Importance of Reviewing by H. Clay Trumbull

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 9, 1907

Importance of Reviewing

By H. Clay Trumbull

REVIEWING not only shows how much the scholar has been caused to know of the truth which his teacher has brought before him; it also causes the scholar to know much that otherwise he would not know; and, again, it enables him to continue to know much that he was caused to know, for the time being, but which he would again cease to know, if he were never reviewed in his attainments of knowledge.

We rarely learn a truth, or a thing, by a single hearing or a single effort at doing. A little child has, commonly, to have a word said over to him many times before he can say it plainly himself. As he grows older, he has to practise his lessons repeatedly. So simple a thing as the drawing of a straight line, or the making of the letters of the alphabet, is not to be done off-hand at the first showing how. Seldom can even a sincere lover of music catch a new tune which fastens his attention and delights his ear, if he hears it no more than once. And there are not many in the full maturity of their powers, who can make their own, by a single reading, an attractive poem, which they understand at the fullest, and which takes hold of their innermost being in its thought and phrasing. Men of the strongest mental powers want to read over and over again those books which they value most; and their feeling is that they could not learn all that those books can teach them without these repeated readings. And so it is all the way from childhood to maturity: reviewing a truth once learned is essential to fastening that truth firmly in the mind that has received it. Even those truths which have been fairly learned are not sure to be retained in the memory without reviewing. Whatever may be said of the indelibleness of impressions once made on the mind, it must be admitted that not all which we have known, at one time and another, is permanently available in our memories.

Without frequent reviewing, truths once learned by us most thoroughly are liable to pass from our memories, and, again, the truths which are now fresh in our minds will fail to become a permanency there. And if this be so with all of us, there is peculiar need of frequent reviewing in the process of teaching, which is a process of causing our scholars to know that which we would have them to know for now and for always.

Paul wanted his Philippian converts to have joy in the Lord’s service. After he had already used the words “joy” and “rejoice” nearly a dozen times in his one letter, he goes on to repeat his injunction to rejoice, with a defense of his reiterations of that injunction: “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not irksome, but for you it is safe.” And then, to give added force to his oft-repeated injunction, he says: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.” It ought not to be irksome to any teacher to review his scholars in an important truth which he would have fastened in their minds; and to them it is safe. There has been no time since the days of Paul when there was not an added power in simple repetition, as a means of fastening a truth in the minds of hearers or readers.

You know what you deem of most importance in all that you have caused your scholars to know through your teaching. Let that be the main subject of your review questioning.— H. Clay Trumbull.