The Seven Laws of Teaching

John Milton Gregory

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If we analyze carefully a full and perfect act of teaching, we shall find it involves seven distinct elements, or parties and parts—two actors, a teacher and a learner; two spiritual elements, the knowledge to be communicated and the medium of communication; and three active processes, that of the teacher in teaching, that of the pupil in learning, and that of testing and rendering permanent the work done. None of these elements can be subtracted and leave the work entire and complete; and no true account of the philosophy of teaching can be given which does not include them all.

Each of these seven elements has its own great natural condition or law of action, and these, taken together, constitute the Seven Laws of Teaching. These laws are so simple and natural that they must suggest themselves almost spontaneously to any one who will carefully note in turn the several parties and elements already named. Is it not evident that

1. A teacher must know thoroughly what he would teach.
2. A learner must attend with interest to what he would learn.
3. The medium must be language understood by both teacher and pupil in the same sense.
4. The truth to be taught must be related to truth already known, as we can only reach the unknown through that which is known.
5. The act of teaching is the act of arousing and guiding the self-activities of another mind so as to develop in it a certain thought or feeling.
6. The act of learning is the act of reproducing, fully and accurately in our own understanding, the ideas to be acquired.
7. The test and confirmation of teaching are to be found in repetitions and reviews. - Summary by John M. Gregory (3 hr 51 min)