counselors there is not scrip-
tural assurance of safety*. I sometimes turn away
from these glib paidologists with the feeling I had
when the phrenologists used to examine our craniums,
and make charts of our future destiny — at a dollar per
chart Human nature in books and in boys is not
always the same. The best book on child study I

What It Should Be 35

know of is a little black Book, to which I refer all
problems of religious psychology. Next to that book
in my library is Froebel. I beg pardon for taking my
paidology from the Bible, though I am glad, however,
to pay tribute to much of the current study of the
Sunday-school scholar, especially to such books as
Miss Harrison's "Study of Child Nature," DuBois's
"Point of Contact," Trumbull's "Hints on Child
Training," McKinney's "The Child for Christ." A
fault, as I see it, in most of the recent books, is their
exclusive concern for childhood. The foundation of all
teaching and training is childhood, indeed, but I risk
being held as a heretic in suggesting that the boys
and girls of the intermediate, and the big boys and
girls of the advanced department, are quite as deserv-
ing and needful of our concern. My neighbor is
building a fine home, and his contractor took much
pains over the foundation. But, as a wise master-
builder, I notice that he is equally painstaking with
the rising stories of brick. I would as soon have a
faulty foundation as a leaky roof to my house, and it
does not follow that because the foundation is secure
the roof will not let in water. I am frank to say that
I believe primary books and theories are a little over-
done, and are obscuring problems quite as grave and
imminent. Certainly the "adolescent period" folks
and the primary folks, with their counter claims, need
to get together.

As to the study of the scholar in his intellectual
states and processes, I would like to have every teacher
trained to know the laws of mind, and the order and
relative value and use of the unfolding mental facul-

36 How io Becojfte a Trained Teacher

ties. But I doubt if the average teacher, who is
usually a busy person, has time or need for systematic
study of pure psychology. The applied psychology
of such books as I have named will come nearer
meeting his need and opportunity. Give me one who
really loves boys and girls, whose affection leads him
into intimate personal contact with them at all points,
who has faith in the wisdom of his Bible to interpret
human nature in all of its changing moods, whose
chief concern is to save souls and form Christian
character, — the best I can do for such a teacher is to
commend to him one of the four books I have named,
and leave professional pedagogy and paidology to
take care of themselves.

THE WELL-ROUNDED TEACHER

There are few "born teachers." They are as rare
as born artists or authors. Most of the successful
teachers of the day were bunglers at beginning, but
by study and practice have mounted step by step to
success. Learning how to teach is not harder or
more complex than learning to keep accounts, to bind
books, to run a farm. It involves both science and
art The science of teaching gives one the principles
by which teaching must be shaped. The art comes
from patient application of these principles to the
work of instruction. There are certain fundamental
principles of teaching, few, simple, and unchanging.
The great teachers of the past used them, and every
successful teacher consciously or unconsciously em-
ploys them. Christ gave them his sanction. When
a "certain lawyer" stood up, tempting him with

What It Should Be 37

questions about his neighbor, and our Lord put the
burden of answer back upon his questioner, he was
enforcing what is now one of the "seven laws" in
Gregory' s little book : « * Use the pupil' s own mind,
exciting his self-activity."

To learn thoroughly such a principle, then to make
one's self master of it by practice, is far better than
slavish copying of methods without understanding
the reason for them. Ready resort to borrowed
methods is the bane of much modern teaching. The
mere copyist shifts from copy to copy, and, though
some of his methods may happen to hit, is shooting
arrows in the dark. Sunday-school conventions and
institutes are a hindrance rather than a help to the
teacher who takes home from them for use in his
class a method the reason for which he does not
understand. What the trained Sunday-school teacher
needs is to be grounded in the unchanging laws of
teaching, and from these to deduce his own methods,
or wisely adapt the methods of others. Otherwise he
is like one trying to pick out of piles of stone and
brick and lumber the architect' s plan of a building.

I cannot urge too strongly upon those who are am-
bitious to succeed as teachers the study of these
"principia," or first things in teaching. They come
only by study and from books. The old-world expe-
rience transmits them to the new, as a heritage from
master- teachers like Socrates, Paul, Luther, and
Arnold of Rugby. Gregory' s * ' Seven Laws of Teach-
ing," Trumbull's ''Teaching and Teachers," Brum-
baugh's "Making of a Teacher," are expressions
of these principles, all the better for Sunday-school

38 How to Become a Trained Teacher

teachers because they deal with the application of the
principles rather than with the principles themselves.

The Sunday-school teacher needs training in other
matters than the science and art of teaching. He
needs to study the ever-broadening field of his work.
He is more than instructor. He is student, teacher,
trainer, officer, under-pastor, shepherd. He is the
spiritual ally of the home, the recruiting officer of
the church, the conscience-maker of the state. His
work, for the first time in religious history, is being
inquired into by university and college men, who
seek to correlate it with their own. He is vidette and
drill-master of the church. Over against him and his
one hour on the Sabbath is set an array of evil forces
— the neglectful Christian home, the godless home
with positive evil training, the vices of the street and
the evil companions who ensnare youth, the bad
books and papers in easy reach. He must study
ways of counteracting these evils. He will need to
study the art of the trainer even more than the art of
the teacher. Training is more difficult than teaching.
It is putting into practice what is taught. It is the
difference between planting the seed and caring for
the plant until it comes to maturity. Teaching gives
knowledge ; training makes character. And the
teacher' s abiding work is along the lines of training.

But above his teaching and training, as his supreme
mission, the teacher needs to study the art of soul-
winning. It is a divine art, and its processes are
nowhere so plainly set forth as in the teacher' s Bible.
The lesson that is made plain to the mind, but does
not find its way to the heart, is a failure. The teacher

What It Should Be 39

who has no conversions in his class is an anomaly.
To save his scholars is his one great duty, and his
position gives him opportunity beyond that of even
pastor or parent. Any teacher-training system that
does not include and exalt this soul-winning art is
unworthy its name.

THE MODERN SCHOOL

Place a tallow candle at one end of a room and an
Edison electric lamp at the other, and you have by
contrast the school of Raikes and the modern Sunday-
school. Learning to spell and read have given place
to graded teaching and graded lessons. The unclassi-
fied room of Gloucester gamins is transformed into
the model Sunday-school building, with departments
and class-rooms. The four women, at a shilling a
Sabbath, have grown into millions of picked men and
women, the "cream of the church," as Mr. Jacobs
was fond of saying. Raikes' place as a superinten-
dent is held by Wanamaker, Pepper, and Lawrance.
What was a " mission school" has become the chief
dependency of the church for growth and power.

It is in the light of such progress, and under such
increasing pressure, that the Sunday-school teacher
must do his work. He is not a mere spectator. He
is a vital part of the complex machine, — cylinder,
shaft, balance-wheel, or safety-valve. The school's
frictionless movement depends upon him, and he in
turn depends upon the school. He must know his
place and keep it, or become the "hot box" of hin-
drance to life and motion. I have known a single
teacher and class to obstruct the entire machinery

40 How to Become a Trained Teacher

of a Sunday-school. The teacher, by virtue of his
office, is an officer of the school. He is an assistant
superintendent, though not known by that title. The
school is his workshop and drill-ground. His own
class is but one of the successive stages through which
his scholars must pass.

He ought therefore to know what precedes and fol-
lows him. He should study the various departments,
their management and methods. He should know the
ins and the outs of every approved modern method.
He should study the art of managing a school from
the standpoint of the superintendent, which differs
only in measure from his own management of a class.
He should learn how to keep the school' s records and
finances, and run its library and Home Department.
He should study the music, the literature, the pro-
gram. Especially he should be a student of the his-
tory of the Sunday-school movement, from its crude
Old Testament beginnings to its splendid modern de-
velopment He need not lack for training-books that
will give him this bird's-eye view of the modern
Sunday-school. From a score or more of recent text-
books it would be hard to say which is best, but if my
choice were restricted to one book I would take Law-
rence' s ' • How to Conduct a Sunday School, ' ' or Axtell' s
'* Organized Sunday-school," or McKinney's "Bible
School," or "Vincent's Modern Sunday-school."

LOYALTY TO CHURCH

I do not place the church last in the elements of a
teacher-training course because it is greatest or least
Logically it comes last, as all our Sunday-school ser-

What It Should Be 41

vice should be to exalt and magnify the church as
the one divine institution in the earth. I cannot
sympathize with or understand a system of teacher-
training that does not begin and end in the church.
Nor can I esteem one fully equipped to teach and
train the children of the church who is himself
untaught and untrained in its noble history and doc-
trine. I would as soon think of training the public-
school boy for citizenship in our republic without a
knowledge of the country to which he belongs, and of
the men who purchased our liberties by their blood.
One day in Chicago I saw a crowd of boys silently
gazing into a shop window, oblivious to all sights and
scenes of a great city. I followed their reverent look,
and I saw what had fixed their eager eyes. It was a
small, tattered, and powder-blackened flag, and be-
neath it was the legend, "This flag was in the battle
of Bunker Hill." There is a love of church that is
deeper than love of country, and I would have every
teacher to know and feel it, and to inspire it in his
Sunday-school class.

I have no love for that mawkish sentiment that any
church is good enough, and that *'it makes no differ-
ence to what church one belongs." I have found
that the men and women who counted for something
in faithful, self-denying work, were those in whom
denominational love and loyalty were deep rooted.
Although a paradox on its face, I have also found
that the rock-ribbed denominationalist was oftenest the
most catholic and helpful in any Christian fellowship
or work. I am sure that every trained teacher will
be a better and stronger teacher if he adds to his

42 How to Become a Trained Teacher

training equipment a knowledge first of the general
church of Christ in all lands and ages, and then builds
upon this a fuller knowledge of his own denomina-
tion. I call to mind Hurst's "Outlines of Church
History*," a small book, fairly and accurately written,
which is a sample book of study of the general
church. The denominational history, each denomi-
nation will provide for its own. I beg pardon for a
personal reference. I was born into a family that
has been Methodist for six generations, my father a
Methodist preacher. There is nothing I love so
much in all the world as the church of my fathers.
Yet I have never been accused of narrowness or big-
otry. When I am in trouble, and things seem to go
hard against me, it is my custom to take down the
life of Wesley or Asbury, or some story of the men
who suffered and died for my Methodism, and in their
heroic presence I come to myself again.

WAYS OF DOING IT

T

IV
WAYS OF DOING IT

SUGGESTIVE TRAINING-COURSES

An Elementary Course.
IME. — One to two years.

Term. — October to June, — eight months each year.

Membership. — Sunday-school officers, teachers, and
chosen young people.

Requirements. — A written pledge to attend the meet-
ings and to study and complete the course.

Meetings. — Weekly, at an hour apart, or in connection
with the teachers' -meeting.

Plan of Study. — The leader or a committee apportions
in advance the subject-matter of the course, in weekly sec-
tions, for home study by members.

The Weekly Program. — The hour used chiefly in re-
view and drill upon the week's section, as previously as-
signed.

Leader. — The best man or woman available, to direct,
but not always to teach, the class.

Examinations. — As prescribed by the course selected,
or as prepared and conducted by the leader upon completion
of a book, together with frequent additional oral reviews.

Graduation. — A special public church service, with
address and presentation of diplomas.

Course of Study. — (Any books mentioned in these
chapters can be obtained of The Sunday School Times Co.,
Philadelphia.) Your own church course, if it has one ; if
not, then any one of the following training-courses : Pease's
"Normal Course " (first and second series. 50 cents each) ;

45

46 How to Become a Trained Teacher

" Assembly Normal Union " (two books. 50 cents) ; Hurl-
but's "Revised Normal Lessons" (40 and 25 cents);
Semelroth's "Complete Manual" (50 and 25 cents);
"Legion of Honor" (first and second series. 25 cents);
Spilman's "Normal Studies" (25 cents).

An Advanced Course.

Time. — Two years, as a minimum.

Term, Membership, etc. — As with elementary course
above.

Course of Study. — Your own church course, if it has
one ; if not, a course composed of five books, — one book
each upon the five subjects following :

The Bible. — Dunning's " Bible Studies " (40 and 25
cents); or, Sell's "Bible Study by Periods" (60 and 35
cents) ; or, " The Bible and its Books " (50 cents).

The Scholar. — Miss Harrison's "Study of Child Na-
ture " ($1) ; or, Du Bois's "The Point of Contact in Teach-
ing " (75 cents) ; or, Schauffler's "The Teacher, the Child,
and the Book" ($1) ; or, Wells's "Sunday-school Suc-
cess " ($1.25) ; or, Trumbull's " Hints on Child-Training "
($1.25) ; or, Forbush's "Boy Problem" (75 cents).

The Teacher. — Brumbaugh's " Making of a Teacher "
($1.00, net); or, Trumbull's "Teaching and Teachers"
($1.25); or, Hamill's " The Sunday-school Teacher" (50
cents).

The Sunday-School. — Lawrance's " How to Conduct
a Sunday School " ($1.25); Vincent's "Modern Sunday-
school" (90 cents); Axtell's "The Organized Sunday-
school" (5ocents); McKinney's " BibleSchool" (50 cents);
Foster's "Sunday-school Manual" (75 cents); Boynton's
" Model Sunday-school " (50 and 30 cents).

The Church. — Hurst's " Outlines of Church History "
(40 cents), followed by brief history of your own denomi-
nation.

Ways of Doing It 47

Special Pastor's Course

Hatcher's "The Pastor and the Sunday-school" (75
cents) ; Chapman's " Spiritual Life of the Sunday-school "
(35 cents); Lawrance's "How to Conduct a Sunday
School" ($1.25) ; Trumbull's "Teachers'-Meetings" (30
cents) ; Hamill's " Sunday School Teacher " (50 cents, net).

CONDUCTING A TRAINING-CLASS

The touch of elbows in any good work is always
stimulating and helpful. Wherever it is possible,
therefore, to form a class, the work will be better and
surer. The choice of an elementary or an advanced
course, as outlined suggestively above, will depend
upon local conditions. The mistake is often made of
setting too severe a standard at beginning. Many
who turn away from an advanced training-course will
return to it after successfully completing an elemen-
tary course. A desire for the more thorough study is
begotten by the easier work. Especially is this true
of the young people who are willing to be put in
training. The pressure of time, the cost of books,
the lack of the study habit, the .small ambition of
many of these, need to be considered. The elemen-
tary course is not child's play. In any one of the
elementary courses I have named a good foundation
is laid in the subjects which should constitute a
teacher-training course. For my own part, I would
advise any teacher, or one who wishes to become a
teacher, to take the severer course. Its five or more
books, patiently studied and assimilated in two years'
time, will assure success as a Sunday-school teacher
to the ambitious student, though of moderate ability.

48 How to Become a Trained Teacher

Several points need to be carefully guarded in the or-
ganization of a training-class. Much depends upon the
spirit and purpose of those who compose it. Hence
I have suggested a written pledge to attend the meet-
ings of the class, and to study and complete the
course. I would admit none who would not subscribe
to this pledge. After the novelty and enthusiasm of
the first study and meetings have passed, as they in-
evitably will, I should need the reinforcement this
pledge would bring. Better a little handful who ' • mean
business," than a multitude of mere enthusiasts.

SECRETS OF GOOD LEADERSHIP

More than this is the choice of a leader, upon
whom, in most cases, the final success or failure of
the class will depend. A training expert is not always
the best leader. Successful leadership, I have found,
is a matter of personal rather than educational qualifi-
cation. The leader who has common sense, sympa-
thy with others, watchfulness to encourage the weak
and laggard student, and an unfailing purpose to hold
his class together to the end, may know little about
training-books, but is the kind of leader who will suc-
ceed. Much, too, depends upon the regular weekly
meeting of the class, and the wise apportionment of
the subject-matter of the course of study.

In the beginning, the order in which the books are
to be studied, and the time to be given to each book,
and the further division of each book into weekly
study sections, should be carefully planned and ex-
plained. Nothing should be allowed to change or
cancel the regular meetings of the class. Either the

Ways of Doing It 49

one expert leader should conduct the weekly session,
or, if no one is more expert than the others, the mem-
bers in turn may lead. As the one purpose of the
weekly meeting is to review the week' s study, and to
test what has been learned, however clumsily this may
be done, any member of the class is competent to do
it A review of the salient points only of the subject-
matter studied, followed by a spirited drill upon these
points, as written upon the blackboard and recited
over and over by the class, is a simple yet effective
method of class leadership.

As this method proceeds, the value of class study
will be shown in the sifting of the subject-matter, and
the determination of what is or is not important.
From time to time the class should be tested by care-
fully prepared oral reviews, based upon questions
ranging through the book in hand, and including its
salient matter only. I recall one class whose mem-
bers thoroughly mastered their course of study by the
use of this very simple catechetical method. Their
weekly meeting was nothing more than the old-fash-
ioned "cross-questioning," back and forth, first by
one, then by all. Again I urgently insist, as enforced
by the experience of many years in training-work,
that it is not upon expert leadership or method the
average training-class must depend. If these are at
hand, use them and be thankful. But there is a
something which I cannot define, yet have often seen
and admired, — a rugged sort of independence and
purpose, in the home-grown, necessity-evolved leader
and method, which somehow eclipses the finest work
of the professional trainer.

50 How to Become a Trained Teacher

I once asked the secret of such a leader' s success.
He was a hard-working Western farmer, who had a
wonderful "knack" of holding together and getting
the best out of his country training-classes. ' ' Oh !
he' s just one of us, — he knows us, and we know him, ' '
was the reply I received. I have found no finer
qualification for local training leadership than that
country phrase, — " Just one of us."

TESTING A TRAINING-CLASS

There is an old maxim about the ' ' proof of the
pudding," etc. I confess that I have little respect for
so-called ' ' reading courses ' ' for Sunday-school teach-
ers, at the end of which there is nothing to test thor-
oughly the work that has been done. A training-
course without a thorough and comprehensive written
examination to enforce this test is like a kite without
a tail. It may be a good kite, but it will not fly. I
never encourage a mere ' ' reading ' ' course. I have
found by disappointing experience how carelessly and
superficially such reading is often done. I exact
downright honest study instead as the only road to
success, whether in secular or religious learning.
There ought to be nothing of the patent medicine,
••quick-cure" method in our training work. For
years I put at the head of all training-books and leaflets
the admonition, "Do not play at normal work."
Anything less than hard study and mastery of the
text is a snare to the student, and has deservedly in-
curred the sharp censure of those secular educa-
tors who have a sincere concern for Sunday-school
teaching. There is already too much of the knowl-

Ways of Doing It 51

edge that puffeth up. I think one reason for the
indifference towards teacher - training on the part
of some of our brighter pastors is their just aver-
sion for training schemes that make a teacher of
you "while you wait" Any reader of these lines
who wants to become a Sunday-school teacher in
fact as well as in name, but is unwilling to pay
the price of hard study as tested by a thorough ex-
amination, will find nothing farther of interest in
these chapters.

It was a saying of Lord Bacon that "reading mak-
eth a full man, conversation maketh the ready man,
but writing maketh the exact man." Upon the com-
pletion of each book of study, the leader of the class,
or his pastor or superintendent in his stead, should
conduct, in writing, an examination sufficiently com-
prehensive and severe as to test fully and fairly the
quality of the work done by members of the class.
Several hours should be given to it, and every allow-
ance made for clumsiness and faultiness of papers,
and every encouragement shown to any who scare at
the ghost of an examination. But I insist that in
these written papers will be found the final and fair
test of whether the student put mind and heart into
his work. Let him understand that he must earn
what he gets, if he is to be trained to respect himself
and his work as a teacher. I have not found that
this standard of hard study and thorough testing
repels. Wherever it does, repulsion is better than
attraction, and sifts the wheat from the tares. Along
with every batch of examination questions I have
been sending out to training-classes, I have tried to

52 How to Become a Trained Teacher

guard the integrity of the examination by some such
requirements as the following :

1. These questions are mailed to you directly as leader,
or as pastor or superintendent of an individual student.

2. Please see that the questions are withheld until the
hour for examination, and that the examination is fairly
conducted, under your immediate supervision and at one
sitting. The time, place, length of time given, and all
other details, are left to your own discretion.

3. Call all members together ; read these instructions ;
urge each to take the examination at the one time and
place fixed, as the questions are not severe, and the stand-
ard for diploma fair and reasonable. Every examinee,
upon completing his examination, should certify in writing
that "the examination has been taken upon honor."
Please see that this statement accompanies each set of
papers sent.

GRADUATING A TRAINING-CLASS

As I have urged a written examination as a final
test of study, so I urge the public recognition of those
who have proved faithful students. If the test of
study discloses conscientiousness and thoroughness of
work by the student, he should be accounted worthy
of every honor, local or general, that can be con-
ferred. While the training diploma is not the end in
view, it should signalize the end of the training-course.
It is the concrete objective, and will do much to hold
the class together and assure a better quality of study.
It gives dignity to the training work, and calls public
attention to its importance. I do not count it a weak-
ness in men or women to covet the honors they have
fairly won. The desire for honorable recognition is a

Ways of Doing It 53

weakness to which most of us are liable — if it is a
weakness. The Bible allows for it. Paul and Peter,
and other apostles and good men, were not above it.
Our Lord, as he tells us in one of his parables, holds
in reserve a word of public recognition that I trust all
of us at the last may hear, each for himself: "Well
done, thou good and faithful servant"

I have had the privilege thus far of signing more
than five thousand training diplomas, and of present-
ing very many of them in person to the hard-working
Sunday-school people who had earned them. In the
West and South, and in Canada especially, this clos-
ing service of public recognition has proved a strong
and needed stimulus to the work. In Illinois, year
after year, the one great hour of the annual Sunday-
school Convention is that devoted to honoring its
host of teacher-training graduates. No expense is
spared, no device is unused, and the great audience
is always at its greatest and best when that hour
occurs. In my present field I am setting the gradu-
ates of my church in the finest place of honor I can
contrive upon the platform of Annual Conferences,
before the chief dignitaries of the church, and am
putting their names upon the "Roll of Honor" in
all its Sunday-school literature.

Most, if not all, of the training-courses I have named
in this chapter provide diplomas for their graduates, —
the Assembly Normal Union, the Pease, the Semel-
roth, the Hurlbut, the Legion of Honor, and others.
Several of the churches have their own training-
courses and diplomas, which every loyal churchman
should first consider. More than forty of the inter-

54 How to Become a Trained Teacher

denominational, state, and provincial Sunday-school
associations award their own diplomas to graduates of
association courses. Diplomas, general in form and
adaptable to local conditions, may also be procured.

At its Winona, Indiana, meeting, in August, 1903,
the Executive Committee of the International Sunday-
School Convention appointed a "Committee on Edu-
cation," composed of seven college and Sunday-
school men, who were instructed to formulate "stand-
ards and rules governing the issuance of an Inter-
national Sunday-school teachers' diploma," for use
throughout the entire continent. Of the seven men
of the committee it is worth noting, as a sign of the
advance of teacher-training in the church, that three
of its members are President W. O. Thompson, of
the Ohio State University ; President E. Y. Mullins,
D. D., of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
and Dr. M. G. Brumbaugh of the Philadelphia public
schools. In the next chapter the reader will find a brief
statement of what this committee has already done.

Whatever the diploma that marks the end of the
course, it should be awarded with every accessory of
honor. In the local church chosen by the class, on
Sunday evening preferably, as a special service, the
graduation of the class should be observed. The
pastor or pastors of the graduates should "lay them-
selves out" to make it an occasion of peculiar interest
and profit. It should be thoroughly advertised in
every paper and home in the community. The fair-
est flowers and the brightest music should enhance it
The graduates, the elect pastors and superintendents,
and the officers of the church, should occupy the

Ways of Doing It 55

place of honor upon the platform. The finest address
that some pastor or speaker of ability can deliver
should be the feature of the evening. The award of
diplomas should be made as impressive as possible,
and the occasion generally should prove an impetus
to local Sunday-school work. I am not dealing with
the theoretical. I know what these occasions may
do. I have had the honor to take part in more than
a hundred of them within the last ten years. May
their number and their influence for untold good in-
crease !

Here is a souvenir program of such a graduating
service. The paper is growing yellow, and the lines
are fading out, but I specially cherish it as a token of
the first service in which I presented diplomas to a
teacher-training class. Behind the fading names a
rhost of tender memories arise of the faithful leader
and class of that Southern Illinois town :

LEGION OF HONOR GRADUATING EXERCISES
Methodist Church, Carmi, Illinois, January 15, 1891

Program
Duet : "The Light of the World," Mrs. A. A. Lehman

and M. W. Spencer.
Bible Reading : Thomas Parkhurst.
Song: "Coronation," congregation.
Prayer : Rev. J. G. Dee.

Theme : The Bible.
A Book for Every One : Miss Florence Emerson
Duet: "Lamp of Life," Miss Annie Tate and W. J.

Blackard.
Its Literature : Miss Mae E. Dunlevy.
Its Teachings : D. L. Boyd.

56 How to Become a Trained Teacher

Song : " Wonderful Words," by normal class.

Its Authenticity : Miss Ina Anderson.

Its Inspiration : Mrs. Ira Reeves.

Song : " Walk in the Light," by normal class.

Address : Rev. H. M. Hamill, followed by award of

diplomas to class of twenty graduates.
Song : " Here am I, send me," congregation.

DOXOLOGY AND BENEDICTION.

A HOME-GROWN VETERAN TRAINER

Mr. George P. Perry is a successful druggist of
Sterling, Illinois, and a Baptist in good standing. He
is of the "home-grown" variety, with a pronounced
Western flavor. There proved to be much more in
him than his friends or myself had discovered.
Never a college or seminary man, he invented a
unique and most helpful objective study of the
' ' Life of Christ, ' ' which has gone round the world.
For many years, though yet a young man, this
veteran organizer and conductor of training-classes
has been modestly making fame for his little city.
There is nothing phenomenal about the man or
his methods. He has those three homespun quali-
ties of the American proverb, — "grace, grit, gump-
tion." He is a fair illustration of the possibilities in
thousands of men and women, who could match his
achievements if they would. I wrote asking him to sum-
marize his teacher-training work. I have his modest
reply, from which I extract the more pertinent facts.

Sterling, III., October 19, 1903.
Dear Dr. Hamill :—

I began my teacher-training work here in 1885. For
months before I conducted a campaign of agitation on the
subject in township conventions and by personal contact.

Ways of Doing It 57

Since that time no year has passed without systematic teacher-
training. My classes have almost always been composed of
members from various denominations. My method of con-
ducting the class is to assign a lesson in advance for study,
then, by question and blackboard and illustration, teach it as
best I can. I have never organized a class but it finished the
course of lessons. I have used a number of series of teacher-
training courses, — the " Assembly Normal Union," Dunning's
" Bible Studies," Hurlbut's " Normal Outlines," the " Legion
of Honor," etc. I can go into nearly any school in the city
and pick out my pupils as part of the school's teaching force,
many of whom have assured me of great good derived from
the course they studied. Usually I begin my classes in Octo-
ber, and continue through April, the number of meetings
ranging from twenty to twenty-eight. I am now conducting
my eighteenth and nineteenth classes. My total enrolment of
students to date is five hundred and twenty-seven, average
attendance two hundred and ninety-five, and the number com-
pleting a course by written examination and receiving diplo-
mas is one hundred and sixty-one (including the probable
graduates of my present classes).

Sincerely,

George P. Perry.

I shall not paint the lily nor adorn the rose by
comment upon that letter.

TEACHER-TRAINING AGENCIES

TEACHER-TRAINING AGENCIES

BY THE TEACHERS' - MEETING

I AM mindful of my promise. It was to the effect
that a variety of ways would be suggested, by
some one of which any teacher might secure the
training desired. I know nothing better to begin
with than the teachers' -meeting. Wherever and what-
ever the Sunday-school, the teachers' -meeting is
indispensable. It stands first in any catalog of
teacher-training agencies, because the weekly lesson
must be studied, and the one place for its most effec-
tive study is in this meeting of teachers. I might go
farther, and say that, when a school holds regularly
and faithfully its meeting of teachers, it has already
taken a long step in the direction of teacher-training.
But it needs to take another step. It should add
to its weekly lesson study a course of specific teacher-
training. To do this would double its interest and
usefulness, and would do away with the popular ex-
cuse that busy teachers have not the time for both
teachers' -meeting and training-class. Let the two
be made into one, as both are closely related and
interdependent. One cannot study the lesson with
others without getting a measure of training, nor can
one study a training-course without learning how better
to study and teach the lesson. I can see how teacher-
training work might become at once a feature of

61

62 How to Become a Trained Teacher

thousands of Sunday-schools, if pastors and superin-
tendents would readjust their teachers' -meetings to
the double end of lesson study and teacher-training.
Let any one of the approved elementary training-
courses be selected, if there is no prescribed denomi-
national course ; or, from the list of training books
given in these articles let a special course be chosen,
and for a year of pledged attendance and study let the
following weekly program be enacted :

Teachers' -Meeting Program

Time : Eighty minutes.

Place : The cosiest church room.

Leader : The superintendent or pastor, or both.

Members : The officers and teachers and young people of
the "teacher-supply class."

Meetings : Monday evening.

Pledge : To attend and study both lesson- and training-
course for one year.

Program : Ten minutes' prayer-meeting ; ten minutes as a
council upon the school ; thirty minutes' lesson study ; thirty
minutes training-study.

THE TEACHERS' CLASS

I have suggested the use of the teachers' -meeting in
a training way as an easy initiative. From the best
estimates at hand, about one-fourth of our Sunday-
schools already conduct these weekly meetings of their
teachers, and have therefore a convenient time,
place, and opportunity for beginning a teacher-train-
ing work. But I urge it as a compromise at best.
There are many Sunday-schools whose officers and
teachers are willing and ready for independent and

Teacher - Tra in ing Agencies 63

specific teacher-training. To these the teachers' -
meeting, if one is held, is a place for lesson study
only. Their desire is for a distinct course of teacher-
training, apart from all other meetings, after a plan
and under a leader of their own, with the one set pur-
pose of becoming trained teachers. I sincerely sym-
pathize with this desire for independent study. The
end to be attained is worth the additional effort, and
even the teachers' -meeting is subordinate to the train-
ing-class. Both are practicable in the same school,
the membership of both being substantially the same.
It is simply a question whether the teacher, in addi-
tion to the hour given weekly to the teachers' -meeting,
is willing to add an hour each week for the study of a
training-course. With such direct and exclusive pur-
pose in view, it is easy to frame a program for train-
ing-work :

The Teachers' Training-Class

Members : The teachers, officers, and pastor.

Time : Any convenient hour each week.

Place : The pastor's study or church parlor.

Leader : Elected by class or appointed by superintendent
and pastor.

Course of study : Denominational or selected, — two years.

Condition : Pledged members only.

Program : Review of previous study, led by members alter-
nately, fifteen minutes ; blackboard drill upon main points of
the week's study, by class leader, thirty minutes ; discussion
by class, fifteen minutes.

I have at hand the report of such a class. It comes
from the Bethel Sunday-school of old Charleston.
"Dux femina acti," — which is Virgil's way of saying

64 How to Become a Trained Teacher

that a woman was the moving spirit in it. It is one
of the teachers' classes in my charge of which I am
especially proud, and I shall not, therefore, introduce
it apologetically. I wrote to the leader, asking a
matter-of-fact statement of the ups and downs of the
class, that I might use it, if desired, in print Here
is the reply :

Charleston, S. C, October 16, 1903.
Dear Sir :

I disclaim credit for the success of our train-
ing "Circle No. 369." Our pastor, the Rev. E. O. Watson,
has been virtually our leader in conducting the meetings of the
Circle. He first called the notice of the teachers to the forma-
tion of the teacher-training department of our church. He
explained its organization and purpose, and called for the
names of those who would enter upon the work. Thirteen
responded. I was elected leader. From the roll of the teach-
ers of the school, by personal appeal, I added five more mem-
bers. We had our difficulties. Some were skeptical as to this
new movement ; some were elderly people who had not kept
in touch with the educational progress of our day ; some were
unaccustomed to study ; and others, after beginning, were in-
clined to drop out We had extremes as to age, and I was
embarrassed by the fact that the older teachers had known me
from infancy, and one had been my teacher. As to how these
and other difficulties were met and overcome, I can put it in a
single sentence, — by persistently and patiently keeping at it.
At our meetings I would carefully watch the various members,
then would privately manage to give to the discouraged a word
of cheer. With those who seemed indifferent I would en-
thusiastically enlarge upon the great opportunity our church
was affording us for preparation in the great work we had un-
dertaken as teachers. I used all the tact I had, and kept at it
at every opportunity. I would tell them how I had studied
the course, what notes I had taken, and how I tested my work.
I began with eighteen members. Fifteen will receive the full-
course diploma of our church, and the remaining members are

Teacher- Training Agencies 65

yet at work on the first-year course. I lost one member only,
— by removal. Most of our members are self-supporting, and
find it therefore difficult to meet at night, as we were com-
pelled to do. I was much encouraged by the enthusiasm of
some of our members, by the timely encouragement and notice
of us given in our Teachers' Magazine, and by the fact that
the pastor, who is a born leader, used our " Bible studies " as
the basis of his prayer-meeting talks. All our work was free,
hearty, informal, and conversational. What I did was with
the individual members, privately encouraging and persuading
them. I believed in the movement with all my heart, and
tried to present it to the others as I saw it.

(Miss) Mary E. Hamlin.

THE CLASS IN THE SCHOOL

If I have a training "hobby," it is this, — a class of
picked young people in every Sunday-school in train-
ing to teach. All else, in its last analysis, is a mere
make-shift in solving the vital problem of teacher-
training as it now confronts the church. The utiliza-
tion of the teachers' -meeting is good if there is
nothing else at hand ; the formation of a distinct and
independent teachers' training-class is better ; but
the class of young people in the Sunday-school under
training to become the future teachers of the school
is by all tokens the very best. It is the one way to
"grow a crop of teachers." Teachers' -meetings
come and go, and ebb and flow. Teachers' - classes
at best mend existing methods of teaching. The
class in the school strikes at the root of the church' s
need. All other methods are reformative ; this is
essentially formative. My old friend in Illinois, Dr.
C. C. Miller, used to cut across my oft-repeated pleas
for temporary training expedients with the curt ques-

66 How to Become a Trained Teacher

tion, "Why don't you aim directly at the bull's-eye?
You are not hitting it with these devices." I knew
my critic was right, though I was doing the best I
could under adverse conditions. I must go the same
round of devices and expedients now, but I realize
more than ever that the one sure and satisfactory
solution of teacher-training is for every church to put
into its every Sunday-school in patient training a class
of young people who shall be made ready to teach.

I wish I could impart some of the unbounded con-
fidence I have in this method to the pastors and su-
perintendents who may care to read these lines.
Already I am finding that it is the one solvent of most
of the difficulties in my way as a trainer of teachers.
There is an enthusiasm, a docility, often a holy zeal,
in youth, that compensates for all other defects. My
mail brings me frequently nowadays the cheering in-
telligence that, while little could be done here and
there to arouse the teachers, a company of ambitious
young souls have banded together in the Sunday-school
hour, and liave begun the study of my church' s train-
ing course. A chairman of a state board of public-
school examiners saw his opportunity, got together
some young people in his Sunday-school, and is my
latest correspondent and comforter. In a Sunday or
two I am to visit, on invitation, a big school of several
hundreds in which the teacher-training work has
dragged heavily among its -fifty or more teachers ; and
the purpose of my visit is to set in motion a training-
class of twenty picked young women who are eager
to enter upon their two years' course. Years ago I
got my first inspiration along this line from a Western

Teacher- Training Agencies 67

college president, now grown famous, and his super-
intendent, now governor of a great state, who jointly
entered upon the experiment of growing their own
crop of Sunday-school teachers from the devoted
young people of the school. I wish I had time and
space to tell how they did it, and how much life and
vim it finally put into their school. Their "gallery
training-class," with outlines on manilla paper and
rapid-fire drills, and the pride of its graduates as they
came to the end of a long hard course, before a great
congregation, is a memory that stirs my heart. Here
is a suggestive program for such a class :

Young People's Training-Class

Time : The regular Sunday-school hour.

Place : A separate room, the "gallery," or a convenient
corner.

Membership : Any number of picked young people who
" mean business."

Pledge : To study and complete the course, and then to
serve as teachers.

Leader : The best available. The pastor, if he must teach.

Training-Course : Either elementary or advanced. To take
the place of the regular lesson study. A two years' course,
with graduation and diploma.

THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT

I come back at the last to the individual student
Until the various denominations erect severally their
training-courses, or the interdenominational associa-
tions include all candidates for teaching in their train-
ing-classes, the individual student must have a way
provided specially for him. Even after all church
and general training agencies are in operation there

68 How to Become a Trained Teacher

will be many who have not access to training-classes,
or who prefer to do their training-study individually.
Heretofore the individual student has been at a dis-
advantage. From the many training-courses and
books issuing from the publishers he knew not which
to choose. Apart from the few distinct church or
associated courses there was no official stamp of rec-
ognition or authority upon them. The teacher-train-
ing movement generally has been crude and chaotic,
and needed classification and unification, to the end
that one who was seeking a way to self- training as a
Sunday-school teacher might have competent lead-
ership and counsel in finding his way.

Precisely what was needed has been done. In
the fall of 1903 the Executive Committee of the
International Sunday-School Convention, recognizing
the fast-increasing demands of a great field for guid-
ance along the lines of teacher-training, appointed a
"Committee on Education," clothed with plenary
power to help in the solution of all training problems.
In the city of Louisville, December 16 and 17, 1903,
the committee held its first session, and published
its first address, which dealt chiefly, if not exclu-
sively, with the problem of teacher-training. It has
"cleared off the brush," not only for the individual
student, but for the entire training field. As its
thoroughly efficient helper in the field, its plans have
been carried out by Mr. W. C. Pearce, of Chicago, as
' ■ International Secretary of Teacher -Training. ' ' Mr.
Pearce received his training in Illinois, the av ant-
courier among great associations in teacher-training.
He afterwards accomplished a great training work in

Teacher- 7rai?iing Agencies 69

the city of Chicago as its Sunday-school secretary. It
has been his duty and pleasure to assist all who de-
sired assistance in opening up a way towards teacher-
training.

The Committee on Education has already done its
work of classification and unification, as its Toronto
report will show. It has given "recognition" to the
elementary training-courses now in use. It has fixed
the standards for an advanced training-course. It has
been issuing, through the secretary of teacher-train-
ing, its elementary and advanced diplomas to all
teacher-training classes and students who met the
requirements of the several recognized courses of
study and the standards of the Committee. It has
asked and urged publishers of teachers' periodical
helps to erect a teacher-training department for ex-
plaining, encouraging, and instituting teacher-training
agencies throughout the field, denominationally and
interdenominationally. Let the individual student,
and all others concerned as to teacher-training, read
the action of the Committee as contained in the report
of the Toronto Convention, and he will see that a
long step has been taken towards solving the problem
of Sunday-school teacher-training.

INTERDENOMINATIONAL
TEACHER-TRAINING

VI

INTERDENOMINATIONAL
TEACHER -TRAINING

THE CHAUTAUQUA IDEA

ON A Tuesday evening, August 4, 1874, at Chau-
tauqua Lake campground, New York, the first
Chautauqua Assembly was convened, with John H.
Vincent as Superintendent of Instruction. It was
exclusively a "Sunday-school institute protracted to
the length of two weeks.' * It was a great occasion
and a great opportunity. Twenty-five states and all
leading Protestant denominations were represented.
But this was its one year of exclusive teacher-training.
The original idea was expanded to include all forms
of instruction, secular and religious.

The first Chautauqua, although it long ago removed
its ancient landmarks and has become the Chautau-
qua University, in its earlier years was the pioneer in
teacher-training, and its "Normal Union" blazed
the way for other movements, denominational and in-
terdenominational. A few of the hundred or more
American Chautauquas continue to hold in honor the
old idea of helping the Sunday-school teacher, nota-
bly among these the mother Chautauqua in the East,
and the Winona Assembly in the West ; but with
most of them it is within bounds to say that teacher-
training is a mere incident, and that the ratio of their
expenditure for popular entertainment to their expen-

73

74 How to Become a Trained Teacher

diture for teacher-training is a hundred dollars to one.
The change has not come from lack of appreciation
or patronage of Sunday-school workers, but chiefly
from considerations of a commercial nature. Popular
entertainment is a better dividend payer, and teacher-
training, so far as related to the average present-
day Chautauqua, is practically a lost opportunity.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL ASSOCIATION IDEA

Within fifteen years the teacher-training movement
largely passed from the Chautauqua to the inter-
denominational Sunday-school Association. An inci-
dent to the former, it is now the chief concern of the
latter, as it is changing from formative to educational
conditions. To these associations is largely due the
credit of the present widespread revival of interest in
teacher-training. What the Chautauquas failed to do
these are doing in all parts of the great International
Sunday-school field. Of the fifty or more associa-
tions of the United States and Canada — state, provin-
cial, and territorial — most of them have instituted
teacher-training departments and courses of study.
The number of their enrolled students runs up into
tens of thousands, and their graduates are to be
counted by the thousands. One state has an "Alumni
Association ' ' of more than three thousand graduates.
By a few of these associations training specialists
have been employed, and departments thoroughly
and systematically maintained. In most of these, so
far, the courses of study operated are substantially
elementary, and the standards of study and recog-
nition are generally too easy and flexible.

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 75

Yet despite the chaotic conditions under which the
work has largely been done, together with faulty
methods and incapable leadership, a great and wide-
spread teacher-training work has been quietly done.
Noting this fact, and yielding to the insistent appeals
of Sunday-school leaders for a more clearly defined
and unified system of teacher-training, a "Committee
on Education" and an International secretary of
teacher-training were appointed in 1903 by the Execu-
tive Committee of the International Sunday-school
Convention, to whom the matter of teacher-training
was specially committed.

THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

This committee, of which the writer has been chair-
man from its organization, has for four years carefully
studied the field of the International Association, and
has sought to conserve and unify all teacher-training
work among the associations and to correlate it with
the work of the various denominations as far as this
was desired by the denominations themselves. The
twelve members of the Committee, representing the
leading denominations of the country, and with large
experience in both secular and religious education,
have rendered an invaluable service to the cause of
teacher-training throughout the world-wide Sunday-
school field, and have already accomplished more in
practical results than all preceding teacher-training
agencies.

Meeting annually, often semi-annually, at its own
charges, the Committee has given many days of time
and labor to its onerous and delicate work, but it has

76 How to Become a Trained Teacher

received again and again the hearty approbation of
the International Executive Committee and of many
denominational leaders. As reported for the tri-
ennium ending at the Toronto International Conven-
tion of 1905 (though the Committee's work had then
but fairly begun), forty-three Sunday-school Associa-
tion training-courses had been submitted and "ap-
proved," and twenty- three of these Associations were
using the International Elementary Diploma. Dur-
ing the triennium 2,431 training-classes had been
enrolled, with an enrolled membership of 32,377
students, in addition to 1,834 individual students.
During the present triennium, 1905-08, the number
of classes is being greatly increased, and for one year
only the number of students enrolled was more than
forty thousand. So far, however, it is the Inter-
national "Elementary Diploma" and "approved"
Elementary Training Courses included in the above
report. The Committee on Education adopted its
standards for an "advanced course" in 1904, con-
fining its work, very properly, to the formulating of
"standards" only, and leaving to the associations
and denominations the choice or preparation of text-
books, it being the settled policy of the International
Sunday-school Association to keep out of the business
of printing and publishing. Since the adoption of
the "advanced course" standards, several Sunday-
school associations have erected "advanced" courses
which the Committee on Education had approved,
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Illinois being first
to enter the field. During the triennium, 1902-05,
thirty associations reported 10,712 graduates, though

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 77

this number is confessedly incomplete. Among the
greater associations the number of enrolled students
reported as pursuing a training course, in 1905, was
as follows : Pennsylvania, 2, 890 ; New York, 2, 500 ;
Illinois, 2,457 ; Ohio, 1,618 ; Nova Scotia, 1,000 ;
Indiana, 722 ; Ontario, 703 ; Colorado, 551 ; New
Jersey, 500.

For many years Illinois has led among the Sunday-
school associations in the number of classes and stu-
dents, and has now an alumni association of more
than four thousand graduates. Having erected the
first Association teacher-training department in the
world in 1888, under the writer's superintendency, it
easily became the pioneer in interdenominational
teacher-training. In zeal and aggressiveness this
great Association, so long directed by the Jacobs
brothers, is still in the forefront, but other associa-
tions, notably Pennsylvania and New York, compete
with it for international honors. Other pioneer asso-
ciations were Ohio, under the veteran teacher-trainer,
Colonel Robert Cowden ; Kansas, under General
Secretary Engle ; Kentucky, under Professor E. A.
Fox ; Nova Scotia, under Dr. Frank Woodbury ;
New Brunswick, under E. R. Machum ; Iowa, under
B. F. Mitchell ; together with the two California
associations and Ontario. The little cloud that was
no bigger than a man's hand twenty years ago has
now covered the entire heavens.

In all this later progress the wide influence of the
International Sunday-school Association and its Com-
mittee on Education have borne conspicuous part.
But if any one agent should be named, the honor

78 How to Become a Trained Teacher

would deservedly fall upon Teacher-Training Super-
intendent W. C. Pearce, who since 1903 has so effi-
ciently carried out the plans of the International
Sunday-school Association. It is a great pleasure to
the writer, now that Mr. Pearce has been transferred
from the place he has so greatly magnified to the
superintendency of the Adult Class Movement, to pay
to him this personal and official tribute. Always an
enthusiast and safe counsellor in the field of teacher-
training, he has written his name high among the
pioneers in this recent and great international move-
ment.

INTERNATIONAL PLANS

For the information of readers of this book, and to
show how thoroughly the plans of the Committee on
Education have been matured, the following extracts
from the official literature of the Committee, now in
wide circulation throughout the International field
and generally adopted by the half hundred Sunday-
school associations, are given.

I. STANDARDS FOR COURSES OF STUDY

The International Sunday-school Association,
through its Committee on Education, has established
standards for two courses of study, Elementary and
Advanced.

1. Elementary Course. Any course of study equiva-
lent to the Legion of Honor, Hurlbut's, Pease's,
Semelroth's or Roads' s Normal Outlines, or Sabbath-
School Teacher Training Course, No. 1, is approved
as Elementary.

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 79

To those who are unfamiliar with these standard
Normal manuals, it may be well to state that they
comprise a general study of four subjects, as
follows :

a. An outline study of the Old Testament.

b. An outline study of the New Testament.

c. A study of Sunday-school History, Organization,
and Management.

d. A study of the essential Principles and Methods
of Teaching.

To each of these subjects is given about twelve
lessons.

2. Advanced Course. This course must include a
study of the following subjects :

a. The Bible. Introduction to the Old and New
Testaments ; Biblical Geography ; Biblical History ;
Biblical Doctrine.

b. General Church History. (Denominational
Church History referred to the various Denomina-
tions.)

c. Pedagogy and Child Study.

d. The Sunday-school : Its History, Organization,
and Management.

The text-books in each subject shall be selected by
the Association supervising the examination, and
shall be of recognized college grade, as approved by
the Committee on Education. On the request of any
Association, the International Teacher Training Sec-
retary is authorized to furnish a list of text-books
approved by the Committee on Education, and to
render any assistance desired in the arrangement of
courses of study.

80 How to Become a Trained Teacher

II. THE INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMA : HOW SECURED

Two International Diplomas are prepared, one for
each of the above named courses of study. These
diplomas will be given by the International Associa-
tion through the various auxiliary State, Provincial,
and Territorial Associations and Denominations adopt-
ing them, according to the following rules :

1. The Association must have a Teacher-Training
Department, and exercise supervision over all classes
and students, said supervision to be evidenced by en-
rolment and examination.

2. A course or courses of study must be selected
by the Association and approved by the Committee
on Education.

3. The examination must be conducted on ques-
tions sent out or approved by the Association super-
vising the work.

4. The examination must be in writing, without
help, and under the supervision of the Association
conducting the examination.

5. Those taking the examination shall make a
grade of not less than seventy per cent.

Any one residing in a State, Province, or Territory
where the Teacher-Training work is not organized,
may write directly to the International Teacher-Train-
ing Secretary, care General Secretary, Mr. Marion
Lawrance, Chicago, 111. In such cases he is author-
ized to aid in the selection of a course of study ;
to enrol students, conduct examination, and grant
diplomas.

Inter denoininational Teacher- Training 81

III. HOW THE WORK MAY BE DONE

1. Present Teachers, For those who are in active
service at present, a class should be organized to
meet during the week. Sometimes the work is un-
dertaken in connection with the weekly teachers' -
meeting, a part of the time being given to definite
Teacher-Training. In many places, a union class of
the community or district is the most practicable
arrangement. Where none of these plans can be
adopted, the work may be taken up by students
individually.

2. Prospective Teachers. For those who are our
prospective officers and teachers, it would be best to
organize a class to meet at the regular session of the
Sunday-school. Such a class is more easily main-
tained, because it is a part of the Sunday-school, and
contributes toward making the Teacher-Training work
permanent.

3. Leadership. Good leadership is a most im-
portant factor in a Teacher-Training class. Secure a
trained leader, if possible, but a good leader is not
necessarily a trained leader. Many classes have been
successfully led by untrained workmen, who felt the
need of the work and were willing to pay the price of
success.

4. Enrolment. Classes or individual students
should, at the very beginning of their work, enrol
with their State, Provincial, or Territorial Teacher
Training Secretary. It is a constant stimulus to
be in touch with all those engaged in the same
work.

5. Examination. When any section of any course

82 How to Become a Trained Teacher

of study has been completed, an examination should
be taken. The Association with which the classes
or students are enrolled will conduct the examina-
tion. Rules governing the same will accompany ex-
amination questions.

6. Certificates and Diplomas. Certificates will be
issued by the Association supervising the work to all
students who satisfactorily complete any section of
any course. The International diploma is granted
only on the completion of a full course.

7. Graduation. When a class has successfully
finished any full course, a graduating service should
be held. Everything possible should be planned for
this occasion that would dignify the ministry of teach-
ing. This service may and should be the means of
magnifying the Sunday-school work, and securing for
the Sunday-school a more general support.

8. Supply Teachers' Class. Care should be exer-
cised about calling upon a training-class of pros-
pective teachers for supply teachers. This will
hinder and sometimes break up the class. From
the graduates, who may not be needed as regular
teachers, a supply class should be organized. This
class may study the lesson one week ahead of the
school, and its members be prepared to teach at a
moment's notice.

9. Alumni Associations. It has been found to be
practicable for the graduates of a School, City, County,
State, Province, or Territory to form Alumni Associa-
tions. Special social gatherings can be arranged,
and many plans be devised to extend the work of
Teacher-Training.

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 83

IV. SUGGESTIONS TO PASTORS AND SUPERINTENDENTS

1. Be constantly on the search for recruits for the
training-class. The Church and Sunday-school is
full of latent talents that need to be discovered and
developed.

2. Speak often with the young people and explain
to them the need of trained Sunday-school workers.

3. Put on your prayer-list those whom you specially
believe to be full of promise as Sunday-school workers.
Pray regularly, that God may guide them into the
place he would have them occupy in his kingdom.

4. Provide a good Sunday-school workers' library,
and guide these young people in its use. Send or
take them as delegates to Sunday-school conventions
where they may meet other Sunday-school workers
and leaders. In God's own good time many will
hear his voice calling them into the Sunday-school
ministry.

5. When they have heard the call of God, they
will be glad to join the training-class, that they may
secure a preparation for the work.

6. Secure the best possible place for this class to
meet. A separate room is desirable, but not abso-
lutely necessary.

7. Provide the best equipment you can afford. A
blackboard, maps, and a reference library are essen-
tial to the best work.

8. Do much to encourage the members of this
class. Much of the work is difficult and laborious.
They need constant cheer from those who appreciate
what their work means to the future of the church.

9. Help the members of this class to remember

84 How to Become a Trained Teacher

that they are making this preparation that they may
become approved workmen, ■ • rightly dividing the
word of truth." They need this motive in their
work. Permit them not to become discouraged.

THE CITY TRAINING INSTITUTE

More than a score of the greater American cities
within ten years have successfully conducted extensive
campaigns of house-to-house visitation. Some of
these campaigns were remarkable for the skill with
which they were planned and conducted, and for the
results achieved. They gave conclusive proof of the
practicability of uniting the entire religious forces of
a great city into one great movement. Very few of
these cities as yet have entered the training-field,
although the city has conditions peculiarly tavorable
to the maintenance of teacher-training plans. Its
compact population, material facilities, its massing of
religious and educational leadership, especially the
readiness and spirit of its workers and the usually ad-
vanced state of its Sunday-school work, should open
a way to the establishment in every city of a perma-
nent teacher-training institute.

From the signs about me I venture the opinion that
this will be the next step in Sunday-school progress.
Washington, District of Columbia, has for several
years been the headquarters of the American Society
of Religious Education, under the direction of J. E.
Gilbert, D. D., long prominent in training work.
Boston, which maintains the best "superintendents'
unions" in the land, has, so far, no concerted teacher-
training system. Philadelphia, in 1904, organized an

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 85

elaborate Institute of Teacher-Training, with weekly
lectures by a faculty of six men of unusual ability,
and an official course of study with graduation and
diploma. So far its well-laid plans have not justified
expectation. New York City has had a Bible-Teachers'
Training School, erected upon an almost ideal plan,
devoting five periods of one hour each on Friday
afternoons to an appointed course of study under
some of the distinguished specialists of that city.
Chicago is the center of the Religious Education Asso-
ciation, the most recent organization for the promo-
tion of religious education. With more than a score
of departments, a membership of many distinguished
ministers and educational leaders in annual conven-
tion, much should be expected of this body in help-
fulness to Sunday-school teachers.

The trouble with the cities has been that their plans
have usually been too elaborate and high-pitched.
The lecture method without text, weighty courses on
psychology, and critical discussions of the Bible, are
beyond the mass of plain Sunday-school workers,
however profitable to advanced students. Whatever
is done in the cities in ways of teacher-training must,
in the beginning at least, be very simple and imme-
diately helpful, or it will not touch the rank and file.

The most successful city experiment I have known
began in Chicago in 1901, under Mr. W. C. Pearce,
then Sunday-school secretary of Cook County. With
a purely elementary course of study he organized his
first training class, with an enrolment of two hundred
students drawn from many schools, and maintained
for six months of the year. In 1902, with four classes

86 How to Become a Trained Teacher

in the four sections of the city, there were often one
thousand students in attendance. These students, as
they were graduated, in turn organized training classes
of young people in their respective Sunday-schools.
The sessions of Mr. Pearce' s classes were divided be-
tween the study of the training-course and the next
Sunday's regular lesson. Out of these classes have
already come hundreds of graduates. The very sim-
plicity of the system, with the elementary quality of
the work required, made it at once popular and ef-
fective. Now that the International Convention has
erected a teacher-training department, and appointed
a teacher-training secretary, a forward movement
should be looked for in many cities.

SUMMER TRAINING SCHOOLS

The latest development of teacher- training in the
International field is the establishment of summer
training schools for Sunday-school workers, as distinct
from merely incidental lecture courses upon Sunday-
school methods at Chautauqua Assemblies. The
• ' summer school ' ' has now become a recognized
feature of the International work, and as such receives
the official approval of the Committee of Education,
provided its range of subjects and its hours and meth-
ods of study conform to the standards fixed by the
Committee. Where this is the case, the school is
listed, if so desired by its management, and the Inter-
national "Certificate of Recognition" is conferred
upon all students who meet the Committee' s require-
ments. During the year 1906 fully two thousand
such certificates were awarded. The oldest summer

Interdenominational Teacher- Training 87

school is the now famous " Primary School" held for
many years at Asbury Park, under direction of General
Secretary Rev. E. Morris Fergusson of New Jersey.
The first school to be formally recognized by the In-
ternational Executive Committee was the " Fourth Dis-
trict International Summer School," held since 1904 at
Winona Lake, Indiana, and including Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Ontario, and Kentucky. Dr. H. M.
Hamill has been its Dean, and General Secretary
Marion Lawrance Vice-Dean. This school has en-
rolled annually for a two weeks' session more than
500 students, and has been widely copied in plans
and programs. A similar great school for the South
has been organized by Dr. Hamill since 190$ at
Monteagle, Tennessee, its last enrolment being 540
students. The latest report from the International
field — for the year 1906 — gives fully twenty-five schools
entitled to the name "International." In connection
with many of these are faculties made up of the most
eminent Sunday-school specialists and Bible teachers
in the land, ranking in ability, management, and
program with the finest state summer institutes for
secular education. The one weakness of such schools
generally has been the lack of a stated income to pay
expenses. Two great state Sunday-school associations
— Pennsylvania and Illinois — have made definite ap-
propriations of money, and smaller contributions have
come from a dozen other associations, especially those
of the Fourth District.

DENOMINATIONAL TEACHER -TRAINING

VII
DENOMINATIONAL TEACHER -TRAINING

THE CHURCH BASIS

IN THE order of evolution denominational training
work comes last, and, by the same sign, is, or
ought to be, the best. It is the survival of the fittest.
Thus far the work among the denominations is largely
tentative and experimental. Its most hopeful feature
is in the widespread interest now being manifested
among all the churches. Even the few denominations
that have made no formal and official beginning are
frank to confess through their Sunday-school leaders
that they greatly need and desire the introduction of
some plan of teacher-training. The denominations
whose polity is " connectional " have more easily in-
stituted their plans, but those of congregational au-
tonomy are finding a way to broad denominational
systems. Ten years ago there was not a denomination
that could fairly claim to have more than a fitful and
sporadic training movement, without official sanction
or direction from its law-making body. Now it would
be hard to find even among the smaller denominations
one that has not had the matter discussed in its high-
est council. The denominations hold the key of suc-
cess to any wide and permanent teacher-training
movement. The International Sunday-school Asso-
ciation, however wide its field and capable its man-
agement, can at best only stimulate, assist, and report

91

92 How to Become a Trained Teacher

the work by the denominations ; and it is fair to this
great interdenominational organization, known as the
"International Sunday-school Association," to say
that the movement astir among all churches is largely
the result of continued agitation and assistance from
the hundreds of International conventions and other
meetings held annually. The Committee on Educa-
tion has been wise in not seeking to cross denomina-
tional lines and attempt to do for the denominations
what they can and should do for themselves. The
most this Committee, composed of men recognized as
denominational leaders, has asked for has been the
co-operation of the Sunday-school departments of the
various denominations, to the extent of observing some
general standards of study and subject-matter and using
the International diplomas, in addition to the church' s
diploma whenever it was the desire of the church so
to do. Even such limited and reasonable proffer of
help has not been made as the right of the Inter-
national Association, but as an act of mutual courtesy.
"Blood is thicker than water." The church-mem-
ber who is not loyal to his own denomination* s train-
ing course and diploma is not worth the consideration
of an interdenominational teacher-training depart-
ment On the other hand, that church-member has
small ambition i£ after honoring his own church and
earning its diploma, he does not aspire to the diploma
of a great organization which stands for the best that
can be found in all churches. Already some of the
denominations with training courses and diplomas of
their own have asked the Committee on Education to
grant the use of the International teacher-training seal

Denominational Teacher- Training 93

upon their church diplomas whenever the church
course has met the required standards of the Com-
mittee on Education.

THE DENOMINATIONAL STATUS

Space allows a brief outline at most of the teacher-
training work now being done by the leading and
representative denominations, reports of which have
not been made officially to the International Teacher-
training superintendent or its statistical secretary, and
therefore are gleaned precariously from year books
and personal correspondence.

The Christian or Disciple Church, always an ag-
gressive Sunday-school body, at its convention in
Detroit in 1903 appointed a strong committee to de-
vise and direct a system of training for its teachers.
The committee has found it easier to plan than to
find the man pre-eminently fitted for teacher-training
leadership. Yet in several portions of the wide terri-
tory which this church occupies, notably in Missouri
and Illinois, plans of study have been enacted and
diplomas conferred upon graduates for many years.
A Correspondence course includes students in nearly
one-third of the states of the Union.

The same is true of the United Brethren Church,
of which the well-known Colonel Robert Cowden of
Ohio is the leading teacher-training authority. While
it is difficult to exhibit or classify what this church is
doing, it is to be credited with not a little teacher-
training progress and spirit.

In the Protestant Episcopal Church there is an
unusual quickening of Sunday-school interest along

94 How to Become a Trained Teacher

all lines, but especially with respect to the teacher's
equipment. In New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl-
vania, and Michigan notably this Sunday-school re-
vival is in evidence, and in the provinces of Ontario
and New Brunswick of the Dominion of Canada.
The Sunday-school Commission of New York, of
which the Rev. William Walter Smith is secretary
and lecturer, has been especially active in the way of
instructing its teachers and organizing "extension
classes ' ' in the larger cities.

The Congregational Church has at least four emi-
nent teacher-training experts in Drs. Dunning, Wells,
Merrill, and Sanders, the last named having been
taken from the Divinity School of Yale and assigned
a position among the foremost Sunday-school special-
ists of the land, as Secretary of the Congregational
Sunday-school Society. With no official training
course or distinctive department, the Congregational-
ists furnish their full quota of graduates and students
in all association training work, and especially em-
phasize the training of their Sunday-school teachers.

In 1904, the Presbyterian Churches North and South,
the United Presbyterian, the Presbyterian Church in
Canada, the Cumberland Presbyterian and the Re-
formed Church in the United States, united in the
preparation of an elementary training course and a
plan of study and graduation, which is now the official
course and plan of this great union of churches.

The Southern Baptists have by their zeal and ag-
gressiveness compensated in part for the yet unorgan-
ized status of teacher-training in the Baptist Church of
the North. At the session of the Committee of Edu-

Denominational Teacher- Training 95

cation, held in 1906, the thorough plans and courses
of study begun in part by the Southern Baptist Church
several years ago were "approved," and many classes
are being formed and students enrolled throughout the
entire South, under the leadership of Field Secretaries
B. W. Spilman, L. P. Leavell, and others. In addition
to the training course, these experts conduct institutes
and schools of instruction in the greater centers.

Notwithstanding the splendid record held by the
Methodist Episcopal Church, with its three million
Sunday-school scholars and the notable leadership of
such men as Vincent, Hurlbut, Neely, and McFar-
land, there is yet no distinctive teacher-training de-
partment in operation, although for more than four
years an institute corps has been actively at work in
the wide field of this great church.

Southern Methodism, after a trial of four years, be-
ginning in 1900, through its General Conference con-
tinued its finely-equipped teacher-training department,
and its students number ten thousand or more. It
provides a teachers', an officers', and a primary
teachers' course, and its book of law requires the co-
operation of all pastors in organizing "Bible Teachers'
Study Circles wherever practicable." The Superin-
tendent of Training Work is kept most of his time in
the field of the entire South, addressing conferences of
ministers and conducting institutes and conventions.

THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS

In all attempts to set forth the importance of teacher-
training one must begin and end with the pastor. In
its last analysis the teacher-training problem goes back

96 How to Become a Trained Teacher

to the seminary, where the young men of the churches
are in training for the ministry. Not until these semi-
naries begin to turn out a body of pastors with special
modern Sunday-school training will other influences
at work be successful. Think of more than a half-
hundred theological schools running for more than a
generation past with never a professor or book or lec-
ture course in the way of equipping their graduates
to know and to supervise the Sunday-school work
committed to them as pastors ! It is comforting,
however, to recall the great change that is in progress
among these "schools of the prophets." The writer
recently made a tour of certain seminaries under di-
rection and at the expense of a State Sunday-school
Association, where, a few years ago, the doors were
closed against such an innovation. He received a
courteous and appreciative hearing from hundreds of
fine young men, the very flower of the church ; and
also found at his Sunday-school lectures the full facul-
ties of the several institutions visited. It has already
been noted that three theological schools have pro-
vided for, and, in part, have already instituted, pro-
fessorships on Sunday-school pedagogy. Added to
this, it should be put to the credit of these training
schools for pastors, and viewed by friends of the
Sunday-school as the brightest of all omens, that
every seminary and theological school without excep-
tion is erecting, as far as it is possible, a course of
Sunday-school lectures by an acknowledged expert
wherever such expert help can be secured. General
Secretary Lawrance and others of the International
staff cannot respond to all requests for such service,

Denominational Teacher- Training 97

and, in the judgment of the writer the time has come
when a special seminary lecturer should be added to
the list of International workers.

A SPECIMEN TEACHER-TRAINING LESSON

LOfC.

VIII

A SPECIMEN TEACHER-TRAINING LESSON
Blackboard Outline

THE LESSON

Half-Hour.

I. Getting Ready :

O. T

., C. G., C. S., A. B. c.

II. Testing.

III. Teaching.

Attention.
Home study.
Thought.

Plan.

Matter.

Method.

IV. Reviewing.

v. Applying.

Every Sunday.
By the scholar.
Orderly and accurate

Knowledge.

Prayer.

The Holy Spirit,

DRIVING A NAIL

TEACHING is like driving a nail. You have often
heard of ' ' driving the truth home, ' ' which is a
figure of the carpenter and his work. One can
learn to drive a nail, and any one can learn to teach.
Teaching is an art, and can be mastered like stenog-
raphy, or bookbinding, or housekeeping, or any one
of the industrial arts. It takes time and patience,
but final success is as sure as in other arts. There
are few ' ' born ' ' teachers. They are as rare as the
born musicians and artists and poets. Most of those
who have become eminent as teachers in secular and
religious education are self-made teachers. They
learned how, — by observation, by practice, by hard

IOI

102 How to Become a Trained Teacher

study. They were bunglers at beginning, and came
to success by finding out their blunders and making
them stepping-stones to higher success. Shake-
speare's words might be paraphrased to fit the case :
* ■ Some are born to teach ; some have teaching thrust
upon them ; but most teachers achieve teaching."

The " lesson half-hour " is the crux of the Sunday-
school teacher. It is the supreme test of his work.
Out of a whole week he has thirty golden minutes in
which to teach the greatest and hardest of all books,
often to boys and girls who never hear of it outside
the Sunday-school class. Every minute of the thirty,
every step of the teacher in that half-hour, is weighty
with responsibility. There is a right way to begin it,
there are right methods to use in putting the lesson
before the class, and there is a right way to bring that
half-hour to an end. If teaching is indeed an art,
and if any one of you can learn it, you have the right
to ask me : " How should I begin, and continue, and
close ? How can I use the short half-hour to best
advantage ? What are the points that a teacher must
steadily keep in mind while teaching ? What steps,
and in what order, must I take in setting forth a Sun-
day-school lesson ?" I shall try to make answer. I
have put in outline on my blackboard five steps. No
lesson can be truly taught without taking these five
distinct steps. No step of the five can be omitted, if the
lesson half-hour is to be effective and complete.
Leave out a bone or artery of the body, and it is like
the teacher who omits any one of the steps I indicate.
Read with me these successive steps of the lesson
half-hour: "Getting Ready," "Testing," " Teach*

A Specimen Teacher -Training Lesson 103

ing, " • ' Reviewing, " " Applying. ' " Let us take them
in order.

GETTING READY

The one who gets ready to do a thing is likely to do
it. The one who "gets ready" for business is in
demand among business men. The engineer who
gets ready his engine — every bolt, valve, and flue in
order — is the man I like to ride behind on a journey.
The lesson half-hour means only confusion and waste
to the teacher who is not ready for it. I have given
four points that the teacher must make ready if he is
to make good use of his half-hour. They come before
that half-hour begins. What is the first ? (O. T. )
That is old-fashioned and commonplace, but I assure
you no teacher ever did, or ever will, succeed who dis-
regards it. It stands for " On Time," which means,
to the teacher, full ten minutes ahead of time. It is
useless for a teacher to expect success who neglects
the things that make success. The promptness of a
teacher, I have noted for many years, is the sure
prophecy of his success. The teacher who comes at
the last minute comes mentally and spiritually out of
sorts, irritable and irritating. His battle is lost in
the first five minutes. He might have preoccupied
the mischievous spirits of his class, and made an
orderly beginning, but his late coming has lost the
day's victory. Coming O. T., he should give to his
scholars that " C-ordial G-reeting" which every
teacher owes to his boys and girls, some of whom, I
am sorry to say, know little of cordial greetings in the
home. What a strange forgetfulness is that of the

104 How to Become a Trained Teacher

teacher who fails to give a hearty hand-shake and word
of welcome to the little fellows who would be so glad
to get it, and who would be disarmed of mischief by-
it ? You cannot always control the " C. S.," which
stands for "comfortable surroundings," but under
the worst physical conditions you can mass the class
about you, putting them where they can hear you and
see you face to face. I believe in the hypnotic
power of the eye, and I always keep my eyes busy in
teaching. I believe also in teaching at short range,
and I make the radii between me and the class as
short as possible. If I have one boy more mischievous
than another, I take pains to place him closest to me,
so that I can rest my hand — lovingly — upon him.

What is the "A. B. C." of the Sunday-school
teacher ? It is simply this : Putting all lesson-
leaves aside, laying down in the pew everything but
the one book, the Bible, and then throughout the
half-hour teaching eye to eye, face to face, heart to
heart, — A. B. C, "All Books Closed." It is the
beginning of the alphabet of teaching, and until you
are willing to do this, or at least patiently to attempt
it, you might as well give over the hope of success.
Learn to " shoot without a rest," if you expect ever
to become an expert marksman,

TESTING

The second step is testing. You are ready now to
take up the day's lesson. Your coming on time,
your kindly welcome to your scholars, your plans for
a comfortable hour, your thorough knowledge of what
you are to teach, put you at ease, and make you

A Specimen Teacher -Training Lesson 105

master of the situation. What am I to test ? First,
attention. I might say first and last, as the test of
attention must run throughout every moment of the
lesson, you cannot begin or continue or conclude a
lesson without it. The teacher's knowledge is only
one-half the circle. The other half is the scholar' s
attention. Resolve that you will not teach without it.
Do everything possible to secure it. Make any sacri-
fice to get it. Hold every member of your class re-
sponsible for every part of the lesson. Never begin
teaching in the least disorder. Never continue a
moment after inattention sets in. Give the scholar
who is wandering something to do. Ply him with
questions. Be ready to spring a surprise upon any
one who turns away his mind or face. Don' t fret or
worry or scold. Never ask for attention. Determine,
by God's help, that you will have it, and methods
will rise up when needed.

Test the home study. Remember that most schol-
ars are lacking in parental help at home, and that
thirty minutes a week is all too little for their Bible
study. Plan for home study. Take every lesson to
pieces a week in advance, and give out the parts to
scholars. Show them precisely what you wish them
to do in the home. Pledge them to read the lesson
over in the home. Show them how to use lesson-leaf
and Bible together in learning a lesson. Let them
understand that you expect home study. Begin by
questioning upon it in the lesson half-hour. No
matter how often the reply comes, « ' I don' t know, ' '
or " I have not studied it," keep up your opening
fire of questions every Sunday, and assume that they

106 How to Become a Trained Teacher

have studied. This is what the trained public school
teacher does, and this is why " leaves " and "helps"
are never seen in the secular lesson half-hour. Every
influence that can be called into use is made to press
upon the scholar to secure his study at home.

Test the thought of your scholars. Plan your
questions to make them think. Do not lecture them.
The lecture method may do for the college class-
room, though I have my doubts about it. Certainly
it is not for Sunday-school boys and girls. They need
simple thought-provoking questions upon the text of
the lesson. Take verse by verse, and draw out from
them, each according to his ability-, what the text
says and what it means. Do not think for them.
Give them time to think for themselves. Better let
a boy or girl wrestle five minutes over a word or sen-
tence of the text, and finally get at it, than for the
teacher to fill him with a mass of knowledge he can-
not digest The best teaching in the world is that
which compels the learner to do his own thinking.

TEACHING

Your opening test of home study, your constant test
of attention and thought, open the way for your plan
of the day's teaching. I need not urge that there
must be a "plan" to every lesson, yet I often come
upon aimless, chaotic, disjointed Sunday-school
teaching, abounding in knowledge and illustration,
but without form, and void. Your danger will be try-
ing to use bodily the plans of the great lesson-writers
and papers without fitting them to your smaller need.
I believe in a home-made plan for ever)- teacher.

A Specimen Teacher -Training Lesson 107

When Saturday night comes, you should have a
home-spun plan of what you are to teach, what things
in the lesson are of vital account, how the lesson
should begin and close, especially how it should be
fitted to your scholars.

As to the matter of your teaching, that must depend
upon your class. The less of the abstract and the
more of the concrete you can put into your teaching
of boys and girls the better. Leave ' ' ologies ' ' and
"doctrines" to the seniors, where they will harm least.
I have known scarcely a lesson in twenty-five years
that did not have in it in plain sight some one
great practical truth that I could make the nucleus of
my lesson plan, and fit it to my boys or girls. One
such truth — and you will usually find the key to it in
the Golden Text — is enough for the lesson half-hour.
Settle upon that, bend everything to it, go over it again
and again, make it the heart of the day' s teaching,
and put your whole heart into it As to a method of
teaching I have little to say. Any method that drives
the truth home is right I change methods as I
change my clothing. If I see a good method I bor-
row it, and use it, and then throw it away. Only do not
use adult methods on children, or conversely. I have
found nothing so good for boys and girls as the old
Socratic method of the question and answer.

REVIEWING

So far, your teaching has aimed at imparting, but
that is only half your work. You can never know
from your own point of view as the teacher whether
the scholar's learning has kept pace with you. You

108 How to Become a Trai7ied Teacher

must prove your teaching. No lesson is complete
until the teacher knows that what he has taught the
scholar has surely learned. If every teacher would
apply this test to his work, his teaching would grow
in simplicity and power. The old Jesuits understood
it. It was "line upon line, precept upon precept,"
with them. They never let up until what they had
set out to teach had been thoroughly learned. There-
fore, review every Sunday. Review especially all
hard lessons until they become easy. Do not do this
reviewing yourself. Let it come from your scholars,
one by one. Give each a part in it. Only what a
scholar can "tell back" does he know. Take noth-
ing for granted. Let the scholar' s review or restate-
ment of the lesson, or of some part of it, be as
orderly and accurate as he can make it Truth, in or-
der to be retained and used readily and with profit,
must be after an orderly plan, and exact in statement
Do not be discouraged if the review by the scholar
seems slow and bungling. It is vastly better so as a
test of his learning and a proof of your teaching, than
any possible re-viewing you could do for him.

APPLYING

The last step — not always last in time — is applying
the lesson. It is rather applying that which is vital,
spiritual, and most profitable in it, to your class. The
hardest thing I have to do is finding what and how to
apply this one soul-saving truth. I can never come
to it until by hard study I have a full knowledge of
the lesson. I do not believe one can get at it by any
other way than first by hard study. Certainly God will

A Specimen Teacher -Training Lesson 109

not unlock the Bible to laggards and ignoramuses.
But I find that I need to know also my boys and girls,
or how can I apply the truth, after I have found it, to
those whom I do not know or understand ? And
when I have studied my lesson the best my conditions
as a teacher allowed, and have learned also to know,
without and within, my Sunday-school scholars, there
is just one thing more I must do — last and greatest
and most needy it is — before I can truly and wisely
apply the truth of God to human souls. I must go to
my closet and pray. God forbid that I go before my
boys and girls except from bended knee. ' ' From
closet to class." When I have done all else, then,
and not until then, will the Holy Spirit own and bless
my lesson half-hour.

DRIVING A NAIL

How is this teaching like driving a nail ? I have

here a good, big, strong (nail). I took pains to

get ready as fine a nail as the hardware man could
give me. Getting ready the nail is the first step, — it
is coming on time, making welcome your class, know-
ing your lesson so that you can teach (all books closed).

What is the next thing a carpenter does with his
nail ? He sets it. He tests point and position and
wood in setting it. He does not try to drive it head
down. So the teacher must test the scholar as he
drives his teaching nail.

After getting his nail and setting his nail, the car-
penter drives his nail. Driving the nail is the direct
teaching of the lesson. I drive one nail, one point,
at a time. I drive it blow on blow, which is question

no How to Become a Trained Teacher

on question. I do not try to push it to place by main
force, — which is the lecture method.

And when I have driven my teaching nail, I must
then prove it. I must turn my board about, and see
if the point of the nail has gone home. Do you see
the point?

Last comes the clinching of my nail. Get it, set it,
drive it, prove it, but do not fail to have it clinched.
Some one else must do that for you. Your study and
knowledge and prayer will help, but at the last it is
only the Holy Ghost who can clinch the truth as you
drive it home to the mind and heart of the scholar.

JUL 24 1907

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