HOW TO STUDY EFFECTIVELY
By Guy Montrose Whipple

Excerpt from Introduction

Not long ago I was asked by a group of high-school students to present to them some suggestions on the technique of studying, with the idea that better knowledge of the methods by which school work could be prepared might increase their efficiency as students. A survey of the available literature seemed to warrant the conclusion that, despite the existence of a number of books upon the art of study, there was still room for another treatment that should be limited to the direct laying down of a series of rules or maxims, with just sufficient explanatory comment to make them readily intelligible and serviceable for the needs of the average high-school or college student. I judge that many students in our high schools and colleges are not now working under the best possible conditions, and that they would be glad to increase their efficiency, if only they knew how to do it. The rules which follow are intended to help these students. Most of the suggestions could also be profitably kept in mind by elementary-school teachers, whose business it should be as early as possible to develop right habits of study in their pupils.

While it is true that much of what is presented in the school is calculated to appeal directly to the native interests of students, to elicit their curiosity, and to challenge their attention, it is equally true that most studying is real work, and that most boys and girls have to acquire the art of studying as they have to acquire many other habits and skills necessary to success in life. Moreover, conditions in many elementary schools are unfortunately such as to promote only the most superficial kind of studying, to put a premium upon the mere committing to memory of words, to permit fickle and ill-sustained attention and the avoidance of hard intellectual work. Students in both high school and college have been studying, it is true, for years, but too often they have not been studying efficiently, have not formed right habits of mental work, and indeed, do not even know how to go about the development of an adequate method or plan for such work. They are often unable to recognize as such the problems set before them, nor do they have clear ideas as to the methods by which problems should be solved. Neither do they know fully how to deal with those ‘lessons’ that must be ‘learned’ more or less verbatim. For by ‘studying’ I mean to include the ‘getting of lessons, ’ like learning a list of words in spelling, as well as studying in the sense of solving problems and making an investigatory examination and critical survey of a topic…

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