How To Study and Teaching How To Study | Page 3

latter passing it down to teachers in the elementary school. Parents
who supervise their children's studies, or who otherwise know about

their habits of work, observe the same fact with sorrow. It is at least
refreshing to find one matter, in the much- disputed field of education,
on which teachers and parents are well agreed.
How about the methods of study among teachers themselves? Unless
they have learned to study properly, young people cannot, of course, be
expected to acquire proper habits from them. Method of study among
teachers. The most enlightening single experience I have ever had on
this question came several years ago in connection with a series of
lectures on Primary Education. A course of such lectures had been
arranged for me without my full knowledge, and I was unexpectedly
called upon to begin it before a class of some seventy-five teachers. It
was necessary to commence speaking without having definitely
determined my first point. I had, however, a few notes which I was
attempting to decipher and arrange, while talking as best I could, when
I became conscious of a slight clatter from all parts of the room. On
looking up I found that the noise came from the pencils of my audience,
and they were writing down my first pointless remarks. Evidently
discrimination in values was not in their program. They call to mind a
certain theological student who had been very unsuccessful in taking
notes from lectures. In order to prepare himself, he spent one entire
summer studying stenography. Even after that, however, he was
unsuccessful, because he could not write quite fast enough to take
down all that was said.
Even more mature students often reveal very meager knowledge of
methods of study. I once had a class of some thirty persons, most of
whom were men twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, who were
college graduates and experienced teachers. One day I asked them,
"When has a book been read properly?" The first reply came from a
state university graduate and school superintendent, in the words, "One
has read a book properly when one understands what is in it." Most of
the others assented to this answer. But when they were asked, "Is a
person under any obligations to judge the worth of the thought?" they
divided, some saying yes, others no. Then other questions arose, and
the class as a whole soon appeared to be quite at sea as to the proper
method of reading books. Perhaps the most interesting thing was the

fact that they seemed never to have thought seriously about the matter.
Fortunately Dr. Earhart has not overlooked teachers' methods of study
in her investigations. In a questionnaire that was filled out by 165
teachers, the latter were requested to state the principal things that
ought to be done in "thinking about a lesson." This was practically the
same test as was given to the 842 children before mentioned. While at
least twenty different things were named by these teachers, the most
frequent one was, "Finding the most important points." [Footnote: Ibid.,
Chapter 5.] Yet only fifty-five out of the 165 included even this. Only
twenty-five, as Dr. Earhart says, "felt, keenly enough to mention it, the
necessity of finding the main thought or problem." Forty admitted that
they memorized more often than they did anything else in their
studying. Strange to say, a larger percentage of children than of
teachers mentioned finding the main thought, and finding the more
important facts, as two factors in mastering a lesson. Water sometimes
appears to rise higher than its source.
About two-thirds of these 165 teachers [Footnote: Ibid., Chapter 5.]
declared that they had never received any systematic instruction about
how to study, and more than half of the remainder stated that they were
taught to memorize in studying. The number who had given any careful
instruction on proper methods of study to their own pupils was
insignificant. Yet these 165 teachers had had unusual training on the
whole, and most of them had taught several years in elementary schools.
If teachers are so poorly informed, and if they are doing so little to
instruct their pupils on this subject, how can the latter be expected to
know how to study?
The prevailing definition of study.
The prevailing definition of study gives further proof of a very meager
notion in regard to it. Frequently during the last few years I have
obtained from students in college, as well as from teachers, brief
statements of their idea of study. Fully nine out of every ten have given
memorizing as its nearest synonym.
It is true that teachers now and then insist that studying should consist
of thinking. They even send children to their seats with the direction to

"think, think hard." But that does