I
In its widest aspects, the problem of teaching pupils how to study forms
a large part of the larger educational problem. It means, not only
teaching them how to read books, and to make the content of books part
of their own mental capital, but also, and perhaps far more
significantly, teaching them how to draw lessons from their own
experiences; not only how to observe and classify and draw conclusions,
but also how to evaluate their experience--how to judge whether certain
things that they do give adequate or inadequate results.
In the narrower sense, however, the art of study may be said to consist
in the ability to assimilate the experiences of others, and it is in
this narrower sense that I shall discuss the problem to-day. It is not
only in books that human experience is recorded, and yet it is true that
the reading of books is the most economical means of gaining these
experiences; consequently, we may still further narrow our problem to
this: How may pupils be trained effectively to glean, through the medium
of the printed page, the great lessons of race experience?
The word "study" is thus used in the sense in which most teachers employ
it. When we speak of a pupil's studying his lessons, we commonly mean
that he is bending over a text-book, attempting to assimilate the
contents of the text. Just what it means to study, even in this narrow
sense of the term,--just what it means, psychologically, to assimilate
even the simplest thoughts of others,--I cannot tell you, and I do not
know of any one who can answer this seemingly simple question
satisfactorily. We all study, but what happens in our minds when we do
study is a mystery. We all do some thinking, and yet the psychology of
thinking is the great undiscovered and unexplored region in the field of
mental science. Until we know something of the psychology of thinking,
we can hope for very little definite information concerning the
psychology of study, for study is so intimately bound up with thinking
that the two are not to be separated.
But even if it is impossible at the present time to analyze the process
of studying, we are pretty well agreed as to what constitutes successful
study, and many rules have been formulated for helping pupils to acquire
effective habits of study. These rules concern us only indirectly at the
present time, for our problem is still narrower in its scope. It has to
do with the possibility of so training children in the art of study,
not only that they may study effectively in school, but also that they
may carry over the habits and methods of study thus acquired into the
tasks of later life. In other words, the topic that we are discussing is
but one phase of the problem of formal discipline,--the problem of
securing a transfer of training from a specific field to other fields;
and my purpose is to view this topic of "study" in the light of what we
know concerning the possibilities of transfer.
Let me take a specific example. I am not so much concerned with the
problem of getting a pupil to master a history lesson quickly and
effectively,--not how he may best assimilate the facts concerning the
Missouri Compromise, for example. My task is rather to determine how we
can make his mastery of the Missouri Compromise a lesson in the general
art of study,--how that mastery may help him develop what we used to
call the general power of study,--the capacity to apply an effective
method of study to other problems, perhaps, very far removed from the
history lesson; in other words, how that single lesson may help him in
the more general task of finding any type of information when he needs
it, of assimilating it once he has found it, and of applying it once he
has assimilated it.
In an audience of practical teachers, it is hardly necessary to
emphasize the significance of doing this very thing. From one point of
view, it may be asserted that the whole future of what we term general
education, as distinguished from technical or vocational education,
depends upon our ability to solve problems like this, and solve them
satisfactorily. We can never justify universal general education beyond
the merest rudiments unless we can demonstrate acceptably that the
training which general education furnishes will help the individual to
solve the everyday problems of his life. Either we must train the pupil
in a general way so that he will be able to acquire specialized skill
more quickly and more effectively than will the pupil who lacks this
general training; or we must give up a large part of the general-culture
courses that now occupy an important part in our elementary and
secondary curriculums, and replace these with technical and vocational
subjects that shall have for their purpose the development of
specialized efficiency.
All teachers, I take it, are alive to the grave dangers of the latter
policy. Whether we have thought the matter through logically or not we
certainly _feel_ strongly that too early specialization will work a
serious injury to the cause of education, and, through education, to the
larger cause of social advancement and enlightenment. We view with grave
foreboding any policy that will shut the door of opportunity to any
child, no matter how humble or how unpromising. And yet we also know
that, unless the general education that we now offer can be distinctly
shown to have a beneficial influence upon specialized efficiency, we
shall be forced by economic conditions into this very policy. It is
small wonder, then, that so many of our educational discussions and
investigations to-day turn upon this problem; and among the various
phases of the problem none is more significant than that which is
covered by our topic of to-day,--How may we develop in the pupil a
general power or capacity for gaining information independently of
schools and teachers? If we could adequately develop this power, there
is much in the way of specialized instruction that could be safely left
to the individual himself. If we could teach him how to study, then we
could perhaps trust him to master some of the principles of any calling
that he undertakes in so far as these principles can be mastered from
books. To teach the child to study effectively is to do the most useful
thing that could be done to help him to adjust himself to any
environment of modern civilized life into which he may be thrown. For
there is one thing that the more radical advocates of a narrow
vocational education commonly forget, and that is the constant change
that is going on in industrial processes. When we limit our vocational
teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the
process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years
from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so
extremely important to-day may be relatively insignificant by the time
that the child whom we are training takes his place in the industrial
world. But if we can arm the individual with the more fundamental
principles which are fixed for all time; and if, in addition to this,
we can teach him how to master the specialized principles which may come
into the field unheralded and unexpected, and turn topsy-turvy the older
methods of doing his work, then we shall have done much toward helping
him in solving that perplexing problem of gaining a livelihood.