Failure to bear in mind the difference in subject matter from the
respective standpoints of teacher and student is responsible for
most of the mistakes made in the use of texts and other
expressions of preexistent knowledge.
The need for a knowledge of the constitution and functions, in
the concrete, of human nature is great just because the teacher's
attitude to subject matter is so different from that of the
pupil. The teacher presents in actuality what the pupil
represents only in posse. That is, the teacher already knows the
things which the student is only learning. Hence the problem of
the two is radically unlike. When engaged in the direct act of
teaching, the instructor needs to have subject matter at his
fingers' ends; his attention should be upon the attitude and
response of the pupil. To understand the latter in its interplay
with subject matter is his task, while the pupil's mind,
naturally, should be not on itself but on the topic in hand. Or
to state the same point in a somewhat different manner: the
teacher should be occupied not with subject matter in itself but
in its interaction with the pupils' present needs and capacities.
Hence simple scholarship is not enough. In fact, there are
certain features of scholarship or mastered subject matter --
taken by itself -- which get in the way of effective teaching
unless the instructor's habitual attitude is one of concern with
its interplay in the pupil's own experience.
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