Study skills

“ Your science, your literature, should be a source then of energy as well as fortitude. They should enrich your action as well as your thought, and everywhere teach you the lesson of modest faith and perseverance, You must all have learned in your several lines of study the immense value of sustained and vivid attention. You must have come to appreciate the task which he undertakes who resolves to be even a faithful learner, much more a teacher of any important branch of human knowledge. ”

“ Lest some may think that, in emphasising the importance of that understanding which is not altogether gained from books we have under-valued the work of the study, let us, in closing our chapter, describe what seems to us to be the highest type of training for the work of the pulpit. It is the training in which the student gives to every means of furnishing its due and proportionate place; in which he turns to books and to life for the wisdom he seeks. We have spoken of the impracticable scholar, but not all men of learning have been of this order. ”

“ No assertion is here made that children know intuitively how to do this systematic kind of studying; they merely have the qualities of mind and the experience prerequisite to rational study, and are therefore in a position to receive instruction on the subject with profit. ”

“ In this day of narrow specialties, our thinking needs such men to fuse its parts, correlate its forces, and centre its results; and our thinking needs them in its college stage, in order that we may command horizons from our study windows in after days. ”

“ We conclude, then, that for discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value. In all its effects, learning the meanings of things, is better than learning the meanings of words. Whether for intellectual, moral, or religious training, the study of surrounding phenomena is immensely superior to the study of grammars and lexicons. ”

“ For example; boys are often put to the study of mathematics, at the age of eight or ten years; and before they can either read or write. In order to show the impropriety of such a practice, it is necessary to repeat what was just now observed, that our senses are the avenues of knowlege. This fact proves that the most natural course of Education is that which employs, first the senses or powers of the body, or those faculties of the mind which first acquire strength; and then proceeds to those studies which depend on the power of comparing and combining ideas. ”

“ Indeed, as you become more and more expert as a student, you will see that the whole process resolves itself into one of habit-formation, for while a college education has two phases—the acquisition of facts and the formation of habits—it is the latter which is the more important. Many of the facts that you learn will be forgotten; many will be outlawed by time; but the habits of study you form will be permanent possessions. They will consist of such things as methods of grasping facts, methods of reasoning about facts, and of concentrating attention. ”

“ You must focus your efforts and bring your teaching into the range of the pupil’s mental capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering that the minimum of your knowledge of the subject without review will probably be the pupil’s maximum after study.
3. You must keep your knowledge fresh by study.—Growing minds alone are fit to teach. Stale mental stock does not create fresh mental appetites. Your attainments are of less importance than your mental habits. To teach well you must keep growing. ”

“ The simplest lessons in preparatory study are thus justified: they lead to a conscious judgment of one’s attainment. Study means nothing if it does not lead to this judgment. The power once gained, the pupil is his own best teacher, his own strongest helper. Prize, [99] then, all exercises which lead to this judgment. Instead of saying to the untrained pupil, “Read your lesson ten times,” when his present attainment or lack of attainment renders such repetition worse than useless, you will say, “Read the lesson and copy all the words whose meaning you do not know.” ”

“ Unless, either by special study or by daily observation and quick insight, he has gained an approximately-true conception of how minds perceive, and reflect, and generalize, and by what processes their ideas grow from concrete to abstract, and from simple to complex, no one is competent to give lessons that will effectually teach, or to ask questions which will effectually measure the efficiency of teaching. ”

“ And lastly in the highest teachings, which have to do, not with the objective surroundings, but with the man himself, with his thoughts and aspirations, with the expression of these in literature, in art, in ethics, and politics, and philosophy, the student will find enough to develop the highest powers of thought, as he wrestles with the problems of life, when he has reached the later period of study. ”

“ The relation of the mind to a study is determined by the nature of the mind and the nature of the study, and there seems to be no reason in psychology why a college-preparatory subject should be taught differently to one fitting for the duties of life. ”

“ All the school studies have a use, to be sure—a direct use—in giving us something to help us in life in one way and another. But besides this, we get another help from study; namely, the employment of the mind in the right way. ”

“ At present our education combines a thorough study of a few abstractions, with a slighter study of a larger number of abstractions. We are too exclusively bookish in our scholastic routine. The general training should aim at eliciting our concrete apprehensions, and should satisfy the itch of youth to be doing something. There should be some analysis even here, but only just enough to illustrate the ways of thinking in diverse spheres. ”

“ We estimate a man’s worth by his intellectual grasp, his æsthetic and ethical insight, and his power for action toward right and useful ends. If these characteristics make the ideal man, they should be the ideal aim of education, and a study is to be valued as it best contributes toward developing them. The same test of efficiency is to be applied to the whole curriculum of a school period. ”

“ It is to enable the student, at least the more serious student, to slip the trammels of the elective system, and to study rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the subject or group of subjects which he prefers. ”

“ We assert, then, that from a course or manner of instruction from which those characteristics of true study—real work of the learner's faculties, and a just consecution of steps—are largely omitted or excluded, the best sort of intellectual education can not, in the majority of instances, accrue. ”

“ In spite of helpful reductions in the curriculum from other sources, we must look to proper method of study as the principal means by which work for both the teacher and the pupil will be made lighter, more effective, and more enjoyable. ”

“ In addition to the training in observation, memory, expression, and inductive reasoning which most studies offer, we must consider the development of imagination, right emotion, and right will. In other words, æsthetic and ethical training is most essential. Secondary schools need not employ formal courses of study to this end, but various means may be employed incidentally. ”

“ They will have to be shown simple facts and truths, and have their mental relations and importance explained. By gradually introducing new knowledge as occasion offers, the field of study is sufficiently widened. ”

“ There is no such thing as a valuable observation and investigation of natural objects without language in which to embody the results at every step." (Geo. P. Brown.) Report on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen. With annotations by Geo. P. Brown.
[86] "Of course, there is great difference between the disciplinary value of that study in which the pupil solves his own difficulties and that teaching in which the teacher accompanies the pupil, supplying the needed information or suggestion at every step of his progress. ”

“ Study, in the ordinary acceptation, there should be none during this period, not even reading or writing. An acquaintance with facts of various kinds, such as may spontaneously attract the growing powers of attention, will be the only instruction received. ”

“ In the first place we should select subjects for study that are of real interest because they bear upon some problem that concerns us. Whenever we begin to read a book, or undertake any topic of study, it should be done with a definite purpose in mind. ”

“ Each will be dealt with in connection with the above factors, their consideration immediately following the discussion of each of those factors. While the proper method of study for adults will lead, much emphasis will fall, throughout, upon suggestions for teaching children how to study. ”

“ She will accustom them to responsibility for discovering the bearings of observations in nature-study, of stories, work in color, etc., on their home lives, and thus pave the way for collecting knowledge under guidance of definite aims. ”

“ Ever throughout life he will by study and experience deepen and extend his knowledge, but it is earnestly to be desired that he should have some leisure for definite preparation by the study of education as an art, a science, a philosophy, before entering on his responsible work. ”

“ What, then, are these studial methods? Roughly speaking, we may say that they comprise all those forms of work which require on the part of the student conscious efforts of attention; work in which he must think, reflect, or calculate; work necessitating the exercise of his reasoning powers, work which cannot be performed automatically; this constitutes conscious work, and all methods embodying conscious work become ipso facto studial methods. ”

“ Note the value of this word mastery. The pupil fast becomes independent of [85] the teacher, and ready to master the page for himself. Note, also, that this power becomes his in proportion to the teacher’s purpose to make him self-helpful, and her skill in finding the connecting link between the new knowledge and the old.
Two elements of learning to read have been presented here: sentence reading and word mastery. Of the study of the meaning of the words and the development of the power of imagination we shall speak elsewhere.
[86]
Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. ”

“ When the schools have trained the child to the use of tools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill in thinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiarities of each of the five temperaments ”

“ The general tendency among educationalists to-day is towards interesting methods, methods involving the intelligent use of the intelligence, methods which develop the reasoning capacities, methods which form the judgment, which proceed from the trivial, familiar, and known towards the more profound, unfamiliar, and unknown. ”

“ The result of these examinations in spelling, geography, arithmetic, and history of the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades was that no one of the men examined made a passing mark in any subject. The reason is that the material on which they were examined, and which the children in the schools are daily learning, is of a sort that is seldom or never met with in the business of even the most successful men engaged in commercial and professional pursuits. ”

“ Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them, than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes. ”

“ They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study. ”

“ Study then, but study first that which will most help you to help others. Work patiently at your studies, not that men may think you wise, not even that you may have the happiness of being wise, but because only the wise man can be wisely helpful. ”

“ Believe me my friend, my employment, in your field, will not interrupt my reflections. I can study better in the field, than in the chamber; it requires but little study to deliver simple, plain, gospel truth; to pervert this truth, requires a vast deal of worldly wisdom. ”

“ What is the end of study, let me know. KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know. BEROWNE. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense? KING. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. ”

“ for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. ”

“ Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; ”

“ Has the mental training and discipline of your student life developed in you a love of knowledge for its own sake, irrespective of its utility in fitting you to pass examinations and thereby to enter upon the occupations you have chosen? Has the insight you have obtained into the several branches of knowledge, created in your hearts a reverence for learning, and a desire to add to your knowledge, day by day and year by year, and to expend your best energies in the pursuit of truth? ”

“ The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view, as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom. ”

“ This is the very essence of education, its informing spirit. The student no longer thinks merely of becoming an expert turner; he thinks of becoming a man! All the powers of his mind are roused to vigorous action; imagination illumes the path, and reason, following with firm but cautious step, drives straight to the mark. Rapid development results from the combination of practice with theory—rapid because orderly, or natural. ”