The effect of such teaching on method of study
Not all of such instruction is avoidable or even undesirable; but it is so common that it has a very important effect on method of study.
So long as facts are treated as approximately equal in worth, the learner is bound to picture the field of knowledge as a comparatively level plain composed of a vast aggregation of independent bits. In spelling, writing, and beginning reading it is so many hundreds or thousands of words; in beginning arithmetic it is the various combinations in the four fundamental operations; in geography it is a long list of statements; in history it is an endless lot of facts as they happen to come on the page; in literature it is sentence after sentence.
One can get possession of this field, not by taking the strategic positions,—for under the assumption of equality there are none,—but rather by advancing over it slowly, mastering one bit at a time. Thus the words in beginning reading, writing, and spelling are learned and reproduced in all orders, proving them to be independent little entities. In geography and history, when the facts are not wormed out of the pupil by questions, he sees the page before him by his mind's eye,—a fact frequently revealed by the movement of his eyes while reciting,—and attempts to recall each paragraph or statement in its order. In literature he masters his difficulties sentence by sentence, a method most clearly shown in the case of our greatest classic, the Bible, which is almost universally studied and quoted by verses.
Thus the unit of progress in study is made the single fact; the whole of any subject becomes the sum of its details; and a subject has been supposedly mastered when all these bits have been learned. This might well be called the method of study by driblets. It is probably safe to say that a majority of the young people in the United States, including college students, study largely in this way.
While this method of study is bad in numerous ways, there are three of its faults in particular which need to be considered here.
Respects in which this method of study is wrong 1. Facts, as a rule, vary greatly in value
In the first place, facts vary indefinitely in value. In parts of a few subjects they do have practically the same worth, which is, no doubt, a source of much misconception about proper methods of study. In spelling, for instance, which is probably as important a word as when, and sea as important as flood. In a list of three hundred carefully selected words for spelling for third-year pupils, any one word might properly be regarded as equal to any other in worth. This may be said also in regard to a list for writing. Much the same is true in regard to a possible list of four hundred words for reading in the first year of school. In arithmetic one would scarcely assert that 4X7 was more or less important than 9X8, or 8/2, or 6-3, or 4+2. In other words, the various combinations in the four fundamental operations are, again, all of them essential to every person's knowledge, and therefore stand on the same plane of worth.
To some extent, therefore, the three R's and spelling are exceptions to an important general rule. Yet even in spelling and beginning reading not all words by any means have the same value. Children in the third year of school who are reading Whittier's Barefoot Boy ought to be able to recognize and spell the word robin; perhaps, also, woodchuck and tortoise; but eschewing is not a part of their vocabulary and will not soon be, and probably the less said about that word by the teacher the better.
The moment we turn to other subjects, facts are found to vary almost infinitely in value, just as metals do. Judged by the space they occupy, they may appear to be equally important; but they are not to be judged in this way, any more than men are. According to their nature, thoughts or statements are large and small, or broad and narrow, or far-reaching and insignificant. A general of an army may be of more consequence to the welfare of a nation than a thousand common soldiers; so one idea like that of evolution may be worth a full ten thousand like the fact that "our neighbor's cat kittened yesterday."