Professor James comments on this experience as follows:—
I do not doubt that Mr. Weed's practical command of his past experiences was much greater after fifty years of this heroic drill than it would have been without it. Expecting to give his account in the evening, he attended better to each incident of the day, named and conceived it differently, set his mind upon it, and in the evening went over it again. He did more thinking about it, and it stayed with him in consequence. But I venture to affirm pretty confidently… that the same matter, casually attended to and not thought about, would have stuck in his memory no better at the end than at the beginning of his years of heroic self-discipline. He had acquired a better method of noting and recording his experiences, but his physiological retentiveness was probably not a bit improved. [Footnote: James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 666.]
Again, as to the memorizing of facts by actors, Professor James says:—
What it has done for them is to improve their power of studying a part systematically. Their mind is now full of precedents in the way of intonation, emphasis, gesticulation; the new words awaken distinct suggestions and decisions; are caught up, in fact, into a preexisting network, like the merchant's prices or the athlete's store of records, and are recollected easier, although the mere native tenacity is not a whit improved, and is usually, in fact, impaired by age.
It is a case of better remembering by better thinking. Similarly when schoolboys improve by practice in ease of learning by heart, the improvement will, I am sure, be always found to reside in the mode of study of the particular piece (due to the greater interest, the greater suggestiveness, the generic similarity with other pieces, the more sustained attention, etc., etc.) and not at all to any enhancement of the brute retentive power. [Footnote: Ibid., p. 664.]
The prominence of drill.
It still remains to consider the extent to which mere repetition or drill should be prominent. Some help toward an answer may be found in certain recent investigations into the value of drill, and in certain recent improvements in method.
Spelling, arithmetic, and language being the subjects that have required the largest amount of drill, these will be the principal studies here considered.
Dr. O. P. Cornman in his Spelling in the Elementary School recounts some very interesting investigations into the value of drill in that subject. In two schools, each containing the usual eight grades, the use of the spelling book and home lessons in the subject were abandoned for a period of three years. At the same time the period which had been devoted to studying and reciting in spelling in school was omitted from the school program, making the mastery of spelling entirely an incidental matter. The results thus obtained were then compared with the results previously obtained in spelling in those two schools, and also in a number of other schools that devoted from ten to fifty minutes daily to spelling. The conclusion reached was that "the spelling drill as at present administered throughout the country adds little or nothing to the effectiveness of the mere incidental teaching of spelling"; [Footnote: Cornman, Spelling in the Elementary School, p. 66.] or, again, that it "is of so little importance as to be practically negligible." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 65.] This result may have been due to a considerable extent to poor texts in spelling and to the ineffective methods of drilling used.
A large portion of the time spent on arithmetic in the first six grades is usually occupied with drill. Some schools devote a full fifth of their time to this study, thus making the drill in arithmetic very prominent. It is commonly supposed that so much repetition greatly improves the results. Yet, according to investigations undertaken by Dr. C. W. Stone, "a large amount of time spent on arithmetic is no guarantee of a high degree of efficiency. If one were to choose at random among the schools with more than the median time given to arithmetic, the chances are that he would get a school with an inferior product; and, conversely, if one were to choose among the schools with less than the median time cost, the chances are about equal that he would get a school with a superior product in arithmetic." [Footnote: Stone, Arithmetical Abilities: Some Factors Determining Them, p. 62.]