How to Study and Teaching How to Study

by Frank M. McMurry

The first condition to be met in regard to home study is to assign only such work as the pupils are known by the teacher to be able to do rightly, and without too great physical strain. With the attention to method of study that has been urged, this condition can be easily met. That means, however, that many a topic cannot be assigned for the home as it is approached, for it will first require some consideration at school. Thus the home study of a lesson will very often follow rather than precede its study at school.

The assignment of lessons merely by pages is now often decried, and justly, because it leaves the child so utterly without a guide as to method. But, when method of study has been properly taught, such an assignment would often be fitting. The responsibility would then fall upon the pupil of determining what it was good for, of selecting and reorganizing the principal parts, etc.; but he could meet that responsibility because he would understand what things he was to do and would know how to do them.

Parents should not be expected to take a hand in teaching their children how to study, for that is altogether too large a task, and involves too much special preparation. If they observe that a child does not know how, they would better leave him alone, directing him to apply to his teacher for instruction. Parents are more bent upon obtaining results and getting rid of their children—so far as school work is concerned—than are teachers, so that the duties assigned to them should be few and of a simple character.

There are some important things for parents to do, however. They should take pains to provide proper physical surroundings for home study, including quiet, proper light and temperature. They should exert an influence in the direction of regular hours, of a short period of relaxation immediately before and after meals and before bedtime, and of some variety of occupation during the longer periods of study, so that fatigue may be avoided. In addition, they should stimulate their children by bringing pressure to bear on the lazy ones, by "hearing lessons" now and then, and, above all, by asking questions that call for a review of facts as well as for their use in conversation. They may give some help; but, if they do, they should by all means avoid falling into disputes about method. The child is right in preferring to do a thing in the teacher's way, for it is to the teacher that he is finally responsible; and parents ought to be broad enough to try to follow the teacher's plan. They can help their children most by showing concern for them, really inspecting their written work instead of merely pretending to, and otherwise manifesting genuine interest in their tasks.

Are children capable of the initiative necessary for independent study?

Two questions remain to be considered, the first of which pertains to initiative. If independent study requires that one practically duplicate the work of the teacher by teaching one's self, can children in the elementary school be expected to study alone, or can they even be trained to it? Much power of initiative is rare even among adults. Much of the instruction of teachers themselves is poor owing to a lack of independent thinking. What success, then, can come to children when they are sent off to study their lessons in private?

In reply, it is safe to say that they can be so trained, provided they have some native capacity for self-reliance that can be used as a basis for such training. And that they have such capacity can scarcely be questioned. In their choice and leadership of games and other play; in their plans for constructive work; in their serious tasks set by themselves at home; in their selection of topics for conversation and even in the turns that their remarks take, children plainly show power of initiative.

Intelligent parents recognize this fact, and they not infrequently take successful measures to cultivate this power. Kindergartners also recognize it. Indeed, they expect children who are little more than infants to propose suitable tasks, together with the method of their execution, in the kindergarten, and to carry the responsibility of leadership in the conversation of the "circle" and in the games. The resourcefulness of a ten-year-old boy was recently suggested in a certain class in composition. The subject that they were writing on was Mining in the Far West, and spelling was a serious obstacle for one youth, as it was for most of his mates. Finally, with apparent innocence, he asked his teacher if he might not describe his experiences as a miner in the miner's own dialect. On receiving her consent he gloried in his freedom by misspelling nearly every word that he used.

Evidently, latent power of self-direction is one of the "native tendencies" of childhood. The statement may be ventured, also, that while the field of experience of children is very different from that of adults, the exercise of initiative within that field is as common among children as it is among adults within their own field.

There is, therefore, a good basis in children for assuming the initiative. But it is only a basis. Unless this native tendency toward self-direction is carefully developed in connection with the studies in school, from year to year, it will of course prove inadequate to the demands of proper study. And that very often happens. In spite of the fact that schools exist for the sake of education, there is many a school whose pupils show a peculiar "school helplessness"; that is, they are capable of less initiative in connection with their school tasks than they commonly exhibit in the accomplishment of other tasks. In its quest for knowledge the school may thus easily prove inferior to the street and the average home in the development of this extremely valuable power.