THE PREPARATION OF A LESSON by Charles Mansford

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 2

THE PREPARATION OF A LESSON.

By Charles Mansford

The first step to be taken in the preparation of a lesson is to master your subject. Unfortunately, there seems to be a notion abroad that the preparation and giving of a lesson involves some professional secret, which, once learned, would enable a man to teach on any subject, whether he had mastered it or not; that, in short, a teacher who has been trained in the art could, if he would, write out a receipt for preparing and giving a lesson, just as a cook gives a receipt for mixing a pudding or for bottling gooseberries. This is a great and serious mistake. No one can give more than he has, and no one can teach what he does not know. If, therefore, you are to prepare a lesson which will be of any use at all, you must begin by wrestling with and mastering your subject. The subject must be thought of first, and then the lesson; first the substance, and afterward the form. Here a great many young teachers fall into error. They read up the outline of a lesson, or put a few striking and interesting facts or ideas together, collected from a commentary, and illustrated by a new anecdote. But a lesson thus prepared is like an artificial tree; it has no roots in the soil of their own mind, no living sap circulates in its branches; and if it have any leaves and fruit, they are only tied on, and have no organic connection with the parent stem.—Charles Mansford.