Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

XX
THINKING AND DOING

Saying and doing.

The best methods of instruction in the ordinary school aim at the expression of thought in language. If a thing has been well said, the teacher and the examiner are apt to make no further inquiries. Although the expression of thought in written or spoken language is a species of doing, there is often a wide chasm between getting a thing said and having it done. Many of the reforms and revolutions thought out by university professors never get beyond the room in which they lecture or the page on which they formulate their ideas. The freedom of speech in the universities never troubles a despotic government until the ideas of the professors and students show signs of passing into the life of the nation. The difference between speech and action, between the man of words and the man of deeds, has long been felt and emphasized. The favorite method of teaching by lectures, and requiring the pupil to take notes, fails utterly if it stops with mere telling how a thing is to be done, and is not followed by actual doing on the part of the learner. Work in the shop, in the field, and in the factory often proves more effective in fitting a boy to earn a living than the theoretical instruction of the schools. The advantage of doing over telling as a means of learning has led to the formulation of the maxim, “We learn to do by doing,” and some educational reformers have announced the maxim as a principle of education universal in its application. Hence it is worth while to clarify its meaning and to ascertain its limitations. In so doing, we shall get a glimpse of the true relation between thinking and doing.

The maxim applied to medicine and surgery.

A young man possessed of unbounded faith in this maxim came to town for the purpose of practising medicine and surgery. He announced that if any persons got sick he proposed to give them medicine in the hope of learning the physiological and therapeutic effects of the various drugs. If any limbs were to be amputated, he was willing to try his hand, in the hope of ultimately learning how to perform surgical operations. He was too simple to succeed as a quack. He did not get a single patient; the people wisely gave him no opportunity of learning to do by doing.

The maxim in the other professions.

Equally foolish were it thus to apply the maxim to any of the other professions. Would you, with life or property at stake, allow a novice to plead your cause at court in order that he might learn to plead by pleading? Who would waste the golden Sabbath hours in listening to one who was trying to learn to preach by preaching? The civilized world regards knowledge, which is the product of the act of learning, as the indispensable guide of those who offer their services at the bar, from the pulpit, or in the sick-room. When a Yale professor was asked whether study was required of those divinely called to preach, he replied that he had read of but one instance in which the Lord condescended to speak through the mouth of an ass.

Comenius.

Even an ass may learn to do some things by continually doing them in a blind way, and that, too, in spite of his proverbial stubbornness; but such learning by blind practice is unworthy of the school-life of a being gifted with human intelligence, and capable, it may be, of filling a profession. Instinct may guide a bee or a beaver: but knowledge should guide man in the arts and habits which he acquires. This fact is not ignored in the maxim as originally given by Comenius. “Things to be done should be learned by doing them. Mechanics understand this well: they do not give the apprentice a lecture upon their trade, but they will let him see how they, as masters, do; then they place the tool in his hands, teach him to use it and imitate them. Doing can be learned only by doing, writing by writing, painting by painting, and so on.” There is in this statement a clear recognition, on the one hand, of the knowledge-getting which precedes and accompanies all intelligent doing, and, on the other, of the practice which is needful for the attainment of skill. The master mechanic seeks first to give his apprentice a clear concept of what is to be done; and the knowledge thus acquired through the eye, and perhaps partly through hearing directions and explanations, is afterwards put into practice by the actual manipulation of tools and materials. If the maxim had been allowed to stand in this, its original form and meaning, no one could have objected to its use and application. But when the attempt was made to elevate it into a principle of binding force for all teaching; when, furthermore, the form was shortened so as to widen the meaning, and the maxim was then applied to regulate the acquisition of every form of human activity, both physical and mental, it is not surprising that protests were heard, and the necessity was felt of investigating the maxim for the purpose of ascertaining its limitations and defining its meaning.