Preface

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.

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-butter 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.

But labour alone will not produce gains unless properly and intelligently directed. Misdirected labour, though honest and well-intentioned, may 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 labour may be largely in vain. He may pass 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 mass 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 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 assumed 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, 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.

The Proper Mental Attitude

The first essential is that the student should have the proper mental attitude. That attitude 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 passes the test of his own understanding. Mental courage, therefore, is essential for a proper 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, nobody 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 assumed. 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

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: RITTIK CHANDRA
Bildmaterialien: RITTIK CHANDRA
Lektorat: RITTIK CHANDRA
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.12.2013
ISBN: 978-3-7309-7282-3

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