7 Laws of Teaching: The Law of the Learning Process

What is a teacher? What is teaching?

According to Gregory, the art of education — that is, teaching — is two-fold:

1. Teaching is the art of training. Teaching is leading the students into paths of physical, mental, and moral fitness.
2. Teaching is the art of instructing. Teaching stimulates a love of learning and forms habits of independent study.

Thus, a successful teacher is working himself out of his position. He is moving his pupils not into but out of dependence on his guidance.

We can only train by teaching and we teach best when we train best.

Every act of teaching — purposefully or not, done rightly or not — trains the student in good or bad habits of work and thinking. Likewise, every act of skills-training teaches knowledge, even if there is no lecture.

The work of teaching, says Gregory, is the work of assigning, explaining, and hearing lessons. These days we don’t generally speak of “hearing lessons,” but when we hear an oral narration after independent reading, when we give feedback on a written narration, or when we prompt a discussion, we are hearing lessons. So, “lecture” is only a third of the work of teaching.

Gregory also writes that

Teaching is the communication of experience.

Experience includes facts, truths, doctrines, ideas, ideals, skills, art.
Communication includes words, signs, objects, actions, and examples.

By this definition, then, it is clear that the homeschool mother is not the students’ sole teacher. It is the books used more than the mother that teach. This relieves a lot of the pressure. Even more pressure can be relieved if the teaching we do give and the books we provide work with the grain of nature rather than against it. That’s why it’s important we know these laws.