How to Study and Teaching How to Study

by Frank M. McMurry

Young people can learn to distinguish between authority on the one hand and evidence or reason on the other, and to subordinate the former to the latter, thus allowing conclusions to be based chiefly on facts rather than on persons.

The assertion of authority over children, requiring blind obedience on their part in matters of discipline, is very common. Similar assertion of authority over both children and adults in intellectual matters is also common. The authority of custom, for instance, as represented in the teacher, is dominant in beginning reading, writing, spelling, and in language in general. In many advanced subjects, also, students are accustomed to accept many statements as true simply because the instructors declare them to be.

(1) The two bases of conclusions.

Some subjects, however, to a peculiar degree eliminate authority, basing conclusions mainly on reason. Mathematics affords an example. Personal authority sinks so completely out of sight here that even a child can dare sometimes to correct the teacher. While the majority of studies lie between the extremes represented by literature and mathematics, it is safe to say that conclusions generally can be based upon reasons that are fairly within the understanding and the reach of young people, if it seems desirable.

(2) Inferiority of authority to reason.

Blind obedience is of doubtful value in the discipline of children, because it is so unintelligent; it is well called blind. Blind submission to authority in intellectual matters, on the part of either children or adults, is no less objectionable. It is not any person's mere assertion that makes a thing true, but evidence of some sort; and evidence is likewise usually necessary to make it interesting and comprehensible. The artificiality of the authority of a teacher as the main support for conclusions is plainly seen in the fact that there is no substitute for it outside of and after school and college. Its evil influence is also evident from the fact that persons accustomed to rely much upon it easily come to overlook evidence to the extent of blindly jumping to conclusions. And, having formed their opinions independently of reason, they cannot be easily influenced; for an attitude that has not been reached rationally is not likely to be modified rationally. Submission to authority easily ends in the most extreme dogmatism.

(3) The tendency of authority to usurp the place of reason.

There is a strong tendency, however, for authority to usurp the place of reason. In penmanship, for example, the teacher often dictates the proper position of the body, instead of acquainting the child with the reasons for it. The rules for composition are usually dogmatically presented, in spite of the fact that there are plain reasons back of most of them. If, for instance, a sentence did not begin with some large mark, such as a capital, and end with some other plainly seen mark, it would be difficult to distinguish one sentence from another, so as to read. Statements in geography were long based on authority, like those in grammar; in fact, only very recently has the causal idea become prominent in geography. High-school students of physics very generally want to know what the teacher wishes them to see in an experiment before feeling sure what they do see; and college students of politics, rather than depend upon the evidence itself, are inclined to learn the political views of their professors as the means of finding out what they themselves think.

There are good reasons for this tendency to base conclusions upon authority. It takes much more knowledge of a subject and much greater skill in its presentation to make the reasons for facts clear. Furthermore, it requires a good degree of energy and moral courage on the part of teachers to decline the compliment that young people confer upon them in preferring to trust them rather than evidence; and it also requires a good degree of energy on the part of students to rely upon their own study of facts. It is not surprising, therefore, if the average teacher makes himself the main authority for the statements that he makes in class, and if the average student readily accepts his authority. That is the easier way to get through a day.

(4) How this tendency may be combated.