Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

You have an exchequer of words, and I think no other treasure.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

III
THE MATERIALS OF THOUGHT

Words without thoughts.

The hotel man was right in his criticism of teachers who expect their pupils to make an intellectual meal on mere words. For three hundred years educational reformers have been hurling their epithets against this abuse. Has it been banished from the schools? By no means. It crops out anew with every generation of teachers and in every grade of instruction from the kindergarten to the university. During the years in which a child acquires several languages without difficulty, if it hears them spoken, the mind is eager for words and often appropriates them regardless of their meaning. The child learns rhymes and phrases for the sake of the jingle that is in them, and cares very little for clearly defined ideas and thoughts. So strong and retentive is the memory for words that the child finds it easier to learn by heart entire sentences than to think the thoughts therein expressed. Like a willing and obedient slave, the verbal memory can be made to do the work of the other mental powers. The merest glimpse at a picture may recall all the sentences on the same page, so that the pupil can repeat them with the book closed or the back turned towards the reading chart. The recollection of what the ear has heard may thus relieve the eye of its function in seeing words, degrade the child to the level of a parrot, and thereby greatly hinder progress in learning to read. Very frequently the memory is required to perform work belonging to the reflective powers, because the learner is thereby saved the trouble of comprehending the lesson and expressing its substance in his own language. Moreover, the accurate statement of a truth is apt to be accepted as evidence of knowledge and correct thinking. The average examination tests very little more than the memory. If the answers are given in the language of the text-book or the teacher, the examiner seldom supplements the written work by an oral examination. Thus there is a constant tendency on the part of teachers and pupils to rest satisfied with correct forms of statement; and the pernicious custom of feeding the mind on mere words is encouraged and perpetuated. Exposed in plain terms, this abuse of words is condemned by everybody; yet it is as easy at this point to slide into the wrong practice as it is to fall into the sins forbidden by the decalogue. Like Proteus, this abuse assumes diverse and unexpected forms; instance after instance is needed to put young teachers on their guard and to expose its pernicious effect upon methods of instruction and habits of study. To cry “words, words, nothing but words,” will not suffice to correct the evil, for words must be used in the best kind of instruction. Line upon line, precept upon precept, example after example is needed to expose the folly of learning words without corresponding ideas, of teaching symbols apart from the things for which they stand. No apology is needed for citing laughable and flagrant instances in point; ridicule sometimes avails where good counsel fails.

Spelling.

A superintendent who advocates spelling-bees and magnifies correct orthography out of all proportion to its real value startled a class in the high school by asking for the spelling of a word of five syllables. Not receiving an immediate answer, he referred to the Greek. This made the spelling easy for at least one pupil. A year later he accosted this pupil, saying, “You are the only person that ever spelled psychopannychism for me.” “What does it mean?” was the question flashed back at him in return for his compliment. He could not tell, because he did not know. For years he had worried teachers and pupils with the spelling of a word whose meaning he had failed to fix accurately in his own mind.[2] What more effective method could be devised for destroying correct habits of thinking?

Eyesight.

There is a time in the life of the child when it is hungry for new words. The habit of seeing words accurately and learning their spelling at first sight is then easily acquired, provided there is no defect in the pupil’s eyes. In cases of defective eyesight the first step towards the solution of the spelling problem, as well as the first condition in teaching the pupil to think accurately, is to send him to a skilled oculist (not to a so-called graduate optician or doctor of refraction, who must make his living out of the spectacles he sells, and whose limited training does not enable him to make a correct diagnosis in critical cases). Correct vision will assist the pupil not merely in learning the exact form of the words which he uses in writing, but also in forming correct ideas of the things with which the mind deals in the thought-processes. Although great stress should be laid upon the orthography of such words in common use as are frequently misspelled,—daily drill upon lists of these should not be omitted at school while the child’s word-hunger lasts,—yet it is vastly more important to acquire an adequate knowledge of the ideas, concepts, and relations for which the words stand. To spend time upon the spelling of words which only the specialist uses, and which are easily learned in connection with the specialty by a student possessing correct mental habits, is a form of waste that cannot be too severely condemned. It is far better to spend time in building concepts of things met with in real life.