How To Study and Teaching How To Study | Page 9

the problems
concerning study; indeed, it is the one in which all the others culminate.
The ability of children to study
The above constitute the principal factors in study. But two other
problems are of vital importance for the elementary school.

Studying is evidently a complex and taxing kind of work. Even though
the above discussions reveal the main factors in the study of adults,
what light does it throw upon the work of children? Is their study to
contain these factors also? The first of these two questions, therefore, is,
Can children from six to fourteen years of age really be expected to
study?
It is not the custom in German elementary schools to include
independent study periods in the daily program. More than that, the
German language does not even permit children to be spoken of as
studying. Children are recognized as being able to learn (lernen); but
the foreigner, who, in learning German, happens to use the word
studiren (study) in reference to them, is corrected with a smile and
informed that "children can learn but they cannot study." Studiren is a
term applicable only to a more mature kind of mental work.
This may be only a peculiarity of language. But such suggestions
should at least lead us to consider this question seriously. If children
really cannot study, what an excuse their teachers have for innumerable
failures in this direction! And what sins they have committed in
demanding study! But, then, when is the proper age for study reached?
Certainly college students sometimes seem to have failed to attain it. If,
however, children can study, to what extent can they do it, and at how
early an age should they begin to try?
The method of teaching children how to study
The second of these two questions relates to the method of teaching
children how to study. Granted that there are numerous very important
factors in study, what should be done about them? Particularly,
assuming that children have some power to study, what definite
instruction can teachers give to them in regard to any one or all of these
factors?
Can it be that, on account of their youth, no direct instruction about
method of study would be advisable, that teachers should set a good
example of study by their treatment of lessons in class, and rely only
upon the imitative tendency of children for some effect on their habits

of work? Or should extensive instruction be imparted to them, as well
as to adults, on this subject?
The leading problems in study that have been mentioned will be
successively discussed in the chapters following. These two questions,
however, Can children study? and If so, how can they be taught to do it?
will not be treated in chapters separate from the others. 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.
Some limitations of the term study
The nature of study cannot be known in full until the character of its
component parts has been clearly shown. Yet a working definition of
the term and some further limitations of it may be in place here.
Study, in general, is the work that is necessary in the assimilation of
ideas. Much of this work consists in thinking. But study is not
synonymous with thinking, for it also includes other activities, as
mechanical drill, for example. Such drill is often necessary in the
mastery of thought.
Not just any thinking and any drill, however, may be counted as study.
At least only such thinking and such drill are here included within the
term as are integral parts of the mental work that is necessary in the
accomplishment of valuable purposes. Thinking that is done at random,
and drills that have no object beyond acquaintance with dead facts, as
those upon dates, lists of words, and location of places, for instance, are
unworthy of being considered a part of study.
Day-dreaming, giving way to reverie and to casual fancy, too, is not to
be regarded as study. Not because it is not well to indulge in such
activity at times, but because it is not serious enough to be called work.
Study is systematic work, and not play. Reading for recreation, further,
is not study. It is certainly very desirable and even necessary, just as
play is. It even partakes of many of the characteristics of true study, and

reaps many of its benefits. No doubt, too, the extensive reading that
children and youth now do might well partake more fully of the nature
of study. It would result in more good and less harm;