How to Study and Teaching How to Study Part 8

So long as facts are treated as approximately equal in worth, the learner is bound to picture the field of knowledge as a comparatively level plain composed of a vast aggregation of independent bits. In spelling, writing, and beginning reading it is so many hundreds or thousands of words; in beginning arithmetic it is the various combinations in the four fundamental operations; in geography it is a long list of statements; in history it is an endless lot of facts as they happen to come on the page; in literature it is sentence after sentence.

One can get possession of this field, not by taking the strategic positions,--for under the a.s.sumption of equality there are none,--but rather by advancing over it slowly, mastering one bit at a time. Thus the words in beginning reading, writing, and spelling are learned and reproduced in all orders, proving them to be independent little ent.i.ties. In geography and history, when the facts are not wormed out of the pupil by questions, he sees the page before him by his mind's eye,--a fact frequently revealed by the movement of his eyes while reciting,--and attempts to recall each paragraph or statement in its order. In literature he masters his difficulties sentence by sentence, a method most clearly shown in the case of our greatest cla.s.sic, the Bible, which is almost universally studied and quoted by verses.

Thus the _unit of progress_ in study is made the single fact; the whole of any subject becomes the sum of its details; and a subject has been supposedly mastered when all these bits have been learned. This might well be called the method of study by driblets. It is probably safe to say that a majority of the young people in the United States, including college students, study largely in this way.

While this method of study is bad in numerous ways, there are three of its faults in particular which need to be considered here.

_Respects in which this method of study is wrong 1. Facts, as a rule, vary greatly in value_

In the first place, facts vary indefinitely in value. In parts of a few subjects they do have practically the same worth, which is, no doubt, a source of much misconception about proper methods of study.

In spelling, for instance, _which_ is probably as important a word as _when_, and _sea_ as important as _flood_. In a list of three hundred carefully selected words for spelling for third-year pupils, any one word might properly be regarded as equal to any other in worth. This may be said also in regard to a list for writing. Much the same is true in regard to a possible list of four hundred words for reading in the first year of school. In arithmetic one would scarcely a.s.sert that 4X7 was more or less important than 9X8, or 8/2, or 6-3, or 4+2. In other words, the various combinations in the four fundamental operations are, again, all of them essential to every person's knowledge, and therefore stand on the same plane of worth.

To some extent, therefore, the three R's and spelling are exceptions to an important general rule. Yet even in spelling and beginning reading not all words by any means have the same value. Children in the third year of school who are reading Whittier's _Barefoot Boy_ ought to be able to recognize and spell the word _robin;_ perhaps, also, _woodchuck_ and _tortoise;_ but _eschewing_ is not a part of their vocabulary and will not soon be, and probably the less said about that word by the teacher the better.

The moment we turn to other subjects, facts are found to vary almost infinitely in value, just as metals do. Judged by the s.p.a.ce they occupy, they may appear to be equally important; but they are not to be judged in this way, any more than men are. According to their nature, thoughts or statements are large and small, or broad and narrow, or far-reaching and insignificant. A general of an army may be of more consequence to the welfare of a nation than a thousand common soldiers; so one idea like that of evolution may be worth a full ten thousand like the fact that "our neighbor's cat kittened yesterday."

_2. They are dependent upon one another for their worth_

In the second place, facts can by no means be regarded as independent.

As before, to be sure, the three R's and spelling afford some exception to this rule. In spelling, writing, and beginning reading it is important that any one of a large number of words be recognized or reproduced at any time, without reference to any others. All of these, together with the combinations in the fundamental operations in arithmetic, are often called for singly, and they must, therefore, be isolated from any possible series into which they might fall, and mastered separately.

Aside from these subjects, facts are generally dependent upon their relations to one another for their value. Taken alone, they are ineffective fragments of knowledge, just as a common soldier or an officer in an army is ineffective in battle without definite relations to a mult.i.tude of other men.

If the first sentences on twenty successive pages in a book were brought together, they would tell no story. They would be mere scattered fractions of thoughts, lacking that relation to one another that would give them significance and make them a unit. Twenty closely related sentences might, however, express a very valuable thought.

James Anthony Froude, impressed with this truth and at the same time recalling the prevalent tendency to ignore it, declares: "Detached facts on miscellaneous subjects, as they are taught at a modern school, are like separate letters of endless alphabets. You may load the mechanical memory with them, till it becomes a marvel of retentiveness. Your young prodigy may amaze examiners and delight inspectors. His achievements may be emblazoned in blue books, and furnish matter for flattering reports on the excellence of our educational system. And all this while you have been feeding him with chips of granite. But arrange your letters into words, and each word becomes a thought, a symbol waking in the mind an image of a real thing. Group your words into sentences, and thought is married to thought, and the chips of granite become soft bread, wholesome, nutritious, and invigorating." [Footnote: James Anthony Froude, _Handwork before Headwork._]

A very simple ill.u.s.tration is found in the study of the dates for the entrance of our states into the Union. Taken one at a time, the list is dead. But interest is awakened the moment one discovers that for a long period each Northern state was matched by one in the South, so that they entered in pairs.

_3. The sum of the details does not equal the whole._

Finally, the whole of a subject is not merely the sum of its little facts. You may study each day's history lesson faithfully, and may retain everything in memory till the book is "finished," and still not know the main things in the book. You may understand and memorize each verse of a chapter in the Bible until you can almost reproduce the chapter in your sleep, and still fail to know what the chapter is about. Probably some readers of this text who have repeated the Lord's Prayer from infancy, would still need to do some studying before they could tell the two or three leading thoughts in that prayer.

An especially good ill.u.s.tration of this fact in my own experience as a teacher has been furnished in connection with the following paragraph, taken from Dr. John Dewey's _Ethical Principles underlying Education._ "Information is genuine or educative only in so far as it effects definite images and conceptions of material placed in social life.

Discipline is genuine and educative only as it represents a reaction of the information into the individual's own powers, so that he can bring them under control for social ends. Culture, if it is to be genuine and educative, and not an external polish or fact.i.tious varnish, represents the vital union of information and discipline. It designates the socialization of the individual in his whole outlook upon life and mode of dealing with it." I have had a large number of graduate students who found it very difficult to state the point of this paragraph, although every sentence is reasonably clear and they are in close sequence.

Thus the larger thoughts, instead of being the sum of the details, are an outgrowth from them, an interpretation of them; they are separate and new ideas conceived through insight into the relations that the individual statements bear to one another.

_The proper unit of progress in study_

From the foregoing we see that some facts are very large, while others are of little importance, and that any one statement, taken separately, lacks significance.

The field of thought, therefore, instead of being pictured as a plain, is to be conceived as a very irregular surface, with elevations of various heights scattered over it. And just as hills and mountains rest upon and are approached by the lower land about them, so the larger thoughts are supported and approached by the details that relate to them.

A general of an army, desiring to get possession of a disputed region, does not plan to take and hold the lower land without the higher points, nor the higher points without the lower land. On the contrary, each vantage point with its approaches const.i.tutes, in his mind, one division of the field, one strategic section, which is to be seized and held. And these divisions or units all taken together const.i.tute the region.

So any portion of knowledge that is to be acquired should be divided into suitable units of attack; one large thought together with its supporting details should const.i.tute one section, another large thought together with its a.s.sociated details a second, etc.; all of these together composing the whole field. In other words, the student, instead of making progress in knowledge fact by fact, should advance by _groups of facts_. His smallest unit of progress should be a considerable number of ideas so related to one another that they make a whole; those that are alike in their support of some valuable thought making up a bundle, and the farther-reaching, controlling idea itself const.i.tuting the band that ties these bits together and preserves their unity. Such a unit or, "point," as it is most often called, is the basal element in thinking, just as the family is the basal element in society.

_The size of such units of advance._

Such units of advance may vary indefinitely in size; but the danger is that they will be too small. A minister who reaches his thirteenthly is not likely to be a means of converting many sinners. A debater who makes fifteen points will hardly find his judges enthusiastic in his favor, no matter how weak his opponents may be. A chapter that contains twenty or thirty paragraphs should not be remembered as having an equal number of points. What is wanted is that the student shall _feel the force_ of the ideas presented, and a great lot of little points strung together cannot produce a forceful impression.

Any thought that is worth much must be supported by numerous facts and will require considerable time or s.p.a.ce for presentation. A minister can hardly establish a half dozen valuable ideas in one sermon; he does well if he presents two or three with force; and he is most likely to make a lasting impression if he confines himself to one.

Drummond's _The Greatest Thing in the World_ is an example of the possibilities in this direction.

Accordingly the student, in reading a chapter or listening to a lecture, should find the relations.h.i.+ps among the smaller portions of the thought that will unify the subject-matter under a very few heads.

If several pages or a whole lecture can be reduced to a single point, it should be done. He should always remember that to the extent that the supporting details are numerous they will have a c.u.mulative effect, thereby rendering the central thought strong enough to have a permanent influence.

_The meaning of organization of knowledge, and its value._

Such grouping of ideas as has thus far been considered, although of the greatest importance, is only the beginning of the organization of knowledge. For thus far only the minimum unit of advance has been under discussion. Asone proceeds in the study of a subject these smaller units collect in large numbers, and they must themselves be subordinated to still broader central thoughts, according to their nature. This grouping of details, according to their relations.h.i.+ps, into points, and of such points under still higher heads, and so on until a whole subject and even the whole field of knowledge is carefully ordered according to the relations.h.i.+ps of its parts, is what is meant by organization of knowledge.

Sometimes an entire book is thus organized under a single idea, Fiske's _Critical Period of American History_ being an excellent example. In this volume the conditions at the close of the Revolutionary War are vividly described. It is shown that great debts remained unpaid, that different systems of money caused confusion, and that civil war was seriously threatened in various quarters. These and other dangers convinced sober men that a firm central government was indispensable. But then, it was no easy matter to bring such a government into existence; and it is shown how numerous heroic attempts in this direction barely escaped failure before the const.i.tution was finally adopted. On the whole, it is safe to say that each paragraph or small number of paragraphs, while const.i.tuting a unit, is at the same time a necessary part of the chapter to which it belongs; likewise, each chapter, while const.i.tuting a unit, is an integral part of the book as a whole; and all these parts are so interrelated and complete that the whole book const.i.tutes a unit.

Observe the advantage of such organization. The period of our history immediately following the Revolution used to be one of the least interesting of topics. Under the t.i.tle "The Period following the Treaty of Paris," or "The Period from the Close of the Revolutionary War to the Adoption of the Const.i.tution," the textbooks attempted nothing more than an enumeration or history of the chief difficulties and struggles of our youthful nation. In some cases, if I remember correctly, this was designated "The Period of Confusion," and its description left the reader in a thoroughly confused state of mind.

Fiske's book was a revelation. What had seemed very complex and confused became here extremely simple; what had been especially dull became here perhaps the most exciting topic in all our history. And the secret of the advance is found to a large extent in the organization. Thus organization is a means of effectiveness in the presentation of knowledge, as in the use of a library or the conduct of a business.

_The basis for the organization of knowledge in general._

All the facts in Mr. Fiske's book are organized about the stirring question expressed in his t.i.tle, _i. e._, how our s.h.i.+p of state barely escaped being wrecked. Because this idea is of intense interest to us, and the entire book bears upon it continually, the story is read with bated breath. Drummond's _Greatest Thing in the World_ is another excellent example on a smaller scale of ideas centered about a vital human question. Thus specific problems of various degrees of breadth, _that are intimately related to man_, can well be taken as the basis for the organization of knowledge in general. Cla.s.sical literature is organized on this basis, which is called the pedagogical or _psychological_ basis, and it seems desirable that other fields should also be.

Yet there are other kinds of organization in which the relation to man is not so plainly, or not at all, taken as the controlling idea. For example, biology is often organized on the basis of the growing complexity of the organism, the student beginning with the simple, microscopic cell, and advancing to the more and more complex forms.

Formerly, after the Linnaean system, plants were cla.s.sified according to their similarity of structure. Now both plants and animals are often cla.s.sified on the basis of their manner of adaptation to their environment. Thus within the field of science there is what is called the _scientific_ basis of organization.

There is also the _logical_ basis of organization of thought, according to which some most fundamental idea is taken as the beginning of a system, or the premise, and other ideas are evolved from this first principle. Rousseau attempted to develop his educational doctrine in this way, starting with the a.s.sertion that everything was good as it came from the Creator, but that everything degenerated in the hands of man. John Calvin did the same in his system of theology; and he reasoned so succinctly from his few premises that any one granting these was almost compelled to accept his entire doctrine.

Attention is called to these facts here in order to suggest that, while the scientific and the logical bases of organization are in common use, neither of them is adequate as the main basis of organization for a young student who is studying a subject for the first time. The reason is that each of them secures a careful ordering of facts only with reference to the relations that those facts bear to one another, and not with reference to the relation that they bear to man; and in thus ignoring man they show grave faults. They are indifferent to interest on the part of the learner; they offer no standard for judging the relative worths of facts to man; and instead of exerting an influence in the direction of applying knowledge, they exert some influence in the opposite direction by their indifference to man's view-point. It must be admitted that they are of great a.s.sistance in securing thoroughness of comprehension by their revelation of the relations existing among facts, and also that they cla.s.sify facts in a convenient way for finding them later; but they are of greatest use to the advanced student, who is already supplied with motive and with standards for judging worth, and who has proper habits of study already formed; they can well follow but they should not supplant the psychological basis.

_The student's double task in the organization of ideas._

An author's organization of subject-matter is frequently poor. But whether it be poor or good, some hard work on the part of the student is necessary before the proper grouping of ideas can take place in his own mind. The danger is that there will be practically no arrangement of his thoughts, as is well ill.u.s.trated in the following letter from an eight-year-old boy.

DEAR UNCLE CHARLIE:

Will you please buy some of my 24 package of my Bluine, if you will please buy one package it will help me a lot. One Sat.u.r.day we played ball against the east side and beat twelve to 1. I will get a baseball suit if I can sell 24 packages of Bluine. We had quite a blizzard here to-day. For one package it costs ten cents. When we played ball against the east side we only had 6 boys and they had twelve. We have a base ball team, and I am Captain, so you see I need a suit. Gretchen and Mother are playing backgammon with one dice. I catch sometimes when our real catcher is not there. When he is there I play first Base.

Your loving nephew, JAMES.

There is one prominent idea in this letter, touching the sale of Bluine, with reasons; and parts of two others, concerning the weather and the occupation of mother and sister. The first is the most fully treated; but, as might be expected from an eight-year-old child, no one idea is supported by sufficient detail to round it out and make it strong.

In avoiding such defects two things are necessary: First, the student must decide what points he desires to make. They should be so definitely conceived that they can be easily distinguished from one another and can even be _counted_. Then, in the second place, all the details that bear upon a central idea should be collected and presented together in sequence under the point concerned. By this ma.s.sing of all supporting statements under their proper heads, overlapping or duplicating is avoided, and clearness is gained. Also, force is secured by the c.u.mulative effect of intimately related facts, just as it is secured by the concerted attack by the divisions of an army.

Even the better students often stop with finding the main thoughts alone. And the temptation to do no more is strong, since teachers seldom require a forceful presentation of ideas in recitation; they are thankful to get a halting statement of the princ.i.p.al facts. But the student should remember that he is studying for his own good, not merely to keep teachers contented; and he should not deceive himself by his own fluency of speech. He should form the habit of often asking himself, "What is my point?" also, "What facts have I offered for its support, and have I ma.s.sed them all as I should?" He must thus form the habit of arranging his ideas into points if he wishes to be pointed.

_Precautions against inaccuracy in the grouping of facts into points._

The dangers of inaccuracy in this kind of study are numerous. First the individual statements must be carefully interpreted. A certain very intelligent ten-year-old girl studying arithmetic read the problem, "What is the interest on $500 at six per cent for one year?"

Then, probably under the influence of some preceding problem, she found four per cent of the princ.i.p.al, and added the amount to the princ.i.p.al for her answer, thus showing two mistakes in reading.