On Teaching

"'Modern pedagogy has emancipated us, whether we be in the pulpit or in the professor's chair or in the pew, from anything so irksome as earnest labour in the acquisition of knowledge.' [Machen] then refers to the ascendancy of methodology, observing, 'It never seems to occur to many modern teachers that the primary business of the teacher is to study the subject that he is going to teach. Instead of studying the subject that he is going to teach, he studies 'education'; a knowledge of the methodology of teaching takes the place of the particular branch of literature, history, or science to which a man has devoted his life'" (Stephen J. Nichols, J. Gresham Machen, 179).