Adult education depends very largely for its success upon careful, detailed advance planning. While these details may vary widely according to the subject and the particular group to whom it is to be presented, there are some points in the preliminary preparations which are common to practically every situation. A number of principles will be discussed briefly for the benefit of those who desire to develop skill in carrying on community education. These principles will be followed by a lesson plan which will aim to put them into action.
Pointers for the Adult Educator
1. Decide exactly what you wish to accomplish by your lesson. Keep this purpose clearly in mind in all your planning, and check against it at the completion of the lesson.
2. Know as much as possible about the group to be addressed—their educational background, their relationship to or experience with the problem to be presented, and any local prejudices which might influence their spirit and response.
3. Know the time allotted for the lesson, and plan to keep well within that time, allowing time for questions that might come from the audience or discussions that might arise on some phase of the problem.
4. Know the setup of the meeting place, such as kind of lighting, seating capacity, musical instrument, and whether there are adequate electrical connections. A knowledge of these points helps the speaker in advance planning, and opens up possibilities for supplementing the program with music, slides, and moving pictures, all of which add immeasurably to the interest and the value.
5. Know your subject well. Know more than you expect to cover in your talk. Be so well informed that you have a real enthusiasm which will permeate the lesson. Know the practical phases of the problem thoroughly, so that the prospect of questions from the audience is a pleasure instead of a dread. Be up to date on your knowledge, realizing that in the health field particularly, research is steadily opening up new aspects of old problems, and that entirely new problems are from time to time coming into the limelight.
6. Keep in mind especially the ways in which the problem affects the lives of the people. Try to imagine the questions that would most likely be asked by persons in your audience, and on this basis select a number of high points which should be given particular emphasis. Arrange these in logical order for presentation.
7. Realize that it is largely through arousing interest and understanding, and through association of ideas, that the most lasting impressions are made. Therefore, study how you can simplify all technical terms, and supplement and strengthen various points in your teaching, by demonstration, charts, models, pictures, or stories, by passing articles around for examination, or by encouraging participation in the discussion.
8. Make a written plan for your presentation. Planning improves organization, and writing helps to clarify thinking. Every good lesson plan should include (a) an introduction, (b) the body of the talk (to be accompanied by suggestions for visual aids), and (c) a conclusion. The introduction should be planned to fit the particular audience, and should be written out practically as it will be given. It should serve to enlist interest and establish a relationship between the past experiences of the people addressed and the new ideas to be presented. The body of the talk should include the main topics, previously selected, with a sentence outline of such details as will help to make them clearly understood. The conclusion may serve several purposes. It may summarize or review specific points. It may bring out concrete applications of the lesson given, or it may aim to lay the problem "on the table" and invite discussion by the group as to its solution.
9. Secure or construct the visual aids required. If charts are to be used, these should be planned carefully to supplement and strengthen specific points in the lesson. They may be prepared for use on the blackboard, or lettered on a paper or cloth background. Contacts with suitable health and social agencies are often found to yield valuable materials that contribute greatly to effective teaching. Often considerable ingenuity and originality must be exercised in devising ways and means, and securing articles for use in visual interpretation.
10. Practice giving the lesson aloud, timing yourself by the clock and, if necessary, cutting out parts of the material until the whole can be presented within the specified time limits. Watch constantly during your practice for terms or phrases that should be simplified still further. Practice until you have established confidence in your own ability to present the subject well. As in everything else, "practice makes perfect," and experience in doing is the best way to bring about greater ease in performance and increased effectiveness in delivery.
The accompanying lesson outline is intended to illustrate several of the foregoing suggestions. This plan may be helpful to health workers in rural areas in which malaria is an outstanding problem and where the educational status of the people in general may be average or below par. Given as a chapel talk to a group of students, a number of whom may go as missionaries to malaria-infested countries, the lesson is also timely. Such a practical demonstration, setting forth the work each person may do in stamping out malaria, will appeal to any group, provided the suggested visual education aids are not omitted.
Subject: Stamping Out Malaria
Introduction.—Many of you have seen sanitation workers who have from time to time come through the community with shovels, spades, and hip boots, intent on ditching, draining, oiling, and dusting, to stamp out the malaria mosquito. You all realize that thousands of dollars have been spent for this work. But in spite of all this, we still have mosquitoes. They are with us every summer, sometimes in large numbers, sometimes in smaller numbers, and every year many people have chills and fever. I wonder what should be done in addition to what has been done in the past. Let us see.
Body of Lesson
I. Malaria is a difficult problem. The spread of this disease has to do with three things. (See accompanying chart, "Break the Chain to Stamp Out Malaria."*)
2. The person who is sick with malaria, and has the parasites or germs in his blood. (Point to first link on chart.)
3. The female malaria mosquito that carries the germs in her body and gives them to people when she bites them. We are concerned not only with the grown mosquito, but with the eggs, wigglers, and tumblers as well. (Draw a picture on the blackboard of eggs, wiggler, tumbler, and mosquito.) That is, we are concerned with the mosquito in all stages of life. (Point to second link on chart.)
4. The well person who has never had malaria, but who may get it if he is bitten by an infected mosquito. (Point to third link on chart.)
II. These three things are closely tied together, like the links of a chain. To stamp out malaria, it is necessary to break, not one link, but all of them. So far we have given most of our effort to the middle link. We need to work more on the other two.
III. How can we break the first link of this chain? If a patient who has malaria is bitten by a female malaria mosquito, an outbreak of malaria may occur in that district. To stamp it out, two things must be done. If we do these two things thoroughly, we will break the first link of the chain.
1. Protect the patient so that mosquitoes cannot reach him—by screening the whole house, or, if this is not possible, by screening his bed. (Pass around samples of No. 16 mesh wire screen.
Pass around cotton marquisette for screening bed. Show doll's bed properly screened against mosquitoes.)
2. Have a doctor treat the patient until there are no longer germs of malaria in his blood. (Pass around quinine in a bottle to show a medicine very commonly used in malaria.)
IV. How can we break the second link ? (Point to second link on chart.) If we wish to put the malaria mosquito out of business, we must do two things:
1. Deprive her of a place to lay and hatch her eggs by—
a. Draining stagnant water, for mosquitoes must have water on which to lay their eggs. (Show hip boots, shovels, pictures of concrete-lined ditches.)
b.Cutting down weeds near water's edge, where the mosquito rests in the daytime, and where she lays her eggs. (Show scythe or weed cutter.)
c. Spraying oil or Paris green dust on top of the water to suffocate or poison the wigglers. (Show crude oil—crankcase oil. Show insecticide—Paris green dust 2 per cent; road dust, 98 per cent.)
2. Kill every mosquito that gets into the house. Look especially in dark corners, under beds and low furniture, and on the window screens in the early morning hours. (Show homemade fly swatters and house sprays. Show mounted malaria mosquitoes to emphasize need of No. 16 mesh wire.)
V. How can we break the third link ? (Point to third link on chart.) People who live in a malaria district, but who have never had malaria, should protect themselves against being bitten by mosquitoes:
1. By living in houses that are entirely mosquito-proofed, including doors, windows, fireplaces, walls, floors, and roofs. (Show miniature mosquito-proofed house. Show tar paper used for covering cracks in walls. Show wire basket of moth balls used in chimneys in the summertime.)
2. By keeping away after sundown from districts located within a mile of mosquito breeding places. Malaria mosquitoes rarely fly more than a mile from their breeding places, although they may be carried by people, animals, cars, and airplanes. (Sketch a map showing course of a river, and mark one-mile distance on either side as the heavily infested area.)
3. By using mosquito repellents on face, neck, and arms when going out in the evening in a malaria district. (Pass around bottles of citronella and oil of cloves for audience to smell.)
Conclusion.—Review together points on chart that tell what we must do to stamp out malaria. (Point to each section of chart while reviewing lesson briefly.)
If everyone would keep these three links in mind and do everything possible to break them, we would soon see a decrease in malaria. Malaria is certainly a difficult problem, but if all work together, we can do much to solve it.
* "Malaria Education," by Elma Rood, Rural Press, Madison College, Tenn.
