How To Study and Teaching How To Study | Page 8

at any rate--about actually bringing it to
account in any way?
The use to which his ideas had to be put gave Dr. Reed an excellent test
of their reliability. No doubt he passed through many stages of doubt as
he investigated one theory after another. And he could not feel
reasonably sure that he was right and had mastered his problem until
his final hypothesis had been shown to hold good under varying actual
conditions.
What test has the ordinary student for knowing when he knows a thing
well enough to leave it? He may set up specific purposes to be

accomplished, as has been suggested. Yet even these may be only ideas;
what means has he for knowing when they have been attained? It is a
long distance from the first approach to an important thought, to its
final assimilation, and nothing is easier than to stop too soon. If there
are any waymarks along the road, indicating the different stages
reached; particularly, if there is a recognizable endpoint assuring
mastery, one might avoid many dangerous headers by knowing the fact.
Or is that particularly what recitations and marks are for? And instead
of expecting an independent way of determining when he has mastered
a subject, should the student simply rely upon his teacher to acquaint
him with that fact?
7. The tentative attitude as a seventh factor in study
Investigators of the source of yellow fever previous to Dr. Reed
reached conclusions as well as he. But, in the light of later discovery,
they appear hasty and foolish, to the extent that they were insisted upon
as correct. A large percentage of the so-called discoveries that are made,
even by laboratory experiment, are later disproved. Even in regard to
this very valuable work of Dr. Reed and his associates, one may feel
too sure. It is quite possible that future study will materially supplement
and modify our present knowledge of the subject. The scientist,
therefore, may well assume an attitude of doubt toward all the results
that he achieves.
Does the same hold for the young student? Is all our knowledge more
or less doubtful, so that we should hold ourselves ready to modify our
ideas at any time? And, remembering the common tendency to become
dogmatic and unprogressive on that account, should the young student,
in particular, regard some degree of uncertainty about his facts as the
ideal state of mind for him to reach? Or would such uncertainty too
easily undermine his self-confidence and render him vacillating in
action? And should firmly fixed ideas, rather than those that are
somewhat uncertain, be regarded as his goal, so that the extent to which
he feels sure of his knowledge may be taken as one measure of his
progress? Or can it be that there are two kinds of knowledge? That
some facts are true for all time, and can be learned as absolutely true;

and that others are only probabilities and must be treated as such? In
that case, which is of the former kind, and which is of the latter?
8. Provision for individuality as an eighth factor in study
The scientific investigator must determine upon his own hypotheses; he
must collect and organize his data, must judge their soundness and
trace their consequences; and he must finally decide for himself when
he has finished a task. All this requires a high degree of intellectual
independence, which is possible only through a healthy development of
individuality, or of the native self.
A normal self giving a certain degree of independence and even a touch
of originality to all of his thoughts and actions is essential to the
student's proper advance, as to the work of the scientist. Should the
student, therefore, be taught to believe in and trust himself, holding his
own powers and tendencies in high esteem? Should he learn even to
ascribe whatever merit he may possess to the qualities that are peculiar
to him? And should he, accordingly, look upon the ideas and influences
of other persons merely as a means--though most valuable--for the
development of this self that he holds so sacred? Or should he learn to
depreciate himself, to deplore those qualities that distinguish him from
others? And should he, in consequence, regard the ideas and influences
of others as a valuable means of suppressing, or escaping from, his
native self and of making him like other persons?
Here are two very different directions in which one may develop. In
which direction does human nature most tend? In which direction do
educational institutions, in particular, exert their influence? Does the
average student, for example, subordinate his teachers and the ideas he
acquires to himself? Or does he become subordinated to these, even
submerged by them? This is the most important of all