How to Study and Teaching How to Study

by Frank M. McMurry

The natural tendency to carry ideas into execution.

One of the most attractive baits that can be offered to a discontented, restless child is to propose that he do something; and having received such a proposal, his impatience over delay in its execution shows how closely his nature links doing with thinking and planning. The games of children call for comparatively little study; yet children's desire to be acting is so dominant that they can scarcely wait to learn the rules before beginning to play. An eight- year-old girl who had been studying at home with her mother complained to a friend, "Mother doesn't have me do anything! She has had me read and spell and learn arithmetic, and that's all." It is partly because we have come to appreciate, in recent years, this pressing need of doing, that we have been reforming the elementary school by introducing manual training, cooking, and sewing. One of the early surprises and disappointments of children produced by adults is the failure of the latter to carry into practice plans that they have been heard to make, and ideals that they have professed to admire. Having set up specific aims, such as were suggested in Chapter III, children expect to realize them in practice, because instinct tells them that the value of theory is found in its application. That is the reason that they so often inquire, "What is the use of it?" in connection with their study at school, and that they disapprove so heartily of any project that won't work.

Value of this tendency in education.

Living means substantially the same thing with children as with adults. They have the same general environment as adults; they study the same large fields of knowledge; and they likewise find the object of education in efficiency. There are the same reasons, therefore, as in the case of more mature students, for making the using of knowledge the aim of their study.

The prospect of applying knowledge is a source of motive for all grades of learners. I have never seen a class more attentive to every detail of its procedure than were a certain group of girls who felt under obligations to eat the strawberry jam that they were making at school. Furthermore, the actual doing of the things imagined is a great clarifier of thought for children, as is shown in the very extensive use that the school makes of motor activity in numerous studies, and particularly of dramatizing in literature and history. It is also the most natural test of the practicability of the plans of children, and on that account a means of developing their soundness of judgment. This is well illustrated by a certain six-year-old girl who was making a doll's dress. After working in a very absorbed way for a time she impatiently exclaimed, "I won't have any lace in my sleeves!" "Why not?" asked one of her playmates. "'Cause I can't see any way to put it on," was the reply. One of the chief reasons why the experience of children outside of school is so educative is the fact that their ideas and plans are thus continually corrected by trial.

Briefly, therefore, it is normal for children to carry ideas into execution, and there is the same need of it as in the case of adults. It might be added that the peculiar ease with which children form habits furnishes a special reason why the conversion of ideas into habits should constitute a very important part of their study.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING CHILDREN TO MAKE THE USING OF KNOWLEDGE A PART OF THEIR STUDY

1. Special recognition of those facts that should be translated into habit.

While all of one's knowledge should become familiar enough to form experience, some of it should be worked over until it is translated into habit. Facts of this latter kind should be clearly distinguished from others, in order that they may receive the special attention due them. The moral truths of literature and history belong plainly to this group. But there are many others, such, for instance, as the picturing of places upon the earth's surface rather than upon maps; the association of places with their latitudes; in the case of such a live problem as protective tariff, the association of the main facts in its history; the association of our leading transportation routes with the progress of our country; looking to the evidence in considering the value of statements; and the accurate and pointed wording of questions and answers.

The habits that should be insisted upon in arithmetic are pretty well agreed upon, such as neatness of written work, accuracy of oral and written statements, the statement of a problem in one's own words, in case the meaning is at all doubtful, and the use of the approximate answer as a guide in finding the exact answer. But only when the great importance of such procedures is definitely recognized are they likely to receive the attention necessary to convert them into habits. If accuracy of statement were recognized as one of the very valuable habits to be acquired in literature and geography, as well as in arithmetic, much more effort would probably be put forth to establish that habit in those studies. Rules for thinking and for the expression of thought that should result in habits, like the rules of grammar, pervade all the studies, but until this fact is better established, and until the principal habits to be expected from each study are more clearly defined, somewhat as in arithmetic, there will be much wasted effort in study because important parts of the work will not be carried to completion.