Attention to Definitions.
By G. M. Hammell
To DEFINE, is, in fact, to crystallize thought—to give such real and complete expression to ideas as to be intelligible and clear. Too often in schools, whether secular or ecclesiastical, insufficient attention is given to definitions; and the result is an obscurity of mental view, and looseness of intellectual grasp, which is the bane of our universal education. Scholars cram for hasty recitation, and receiving no idea, soon forget even the memorized formulae, and enter society burdened with a confused mass of rules, axioms, isolated facts, and historical dates, needing classification and exact definition. My attention has been directed to this defect in our educational systems by visits to secular schools, in which answers have been given and words mechanically spelled with no adequate conception of their meaning. For example, in a certain school, taught by a gentleman of some local repute as an educator, a girl defined Christianity as a “monotheistic religion,” and was about to return to her seat, when I asked, “What is the meaning of ‘monotheistic’?” A blank stare and piteous look of appeal was the only answer. Assuming control of a Sunday-school class on that October Sunday when the “Peace Offering” was the subject of study, I assigned the following words for definition: sacrifice, unleavened, anointed, oblation, priest, leavened, and vow. The first word was left undefined, although the pupil was at least twelve years of age, and a daily attendant at the secular school. Unleavened was defined as “smooth;” priest, as “a preacher in the Catholic Church;” and but one word was correctly defined. After the knowledge of the pupils had been tested, and found so lamentably defective, I gave the correct definitions, and quickly saw, by unmistakable signs of interest, that they were real discoveries, as, no doubt, they essentially were. If I were a teacher in daily contact with growing mental life, I should insist on knowledge of the meaning, and so far as possible, the history of words; for it is true enough that the etymology of a word is often as fascinating as the story of a campaign; and I would take as my model “Old Adam Hope,” who, as Carlyle says in his “Reminiscences,” “knew what he did profess to know in every fiber, and to the very bottom. More vigorously solid teacher of the young idea, so far as he could carry it, you might have searched for through the world in vain. Self-delusion, half-knowledge, sham instead of reality, could not get encouragement from him. He had a Socratic way with him; would accept the hopeless pupil’s half-knowledge, or plausible sham of knowledge, with a kind of welcome. ‘Hm! h’m! yes;’ and then gently enough begin a chain of inquiries more and more surprising to the poor pupil till he had reduced him to zero,—to mere ne plus ultra, and the dismal perception that his sham of knowledge had been flat misknowledge with a spice of dishonesty added.” “Old Adam Hope” may have been voted a hard teacher, but the pupils who learned what he taught became more and more thankful that they had been led below surfaces to the depths, and that they actually knew what they thought they knew. —G. M. Hammell, in S. S. Times.