RECEPTIVE ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLS

Critical Book Review (CBR)

OLEH:

HARIYANTI SARAGIH - 2203121001

PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

FAKULTAS BAHASA DAN SENI

UNIVERSITAS NEGERI MEDAN

2020
A. IDENTITY OF BOOK

Title of Book : In The School-Room – Chapters In The Philosophy Of Education

Name of Author : John Seely Hart

Release Date : January 25, 2010

Language : English
 B. SUMMARY OF BOOK

The knowledge of the subjects to be taught, may be gained at any school. In order to give to
the Teachers' Seminary its full power and efficiency, it were greatly to be desired that the
subjects themselves, as mere matters of knowledge, should be first learned elsewhere, before
entering the Teachers' School. Many of those who attend a Teachers' Seminary, come to it
lamentably ignorant of the common branches of knowledge. They have consequently first to
study these branches in the Normal School, as they would study them in any other school.

That is, they have first to learn the facts as matters of knowledge, and then to study the art
and science of teaching these facts to others. All we can do is to define clearly the true idea of
the Teachers' School, and then to work towards it as fast and as far as we can. A Normal
School is essentially unlike any other school. It has been compared indeed to those
professional schools which are for the study of
law, divinity, medicine, mining, engineering, and so forth.

The Normal School, it is true, is like these schools in one respect. It is established with
reference to the wants of a particular profession. They teach
law, divinity, medicine, mining, or engineering. They aim to make
lawyers, divines, physicians, miners, engineers, not teachers of these branches.

The Professor in the Law School aims, not to make Professors of law, but lawyers. The
medical Professor aims, not to make medical lecturers, but practitioners. To render these
institutions analogous to the Teachers' Seminary, their pupils should first study
law, medicine, engineering, and so forth, and then sit at the feet of their Gamaliels to be
initiated into the secrets of the Professorial chair, that they may in turn become Professors of
those branches to classes of their own. It surely needs no demonstration to prove, that in the
highest departments, no less than in the lowest, something more than knowledge is needed in
order to teach.

An understanding of how to communicate one's knowledge, and practical skill in doing it, are

I certainly have seen, in the very lowest department of the common school, a style of
teaching, which, for a wise and intelligent comprehension of its object, and for its quickening
power upon the intellect and conscience, would compare favorably with the very best
teaching I have ever seen in a College or University. I come back, then, to the point from
which I set out, namely, that a Normal School, or Teachers' Seminary, differs essentially
from every other kind of school. It aims to give the knowledge and skill that are needed alike
in all schools. He must first have the knowledge.

But the mere possession of knowledge does not make one a teacher, any more than the
possession of powder and shot makes him a marksman, or the possession of a rod and line
makes him an angler. The fact about to be stated, was communicated to me by a gentleman of
eminent commercial standing in Philadelphia, at that time the President of one of its leading
banks. He was, at the time of its occurrence, largely engaged in the cloth trade. His faculties
of mind and body, and particularly his sense of touch, had been so trained in this
business, that in going rapidly over an invoice of cloth, as his eye and hand passed in quick
succession from piece to piece, in the most miscellaneous assortment, he could tell instantly
the value of each, with a degree of precision, and a certainty of knowledge, hardly credible.

His own knowledge of the subject, in short, was perfect, and it was rapidly winning him a
fortune. Let the receiving-teller of a bank be called upon to explain how it is that he knows at
a glance a counterfeit bill from a genuine one, and in nine cases out of ten he will succeed no
better than the cloth merchant did. Similar illustrations might be drawn from artists, and from
men of original genius in almost every profession, who can seldom give any intelligible
account of how they achieve their results. To all objections to his plans, he could only
say, «Silly, silly, that's silly.» It was much the same with Cromwell.

Patrick Henry would doubtless have made but a third-rate teacher of elocution, and old
Homer but an indifferent lecturer on the art of poetry. To acquire knowledge
ourselves, then, and to put others in possession of what we have acquired, are not only
distinct intellectual processes, but they are quite unlike. In the former case, the faculties
merely go out towards the objects to be known, as in the case of the cloth merchant passing
his eye and finger over the bales of cloth. But in the case of one attempting to teach, several
additional processes are needed, besides that of collecting knowledge.

He must turn his thoughts inward, so as to arrange and classify properly the contents of his
intellectual storehouse. He must then examine his own mind, his intellectual machinery, so as
to understand exactly how the knowledge came in upon himself. He must lastly study the
minds of his pupils, so as to know through what channels the knowledge may best reach
them. The teacher may not always be aware that he does all these things, that is, he may not
always have a theory of his own art.

He is a teacher at all only so far as he does at least these four things. In a Normal School, as
before said, the knowledge of the subject is presupposed. The object of the Normal School
is, not so much to make arithmeticians and grammarians, for instance, as to make teachers of
arithmetic and grammar. The theologian, the mathematician, the linguist, the learned
professor, no less than the teacher of the primary school, or of the Sabbath-school, all need
this supplementary knowledge and skill, in which consists the very essence of teaching.
This knowledge of how to teach is not acquired by merely studying the subject to be
taught. The Sabbath-school teacher may dip deep into biblical lore, he may ransack the
commentaries, and may become, as many Sabbath-school teachers are, truly learned in Bible
knowledge, and yet be utterly incompetent to teach a class of children. He can no more hit the
wandering attention, or make a lodgment of his knowledge in the minds of his youthful
auditory, than the mere unskilled possessor of a fowling-piece can hit a bird upon the
wing. The art of teaching is the one indispensable qualification of the teacher.

Without this, whatever else he may be, he is no teacher. They have some natural aptitude for
it, and they grope their way along, by guess and by instinct, and through many failures, until
they become good teachers, they hardly know how. To rescue the art from this condition of
uncertainty and chance, is the object of the Normal School. In such a school, the main object
of the pupil is to learn how to make others know what he himself knows.

Studying how to teach, with an experimental class to practise on, forms the constant topic of
his meditations. If the faculty of teaching is in them at all, a very few experimental
lessons, under the eye of an experienced teacher, will develop it. The good teacher does not
indeed stop here. The pupil of a Normal School gains there a start and an impulse, which
carry him forward the rest of his life.

A very little judicious experimental training redeems hundreds of candidates from utter and
hopeless incompetency, and converts for them an awkward and painful drudgery into
keen, hopeful and productive labor.

C. CRITICIZE

1. STRENGTHNESS
2. WEAKNESS