No more important matter can possibly concern us than how and what our teachers are teaching, because the teachers have the mind before them in its formative period, where they can mold it and shape character as they will, while the preacher has before him those whose opinions are very, likely already formed. And the only way the superintendent can know what and how the teachers are teaching is to have a training department in his school and train those who are already teachers and those who are to be teachers.

      Now, I am sure that it was not the purpose of those who assigned me the task this afternoon of telling you how to teach a training-class, that I should come before you with any claims of a perfect plan for teaching, but to bring before you some methods that we have used in teaching. So I have presented to you an acrostic form on the blackboard, formed on the initials of "how to teach," showing something of the methods that should be used in conducting a training-class.

     

F. M. ROGERS.

First of all, I would say, have a perfect knowledge of the lesson you are going to teach. Some training-classes have failed because some of our ministers, who feel that it is unnecessary to make special preparation to teach, go before a class not knowing exactly what they are going to do. He is an unwise man who will go before a teacher-training class and try to teach the class an outline which he has not grasped himself.

      Outline the lesson upon the blackboard. Then erase it and have them repeat the entire outline from memory. Then work for results; that is, work for trained teachers. Do not have a cheap class. Have a teacher-training class. A good many so-called teacher-training classes over the country are simply Bible-study classes. They may be taking a teacher-training course. And I am not here to discourage that. But they are not teacher-training classes in the broad sense unless they are turning out teachers.

      Test the knowledge of your class by frequent reviews. If you do this, there will be no dread of examinations ahead. Occasionally have classes recite Scripture verses, not only in recitation, but have them come before the entire church and do this. Advertise the work, and by so doing you will reach others who are not at present on the roll.

      Then, above all things, teach, do not preach. To teach is not simply to cause to know, but to cause to understand. Exercises in spelling, pronunciation and the books of the Bible are helpful and are more important than you think. Assign definite work to individuals. You realize the importance of that. Conduct drills. How important that is!

      Above all, have the best equipments possible in the way of maps, blackboards, charts, etc., and, so far as possible, have your maps and your charts made by those who are in the class. It is far preferable to purchasing those [546] that may look better, because you get the class to doing something.

      This great movement for training teachers is here to stay. It is here to revolutionize the Bible school. It is here to build up the church of Jesus Christ and train it for service. It is here, under God, to extend the kingdom. And, friends, in what has been done we have only touched the fringe of the latent power that will make the Bible school a force to be reckoned with. The golden age of the Bible school, the teaching service of the church, is yet in the future. Let us claim its possibilities for Christ.

[CCR 546-547]