How to Study and Teaching How to Study

by Frank M. McMurry

The first change to be made, in order that young people may learn how to study, is to place the center of gravity of the school where it belongs—in the learner. The great question of method, then, becomes, How shall one learn? Not, first of all, with the aid of the teacher, but alone. What are the main tasks that should be performed in private study, and how should they be accomplished? These questions give the right point of view by centering attention in the pupil, and for that reason they are the first questions that teachers and books on method should consider. Every one will commend the insight of the mother who said to an instructor, "If you will teach my boy how to prepare his lessons, I will attend to his reciting." If lessons are properly prepared, the testing of knowledge will be simple.

The problem of independent study having reached some solution, how to come to the aid of the independent student, or how to impart knowledge, follows as a narrower and subordinate question. If the former has been adequately treated, the latter will introduce few new psychological points, because a full treatment of method of study will require a careful consideration of apperception, induction and deduction, interest, association of ideas, attention, etc. Above all, it will give a new conception of the meaning and scope of self- activity. Teaching will then call mainly for a review of such topics, although from a different and very important view-point.

2. Modifying the subject-matter of the recitation.

Method of study will then become a large subject for regular instruction. Even in the kindergarten and the first years of school it will receive some attention, for that is the time when children begin to acquire good mental habits or to fall into pernicious ones. Without making so young pupils fully conscious that they are learning to study, the teacher will lead them to move their eyes rapidly over the printed page, so as to read simple stories quickly in silence, and with good expression orally. This is already done by good teachers. She will accustom them to responsibility for discovering the bearings of observations in nature-study, of stories, work in color, etc., on their home lives, and thus pave the way for collecting knowledge under guidance of definite aims. She will cultivate in them the power to fill out the author's picture, until situations are more vividly seen and felt than now. She will require them to think and talk more sharply by points, and to use judgment in neglecting really unimportant details, training their consciences to allow such neglect, if such training is needed. She will encourage them to pass judgment on the merits of facts that they learn, while influencing them not to feel too sure. She will see that they do whatever thinking is to be done on poems and other matter that is to be memorized before the memorizing itself is undertaken, so that the important habit of memorizing through thought, rather than without it, shall begin to be firmly fixed. She will lead them to understand that they are not through with the study of topics until the ideas have been used in some way, perhaps many times. And, particularly, she will put forth effort to keep them natural in whatever they do and say, reasonably contented with their abilities, and self-reliant. While most of such instruction will be incidental, a portion of many a recitation will be directly occupied in this way.

By the time the fifth year of school has been reached the principal facts concerning each of the prominent factors of study can be talked about freely, as so much definitely understood knowledge, and the children can be expected to apply them in their various studies. Many a whole recitation can be spent in supplementing authors' statements, in determining principal thoughts, and in doing many other things suggested in the preceding pages, the teacher directly emphasizing such things as essential parts of proper study, and requiring them in the preparation of lessons. Many a whole recitation, also, may be occupied in discussing how lessons have been prepared, the teacher not seldom presenting her own way in detail and allowing her pupils to compare theirs with it. Abstract theory about method of study will thus be avoided.

Perhaps, most of all, the teacher will fix upon the second stage of study (p. 204) as the crucial point in method, in which the children select what seems of real value to them and let the rest go. Of course they will often err, and then it will devolve upon the teacher to show the value of what they have rejected. If she cannot do that, either her mind or the curriculum will need to be improved. While this seems a grave responsibility to place upon pupils of the elementary school, It must be remembered that they should know how to study by the time they complete that course; and they cannot possibly learn how, without dealing boldly with values,—the values of facts in comparison with one another, or relative values, and their values to the self, or general values. We have long wanted young people to know how to study, without allowing them choice among ideas, that is, without placing them in the conditions that would permit it. The fact that during the later years of the elementary school children must choose almost daily outside of school between good and bad literature as presented in books, periodicals, and newspapers, and that they actually select and reject freely in their own reading, shows how normal it is to do such work in school, and how important it is to make it prominent.

Method of study will then have precedence over other aims of the school, even ranking above the acquisition of other knowledge. Possibly as much as one-fourth of all the school time might be devoted primarily to this problem, although within that period much subject- matter in the studies would also be mastered.

While children completing the curriculum of the elementary school might then be well enough acquainted with the general principles of study, in their practical applications, to stop the customary complaints of teachers and parents in that regard, method of study would still be far from mastered. For, besides the general principles, there are special principles peculiar to each branch of knowledge, just as there are both general and special methods of teaching. Proper study of arithmetic, for example, does not fully include the method of studying algebra, to say nothing of grammar; neither does the method in algebra duplicate that in geometry; nor the method in English, that in Latin; nor the method in Latin that in French. As each new branch is begun, therefore, two or three weeks might need to be spent primarily in considering how it should be studied, and now and then, later, an hour should be occupied in the same way.

Topics in learning to study that are too broad for the limits of any particular branch would need to be taught from time to time. For instance, the use of the table of contents, or of the index of a book, of the library catalogue, of encyclopedias and other reference works, should become familiar in the elementary school, as well as some facts about taking and preserving notes. In high school and college further systematic instruction would be needed on the finding of articles and books treating of certain topics, on the keeping of notes, possibly to the extent of establishing a card catalogue for them, and on the general use of a library. Some attention to methods of study would be in place, therefore, even in college.

On the whole, the content of the regular school period would be considerably modified. Study periods, both supervised and independent, devoted either to method of study or to subject-matter, would be far more common; and, while the reproduction of facts would still be necessary, it need not be the dominant feature of the school; for improved methods of study, or better thinking, would render much of the mere testing of the presence of facts, such as we now have, superfluous. Study periods, or, preferably, thinking periods, as the name in the regular school program, would then be recognized as more fitting than recitation; the latter is a belittling name.