Aid Study - Sitemap

1. Seriousness of the Evil - No doubt every one can recall peculiar methods of study that he or some one else has at some time followed. During my attendance at high school I often studied aloud at home, along with several other temporary or permanent members of the family. I remember becoming exasperated at times by one of my girl companions.

2. Nature of Study - Our physical movements ordinarily take place in response to a need of some sort. For instance, a person wishing to reach a certain point, to play a certain game, or to lay the foundations for a house, makes such movements as are necessary to accomplish the purpose desired. Even mere physical exercise grows out of a more or less specific feeling of need.

3. Specific Purposes - The scientific investigator habitually sets up hypoth­eses of some sort as guides in his investigations. any distinguished men who are not scientists follow and recommend a somewhat similar method of study.

For example, John Morley, M.P., in his Aspects of Modern Study,1 says, "Some great men, — Gibbon was one and Daniel Webster was another and the great Lord Strafford was a third, — always, before reading a book, made a short, rough analysis of the questions which they expected to be answered in it, the additions to be made to their knowl­edge, and whither it would take them.

4. Supplementing Thought - In the preceding chapter the importance of study­ing under the influence of specific purposes was urged. These are such purposes as the student really desires to accomplish by the study of text or of other matter placed before him. Since they are not usually included in such matter, but must be conceived by the student himself, they consti­tute a very important kind of supplement to whatever statements may be offered for study.

5. Organization - In several branches of knowledge in the primary school it is customary for teachers to attach practically the same importance to different facts. This is the case, for instance, in spelling, where a mistake counts the same, no matter what word be misspelled. It is largely the case in writing. In beginning reading one word is treated as equal in value to any other, since in any review list every one is required.

6. Worth of Statements - We have already seen that proper study places much responsibility upon the student. Instead of allowing him to be an aimless collector of facts, it requires him to discover specific purposes that the facts may serve. With such purposes in mind he must supplement authors' statements in numerous ways, and also pass judgment on their relative values. This all requires much aggressiveness.

7. Memorizing - "All the intellectual value for us of a state of mind depends on our after-memory of it," says Professor James.

In other words, there would be little object in reading, or reflection, or travel, or in experience in general, if such experience could not later be recalled so as to be further enjoyed and used. Want of reference thus far to memory does not therefore, signify any lack of appreciation of its worth. No time is likely to come when a low estimate will be placed upon memory.

8. Using of Ideas - The student has accomplished much when he has discovered some of the closer relations that a topic bears to life; when he has supplemented the thought of the author; when he has determined the relative importance of different parts and given them a corresponding organization; when he has passed judgment on their soundness and general worth; and when, finally, he has gone through whatever drill is necessary to fix the ideas firmly in his memory.

9. Tentative Attitude - A fixed attitude toward facts and conclusions is harmful in several ways. The following incidents suggest how greatly it interferes with the usefulness of knowledge.

A certain man living in one of the suburbs of Greater New York was commissioned by his wife to buy some flannel for her at one of the large department stores in the city. She knew exactly what she wanted, for she had already purchased some of the goods at this store. So she gave her husband a sample, with the explicit knowledge. directions, emphasized, that the new piece should be of exactly the same quality, with white edges, and one yard wide.

10. Individuality - There was a time when people seemed to take pride in self-depreciation. Believing in total depravity, they were suspicious of all natural tendencies, and the crushing out of strong desires seemed no evil. Obedience to Another's will was the one supreme virtue, and the killing of human nature, the annihilation of self, was the condition of its attainment.1

11. Meaning of Study - True or logical study is not aimless mental activity or a passive reception of ideas only for the sake of having them. It is the vigorous application of the mind to a subject for the satisfaction of a felt need. The meaning Instead of being aimless, every portion of effort put forth is an organic step toward the accom­plishment of a specific purpose; instead of being pas­sive, it requires the reaction of the self upon the ideas presented, until they are supplemented, organized, and tentatively judged, so that they are held well in memory.

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