Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

President Porter.

“The person, particularly the student, who has never wrestled manfully and perseveringly with a difficult book will be good for little in this world of wrestling and strife. But when you are convinced that a book is above your attainments, capacity, or age, it is of little use for you, and it is wiser to let it alone. It is both vexing and unprofitable to stand upon one’s toes and strain one’s self for hours in efforts to reach the fruit which you are not tall enough to gather. It is better to leave it till it can be reached more easily. When the grapes are both ripe and within easy reach for you, it is safe to conclude that they are not sour.”[19]

Reading as a source of material.

There are many phases of the library problem which do not call for consideration in this connection, but in addition to their value as a stimulus to thinking, the function of books in furnishing proper material for thought and suitable instruments of thought deserves special consideration on the part of those charged with the duty of teaching others to think. There was a time when libraries were managed as if it were the mission of the librarian to keep the books from being used. The modern librarian seeks to make the accumulated wisdom of the past accessible to all. He regards the library as a storehouse of knowledge, from which any one able to read can get what he needs. Cyclopædias and dictionaries of reference, card catalogues, and helps like Poole’s “Index to Periodical Literature” make the best thought of the best minds in these and other days accessible to the student. He who wishes to gain a hearing on any theme must know what others have said upon it. Disraeli has well said that those who do not read largely will not themselves deserve to be read. The prize debates between different colleges are teaching students how to utilize books in getting material for public discussions. Theses for graduation develop the ability to use books in the right way. And yet, valuable as books are for furnishing fuel to the mind, they may be used to destroy what little ability to think a pupil has otherwise developed. To assign topics for composition which require a culling of facts from books, and to allow the essays to be written outside of school hours, expose the pupil to unnecessary temptations. In the public schools there should be set apart each week several periods of suitable length, during which the pupil, under the eye of the teacher, writes out his thoughts. In such exercises the attention should not be riveted upon capitals, spelling, punctuation, grammatical construction, and rhetorical devices; the mind should be occupied solely and intensely with the expression of the thought. Mistakes should be corrected when the pupil reviews and rewrites his composition. Books can be used to furnish material for thought; the elaboration can be helped by oral discussions; the interest thereby aroused will make each member of the class anxious to express his thoughts; hesitation in composing and distraction from dread of mistakes can be overcome by making the class write against time.

Enriching one’s vocabulary.

Books are helpful in enriching one’s vocabulary. Treatises on rhetoric teach what words should be avoided. The student finds more difficulty in getting enough words to express his thoughts. The study of a good series of readers is more valuable as a means of acquiring a good vocabulary than all the rules on purity, propriety, and so forth, which are found in the text-books on rhetoric. A good series of school readers employs from five to six thousand words. With these the average teacher is familiar to the extent of knowing their meaning when he sees them in sentences. He does not have a sufficient command of a third of them to use them in writing or speaking. The selections of a Fifth Reader contain more words than are found in the vocabulary of any living author. The step from knowing a word when used by another to the ability to use that word in expressing our own thoughts has not been taken in the case of the larger proportion of the words with which we are familiar on the printed page. Most persons use more words in writing than in oral speech, more words in public speaking than in ordinary conversation. We unconsciously absorb many words which we hear others use, but we pick up a far larger number from those we see in print simply because the printed page contains a larger variety of words than spoken language. In this respect there is a vast difference between the oral discourse and the written manuscript of the same person. The style is different; the sentences in oral discourse are less involved; the diction is less complicated; the vocabulary is less copious. Hence the advantage of the boy who has access to standard authors over the youth who has access to few books, and these not well selected. Without any effort, the former gains possession of a vocabulary which makes thinking easier and richer.

School readers.

The lack of a library of standard authors can be supplied, to some extent, by a judicious use of the school readers. If the mastery of the words and the getting of the thought precede the oral reading of the lesson, and if the vocal utterance is followed by oral and written reproduction of the thought, correct habits of study will be formed, and the working vocabulary of teacher and pupil will be vastly increased. The habit of eying every stranger on the printed page will be fixed, and the appropriation of new words will rise above the subconscious stage. Only one other exercise is comparable,—namely, the comparison of words in a lexicon for the purpose of selecting the right one in making a translation from some ancient or modern language. Such translations, if honestly made, enrich the vocabulary and furnish exercise in the study of the finer shades of meaning which words have, as well as in the use of the words for the purpose of expressing thought.

Franklin’s plan.

Correcting papers.