How to Study

How to Study.

by George Fillmore Swain.

PREFACE

The present paper has been suggested by a long experience in teaching, in which the writer has been continually surprised at the ignorance manifested by students in the higher cla.s.ses of our technical schools and universities, or graduates from such schools, with reference to proper methods of study. If his experience is a reliable guide, & large majority of the graduates from such schools, as well as some teachers in them, have not acquired proper habits and methods of study, and have devoted little or no attention to the consideration of the subject, vital though it is.

It is undoubtedly true that training in the proper habits and methods of study should be inculcated by each individual teacher in the course of his work, and exemplified by the occurrences in his cla.s.s room. The individual teacher can do much in this direction, and indeed the writer may say that probably the most important part of his instruction during the past thirty-five years has been teaching his students how to study and how to think logically, by constant reiteration of principles in the cla.s.s room and by making any failure {vi} on the part of a student the occasion for pointing out how such failure arose from improper methods of study or reasoning.

Nevertheless, it has seemed to the writer desirable to formulate, in a brief but simple manner, certain fundamental principles which he has been in the habit of pointing out in the cla.s.s room, and that such a statement might perhaps be found useful with students of any grade as a set subject of study in itself, occupying one or more lessons. With this object in view, the present paper has been written, and it is hoped that it will prove useful to teachers as well as to students, suggesting to the former directions in which they may seek to discover defects in their students and in which they may urge improvement. Most students desire to learn but do not know how. A student will frequently answer a question correctly, perhaps in the words of the book, but upon further probing the teacher will very likely find that he fails entirely to understand what he is talking about. The teacher should seek to discover if such is the case and should, if practicable, point out the cause of the trouble.

The writer believes that if the students in our colleges will read this paper carefully and thoughtfully, and will endeavor to follow its precepts, {vii} they will derive some benefit. If such proves to be the case, and if this paper affords help in enabling students to save time and to study more understandingly, the aim of the writer will have been accomplished.

HOW TO STUDY

"For the end of education and training is to help nature to her perfection in the complete development of all the various powers."--_Richard Mulcaster_, 1522-1611.

Education is an opportunity, nothing more. It will not guarantee success, or happiness, or contentment, or riches. Everything depends upon what development is produced by it and what use is made of it. It does not mean morality or usefulness. It may make a man more capable of doing harm in the world, for an educated scoundrel is clearly more dangerous than an ignorant one. Properly employed, however, and combined with high character, with a due regard for the rights of others, and with simple and practicable but high ideals, it should help a man very greatly in making himself of service in the world and so in making his life really successful in the highest sense. What the student gets out of his education depends largely upon what he puts into it. The student is not an empty vessel to be pumped full of learning; he is a complex machine which education should help to run properly.

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The aim of education is purely utilitarian, and is expressed more clearly by the word power than by any other. Its object is to give the man power to meet the problems of life, and to develop all his faculties to the greatest degree. The word "utilitarian," however, is to be interpreted in its broadest sense. It is not simply bread-and-b.u.t.ter utility that is aimed at. Whatever makes a man more capable of legitimate enjoyment, or helps to make him contented and happy, or to enlarge his breadth of view, is really useful and helps to give him power. "The true order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice."

The only way that power and strength can be developed is by effort on the part of the student. The only real education is self-education.

The best that the teacher can do for the student is to show him what he can do for himself and how he can do it.

"If little labor, little are our gains; Man's fortunes are according to his pains."

But labor alone will not produce gains unless properly and intelligently directed. Misdirected labor, though honest and well-intentioned, may {3} lead to naught; just as any virtue, such for instance, as perseverance, if misdirected or misapplied, or in the wrong proportion, may become a vice. Hegel's dictum that anything carried to its extreme tends to become its opposite, has profound significance. A student may work hard and earnestly in school or college and yet accomplish little or nothing. He should, therefore, be made to see--not only the necessity for hard work, and how to work--but also how to work _effectively_.

Among the most important things, then, for a student to learn, is how to study. Without a knowledge of this his labor may be largely in vain. He may pa.s.s his examinations and yet know nothing thoroughly and have little power. The importance of knowing how to study is evident when we realize that the amount of knowledge that a student can acquire in college, compared with the whole ma.s.s of human knowledge, even that bearing upon a single specialty, is entirely insignificant; and furthermore, that a student is generally quite unable to foresee with any degree of correctness what his work in life will be. Unless, therefore, his education has enabled him to take up a new subject or a new problem and to study and master it {4} himself--that is to say, unless he has learned how to study, how to use his mind properly and to direct it efficiently upon the subject in hand--his education may have benefited him little and may not have fitted him for the career in which he finally finds himself.

Important as it is to learn how to study, it is singular that most students do not learn it, and that little effort is made to teach it.

It is a.s.sumed that children know how to study because they have brains.

Probably a large majority of our college graduates today have not learned how to study properly, and find it difficult or impossible to take up a new study and master it. They have only learned how to do certain routine things in a mechanical way. They have learned by rote.

It is with the hope of emphasizing this subject and of calling attention to some rules for proper study, that this article has been written.

In its broadest sense, the question to be considered is, "How to Investigate a Problem." In doing this the first step is to get together all available information regarding the problem, including books, experimental data and results of experience, and to consider and digest this material. Personal investigations and inquiry, {5} further experimental research, correspondence, travel, etc., may then be necessary. This will be based, however, in general, upon a study of books, and with this part of the subject we are here particularly concerned.

Let us, therefore, consider the elements requisite for a proper method of study.

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I

THE PROPER MENTAL ATt.i.tUDE

The first essential is that _the student should have the proper mental att.i.tude_. That att.i.tude should not be one of subservience, of blind believing, but should be one of mental courage and determination. His object is to understand the subject, not simply to read a book. If the book is a proper one for him to read, that is to say, if he has the proper preparation, and requisite mental power, then he is capable of mastering it. He is to master the book, the book is not to master him.

He is to learn what the writer of the book thinks in matters of opinion, but he is never to accept such views blindly, and is to believe them only when he sees them to be true. Many students accept blindly as truth whatever they see on a printed page that they are required to read. To do this, even if what is read be remembered, is to study by rote; it makes a routine, rule-of-thumb man, who merely imitates or copies. He should realize that nothing is true simply because it is in a book, but should accept it only when it pa.s.ses the test of his own understanding. Mental courage, therefore, is essential for a proper {7} method of study, without which the student will become little more than a parrot. He must possess self-confidence, a consciousness of his power to master the subject, and a firm determination to master it. Of course, n.o.body should read a book that he is incapable of mastering or unprepared to understand. A suitable preparation and sufficient mental power are of course essential, and are here a.s.sumed. The point is that the sense of his own power and the determination to use it should be constantly in his mind.

Students are of course frequently, if not generally, limited in the time which they have available for any given lesson, and they may not be able to follow out completely the methods recommended in this paper.

It may therefore be necessary for a student frequently to accept a statement which he reads, although he is not at the time able to see the reason for it. In all cases, however, he should endeavor to perceive whether it is a mere fact or definition, or whether it has a reason, and if he cannot at the time understand the reason he should accept the statement only tentatively, making a note of it as something which he must return to and study further if he wishes thoroughly to master the subject.

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(_a_) THE STUDENT MUST DISTINGUISH CLEARLY BETWEEN READING AND UNDERSTANDING.--Reading alone, no matter how extensive, or how retentive the memory, will not give wisdom or power.

"Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself."

No doubt every one finds himself at times reading merely words or phrases without understanding them, reflecting about them, or translating them into terms which are intelligible to his understanding. Such reading is worse than useless; it leads to actual mental injury. Whenever we find ourselves doing this we should therefore arouse ourselves, make an effort of will, and concentrate our attention upon the subject, insisting upon understanding it. If for any reason we are unable to do this, we should close the book, take some exercise or recreation, or at any rate do something else, for we are not at the moment fitted for study. We might as well eat sawdust and deceive ourselves with thinking that we are taking nourishment. It is not what is read or what is remembered, but only what is understood, that gives power,

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"In this quest of knowledge ... there are two faults to be shunned--one, the taking of unknown things for known, and giving an a.s.sent to them too hastily, which fault he who wishes to escape (and all ought so to wish) will give time and diligence to reflect on the subjects proposed for his consideration. The other fault is that some bestow too great zeal and too much labor on things obscure and difficult, and at the same time useless."--_Cicero: de Officiis_.

(_b_) THE STUDENT MUST CLEARLY DISTINGUISH MERE FACTS FROM CONCLUSIONS OR OPINIONS.--Mere facts, some of which may be the result of laborious investigation, may be accepted without verification, if the authority is good. When the student reads that the river Nile rises in Equatorial Africa, flows in a northerly direction through Egypt into the Mediterranean sea, he cannot verify this statement nor reason out that it must be so. It is a mere fact and a name, and he simply accepts it, perhaps looking at the map to fix the fact in his mind.

So, too, if he reads that the atomic weight of oxygen is 16, or that a cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds, he cannot be expected to perform the experiments necessary to verify these statements. If he were to do this throughout his reading, he would have to make all the investigations made in the subject since man has studied it, taking no advantage of the labor of others.

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Very different are conclusions or opinions deduced from facts; and logical conclusions are very different from mere opinions. The facts may be sufficient to prove logically a certain conclusion. On the other hand, the facts may simply give reasonable ground, or appear to give reasonable ground, for a certain opinion, though they may fall far short of demonstration. The student must, therefore, discriminate constantly between mere statements of facts, necessary conclusions which follow therefrom, and mere opinions which they seem to render reasonable.

Some conclusions also, like those of mathematics or logic, may be arrived at by the unaided reason without the previous acc.u.mulation of facts deduced from experiments or observation. Such truths or conclusions should be distinguished from those which are based upon facts, experiments or observation. If the student reads, therefore, that the sum of the angles of a plane triangle is equal to two right angles, he should see that this is not a mere fact, but an inevitable truth, the reason for which he should perceive, and not accept simply because he reads it.

The continual exercise of this discrimination, which comes from an att.i.tude of mental courage and independence, is an essential of proper study.

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(_c_) THE STUDENT'S MIND SHOULD BE A CONTINUAL INTERROGATION POINT.[1]--He should always ask himself, regarding any statement which he reads, whether there is a reason for it, and if there is, whether it is inherent in the nature of things, so that he might independently arrive at it, or whether it follows from facts which the writer has observed. For instance, there is at first sight no reason why a cubic foot of water should weigh 62.4 pounds. It simply does and that is all there is to it; it does, because it does. But if he reads that a cubic foot of water at one point on the earth's surface weighs less than it does at another point, or that in the Northern Hemisphere the wind in a storm revolves around the storm center in a direction contrary to the motion of the hands of a clock, he should perceive that these facts, if true, have a reason for them, and he should endeavor to perceive that reason.

It must be observed at this point that, strictly speaking, there must be a reason for any truth, even for what we may term mere facts, excepting those which are mere definitions. There is some reason, lying in the const.i.tution and arrangement of its atoms, why a cubic foot of water at a given {12} spot and at a given temperature weighs 62.4 pounds. But there is no reason why New York is 90 miles from Philadelphia; those two points 90 miles apart are simply so named or defined. Many truths which are accepted as mere facts, the explanation being unknown, in the course of time are explained by the progress of science. Thus, for many years the fact that a magnetic needle pointed toward the North was a mere unexplained fact, but later the reason was discovered. The same is true of the fact that the pollution of drinking water by sewage may cause typhoid fever. The point is that the student must continually discriminate, continually inquire, and, as he reads, keep a list of points, the reason for which he cannot then discover, but which he perceives must have a discoverable reason. He should not go too deeply into this, but should preserve his sense of proportion; for if he follows every possible line of inquiry back to its source he will progress but slowly. Thus, if he is studying descriptive astronomy and reads that the sun is ninety-two million miles from the earth, or that Jupiter has nine moons, or that the star Sirius is moving away from the earth with a velocity of eleven miles per second, or that the moon always turns the same half toward the {13} earth, he should perceive that he cannot at that stage try to get back of these facts, but he may well make a note of them as questions to be later examined, if not as to the cause, at least as to how the fact is ascertained.

It does not follow that he should never leave the subject until he has found a reason, for it may depend upon facts or principles of which he is not at the moment informed; but if such is the case, he should accept the fact tentatively, but make a mental note that it is something which clearly must have a reason which he is capable of perceiving, and which he will look up at some future time. In studying his book he may well make a list of such questions to ask the teacher or to look up later.

Students must of course proceed in a systematic way, and a student who has not studied physics cannot be expected to perceive reasons that depend upon the laws of physics, and yet without a knowledge of physics he may still perceive that a statement is not of a mere fact, but of something that must have a reason. To primitive peoples nature was a closed book. The simplest phenomena were beyond their understanding, and they, therefore, imagined deities of whose personal activities these phenomena {14} were supposed to be manifestations. With the progress of science many phenomena once mysterious and looked upon as facts have become easily explained. The intelligent student, however, can generally distinguish between statements of the different kinds which have been described, and he should constantly endeavor to explain or seek the reason for new statements by relating them to the body of knowledge which he has previously gained. Unfortunately, the average student reads only to accept what is written, whether fact, conclusion, or opinion, perhaps memorizing it verbatim under the impression that by so doing he is learning; he does not examine or reflect upon it, and often even accepts as facts what are explicitly stated to be mere expressions of opinion. Thus palpable mistakes, or even typographical errors, which a careful student should detect at once, are often accepted and believed. It is for this reason that it is so easy to deceive most people, at least for part of the time. They do not think for themselves, and all that is necessary to make them believe what you say is in some way to get them to think you are an authority.