Ed from books. To teach the child to study effectively is to do the most
useful thing that could be done to help him to adjust himself to any
environment of modern civilized life into which he may be thrown. For
there is one thing that the more radical advocates of a narrow
vocational education commonly forget, and that is the constant change
that is going on in industrial processes. When we limit our vocational
teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the
process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years
from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so
extremely important to-day may be relatively insignificant by the time
that the child whom we are training takes his place in the industrial
world. But if we can arm the individual with the more fundamental
principles which are fixed for all time; and if, in addition to this, we
can teach him how to master the specialized principles which may come
into the field unheralded and unexpected, and turn topsy-turvy the older
methods of doing his work, then we shall have done much toward helping
him in solving that perplexing problem of gaining a livelihood. II I
shall not try in this discussion of the problem of study to summarize
completely the principles and precepts that have been presented so well
in the four books on the subject that have appeared in the last two
years. I do not know, in fact, of any book that is more useful to the
teacher just at present than Professor Frank McMurry's _How to Study and
Teaching how to S
|