Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

Most persons, when they face an audience or feel at all embarrassed, think in phrases, in broken sentences. Hence exercises designed to cultivate the habit of thinking in sentences are very valuable. Franklin’s plan of rewriting the thought of a book like “The Spectator,” and then comparing his own sentences with those of a master-mind, can be followed with great advantage, because it lifts the burden of correction from the teacher’s shoulders and throws it upon the pupil, giving the latter the full benefit of the exercise. Moreover, it cultivates in the pupil the habit of watching how thought is expressed by standard authors. The teacher’s interest in the thought side of language often makes him forget that the correct use of capitals, punctuation marks, sentences, and paragraphs is a matter of thinking quite as much as invention and the arrangement of materials. These externals of the process of composing must at some time be made the object of chief regard. The reason so many pupils do not learn their use is found in the fact that teachers hate the drudgery of correcting papers, and they expect the pupils to acquire this knowledge incidentally. The right use of books obviates the necessity for much of this drudgery, and secures the desired end with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. Skill in the use of capitals and punctuation marks is best acquired when the attention is not absorbed by the elaboration of ideas or by the labor of composing. The externals involved in putting sentences upon paper can claim the chief attention in the dictation of standard selections from a school reader. This exercise enables the pupil to make his own corrections, and is worth a dozen in which the teacher makes the corrections, only to be cast aside after a momentary glance by the pupil. The exercise may be varied by copying a selection from a standard author upon the black-board, covering it with a screen or shade (on rollers) during the dictation, and exposing it to view only while the corrections are made. If each one of the punctuation marks is made an object of special attention in a particular grade, there are enough grades to cover them all before the pupil reaches the high school.

Dictation.

A superintendent revolutionized the language-work of an entire county by dictating to the applicants at the annual examination for provisional certificates a selection from a First Reader for the purpose of testing their knowledge of capitals and punctuation and the other details of written speech. Every one saw the value of the test, and it led to a study of the school reader from a new point of view.

Books for all.

Right use of books.

It is not easy to overestimate the value of books, not merely for those who aspire to become thinkers, but even for all classes of men in civilized life. Books treasure the wisdom of the ages and transmit it to future generations. They kindle thought, enliven the emotions, and lift the soul into the domain of the true, the beautiful, and the good. They furnish recreation and instruction, comfort and consolation, stimulation and inspiration. They confirm or correct the opinions already formed, and give tone to the entire intellectual life. They enlarge the vocabulary, exemplify the best methods of embodying thought in language, and show how master-minds throw their materials into connected discourse, how they organize facts, truths, inferences, and theories into systems of science or speculation. One can subscribe to all that is said in favor of object-teaching and laboratory methods, and still be consistent in maintaining that it should be one of the chief aims of the school to teach the right use of books, that the college and university fail in their mission if they neglect to put the student into the way of using a library to the best advantage. If the policy of many schools were adopted in other fields of human activity, the folly would be too glaring to escape notice. Suppose, by months of effort, a botanist could create in his son a liking for the plants of the nightshade family, some of which, like the potato and the tomato, are good for food and others are poisonous. Having created the appetite, the father makes no effort to gratify it. The son, failing to distinguish between the good and the bad, the esculent and the poisonous, and finding the latter within easy reach, begins to gratify his appetite by eating without discrimination. The deadly effects are more easily imagined than described.

Good literature.

A parallel folly has been committed in hundreds of communities which have taxed themselves to banish illiteracy and to make ignorance impossible among the young people. Reading is carefully taught; the ability to read is followed by an appetite for reading; a strong desire for the mental food derived from the printed page is created. Yet nothing is done to supply the right kind of books for the purpose of gratifying this appetite. The average youth is allowed to get what he can from the book-stalls, which contain much that is as deleterious to the soul as some plants of the nightshade family are to the body. It is as much a duty to supply proper literature as it is to impart the ability to read. When, in the twentieth century, some historian shall give an account of the educational development of Pennsylvania, he will record it as a fact passing strange and well-nigh incapable of explanation that for more than three decades there stood upon the statute-books of a great commonwealth a law preventing boards of directors from appropriating any school funds to the purchase of books for a school library except such works of a strictly professional character as were necessary for the improvement of the teachers. Within the last decade a new era has dawned in library legislation and in the purchase of books. Directors are now empowered to levy a tax for library purposes, and free libraries are springing into existence not only in the large centres of population, but even in the rural schools. The movement has come not a whit too soon; for habits of reading are sadly needed to supplement life in the factory and on the farm. To make from day to day nothing except the head of a pin, or the sixtieth part of a shoe, may develop marvellous skill and speed in workmanship, but such division of labor leaves little room for intellectual activity or for anything above the merest mechanical routine.

The factory.

It should not occasion surprise that operatives in factories seek the mental excitement which human nature always craves after hours of monotony. Far better that they should find recreation in a good book than in a game of cards, in a free library than in a drinking-saloon. That the workman may taste the joys of the higher life of thought, it is essential that he have access to the best literature in prose and poetry, to books of travel, biography, history, science, and sociology. If he lack these, his mind will lose itself in local gossip, in discontent over his lot, in envy of those who have more to eat and drink, better clothes to wear, and better houses to live in. Of the pleasures of the higher life he can have as many as, if not more than, others have; for at the close of the day his mind is not exhausted by professional thinking, and he can enjoy a good book far more than the men whose daily occupation obliges them to seek recreation in physical exercise.