8 Sermon Illustrations on Teaching

Be exceedingly minute in the details of what you describe. Take very short steps, and take each one very distinctly. If, for instance, you are narrating to a man, you may simply say, if such an incident occur in the course of the narrative, that your hero "went down to the shore, and got into a boat and pushed off." Your hearer has probably got into a boat often enough to understand it. But, if you are talking to a child, he will be more interested if you say, "He went down to the shore, and found a boat there. One end of the boat, the front part, which they call the bows, was up against the shore, a little in the sand: the other end was out on the water, and moved up and down gently with the waves. There were seats across the boat, and two oars lying upon the seats. The man stepped upon the bows of the boat: it was fast in the sand, so that it did not sink under him. Then he took up one of the oars, and began to push against the shore to push himself off. But, as he was standing upon the bows, his weight pressed the bows down hard upon the sand, and so he could not push the boat off. Then he went to the other end of the boat, stepping over the seats. The other end of the boat is the stern. The stern sank a little; and the boat rocked from one side to the other, and made the oar which was on the seats rattle. There was nothing but water under the stern of the boat, and that was what made it unsteady. The man stepped carefully; and, when he was fairly in the stern, he reached his oar out again, and now he could push it off. The bows rubbed slowly back off the sand, and, in a minute, the whole boat was floating in the water." Abbott.

Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, the new president of Dartmouth College, gives this bit of classic advice to teachers:

In twenty years of teaching and observation, I have become convinced of some things connected with teaching as a profession. No teacher can hope to inspire and lead young men to a level of aspiration above that on which he himself lives and does his work. Young men may reach higher levels, but not by his aid. The man in whose mind truth has become formal and passive ought not to teach. What youth needs to see is knowledge in action, moving forward toward some worthy end. In nobody’s mind should it be possible to confuse intellectual with ineffectual. Let it not be said:

We teach and teach Until like drumming pedagogs we lose The thought that what we teach has higher ends Than being taught and learned.

It ought to be impossible, even in satire, to say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

It is an interesting commentary on the earnestness and professional zeal of the teachers as a class, that they are in such large numbers willing to spend no inconsiderable portion of their summer vacation, and no small part of their scant earnings, in paying board, tuition, and incidentals at some summer watering-place to pursue their studies, brushing up neglected places in their education, and fitting themselves for higher and better work in their profession. Especially is this noticeable when we find them spending several weeks in close attendance upon the teaching and lectures of the most famous experts the country has produced, getting hints, and more than hints--principles--of the best methods of teaching the common-school studies.--_Journal of Education._

Professor Estabrook, the well-known educator, once told this story to teachers for the purpose of showing them the discouraging results that attend the negative form of command. A mother once sent her little boy to buy some eggs. “Take this basket,” she said, placing it in his small hand, “and don’t spill one or drop the basket. And don’t fall down.” As he was passing through the gate, she called after him, “Don’t be gone long and don’t break the eggs.” After the little fellow had his order filled and started home all he could think about was not breaking or spilling the eggs. A vivid picture of broken shells filled his mind. With a fearful looking into the basket as if afraid they would jump out of themselves, he did not notice the large stone in his path and naturally fell over it, spilling and breaking the contents of the basket.

Our human tasks are done most safely and effectively not while we are concerned with the task, but while we keep in mind the exemplary Way by whose guidance all tasks are made plain.