How to Study and Teaching How to Study

by Frank M. McMurry

III. Cleanliness. Why washing unnecessary (cat's face
washing; aversion to getting wet).
Danger from dampness.
Need of combing and brushing;
method.

IV. Enemies. Kinds of insects; remedies.
Dogs; boys and men.
Proper treatment. Value of Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals;
how to secure its aid.

Thus a definite purpose, that is simple, concrete, and close to the learner's experience, can be valuable as a basis for selecting and arranging subject-matter. Facts that bear no important relation to this aim, such as the length of the cat's tail and the shape of its ears, fall out; and those that are left, drop into a series in place of a mere list.

As a promise of some practical outcome of study in conduct

A manufacturer must do more than supply himself with motive power and manufacture a proper quality of goods; he must also provide for a market. Again, if he makes money, he is under obligations not to let it lie idle; if he hoards it, he is condemned as a miser. He is responsible for turning whatever goods or money he collects to some account.

The student, likewise, should not be merely a collector of knowledge. The object of study is not merely insight. As Frederick Harrison has said, "Man's business here is to know for the sake of living, not to live for the sake of knowing." "Religion that does not express itself in conduct socially useful is not true religion"; and, we may add, education that does not do the same is not true education.

It is part of one's work as a student, therefore, to plan to turn one's knowledge to some account; to plan not alone to sell it for money, but to use it in various ways in daily life. If, instead of this, one aims to do nothing but collect facts, no matter how ardently, he has the spirit of a bookworm at best and stands on the same plane as the miser. Or if, notwithstanding good intentions, he leaves the effect of his knowledge on life mainly to accident, he is grossly careless in regard to the chief object of study. Yet the average student regards himself as mainly a collector of facts, a storehouse of knowledge; and his teachers also regard him in that light. Planning to turn knowledge to some account is not thought to be essential to scholarship.

There are, no doubt, various reasons for this, but it is not because an effect on life is not finally desired. The explanation seems to be largely found in a very peculiar theory, namely, that the fewer bearings on life a student now concerns himself with, the more he will somehow ultimately realize; and if he aims at none in particular, he will very likely hit most of them. Thus aimlessness, so far as relations of study to life are concerned, is put at a premium, and students are directly encouraged to be omnivorous absorbers without further responsibility.

Meanwhile, sensible people are convinced of the unsoundness of this theory. How often, after having read a book from no particular point of view, one feels it necessary to reexamine it in order to know how it treats some particular topic! The former reading was too defective to meet a special need, because the very general aim caused the attitude to be general or non-selective. How often do young people who have been taught to have no particular aim in their reading, have no aim at all, beyond intellectual dissipation, the momentary tickle of the thought. Thus all particular needs are in danger of being left unsatisfied when no particular need is fixed upon as the object. It is the growing consciousness of the great waste in such study that has changed botany in many places into horticulture and agriculture, chemistry into the chemistry of the kitchen, and that has caused portions of many other studies to be approached from the human view- point.

This indicates the positive acceptance of specific purposes as guides in study. They are not by any means full guarantees of an outcome of knowledge in conduct, for they are only the plans by which the student hopes that his knowledge will function. Since plans often fail of accomplishment, these purposes may never be realized. But they give promise of some outcome and form one important step in a series of steps necessary for the fruition of knowledge.