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Page 32
You now see why 'cramming' must be so poor a mode of study. Cramming
seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the
ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations. On the
other hand, the same thing recurring on different days, in different
contexts, read, recited on, referred to again and again, related to
other things and reviewed, gets well wrought into the mental structure.
This is the reason why you should enforce on your pupils habits of
continuous application. There is no moral turpitude in cramming. It
would be the best, because the most economical, mode of study if it led
to the results desired. But it does not, and your older pupils can
readily be made to see the reason why.
It follows also, from what has been said, that _the popular idea that
'the Memory,' in the sense of a general elementary faculty, can be
improved by training, is a great mistake_. Your memory for facts of a
certain class can be improved very much by training in that class of
facts, because the incoming new fact will then find all sorts of
analogues and associates already there, and these will keep it liable to
recall. But other kinds of fact will reap none of that benefit, and,
unless one have been also trained and versed in _their_ class, will be
at the mercy of the mere crude retentiveness of the individual, which,
as we have seen, is practically a fixed quantity. Nevertheless, one
often hears people say: "A great sin was committed against me in my
youth: my teachers entirely failed to exercise my memory. If they had
only made me learn a lot of things by heart at school, I should not be,
as I am now, forgetful of everything I read and hear." This is a great
mistake: learning poetry by heart will make it easier to learn and
remember other poetry, but nothing else; and so of dates; and so of
chemistry and geography.
But, after what I have said, I am sure you will need no farther argument
on this point; and I therefore pass it by.
But, since it has brought me to speak of learning things by heart, I
think that a general practical remark about verbal memorizing may now
not be out of place. The excesses of old-fashioned verbal memorizing,
and the immense advantages of object-teaching in the earlier stages of
culture, have perhaps led those who philosophize about teaching to an
unduly strong reaction; and learning things by heart is now probably
somewhat too much despised. For, when all is said and done, the fact
remains that verbal material is, on the whole, the handiest and most
useful material in which thinking can be carried on. Abstract
conceptions are far and away the most economical instruments of thought,
and abstract conceptions are fixed and incarnated for us in words.
Statistical inquiry would seem to show that, as men advance in life,
they tend to make less and less use of visual images, and more and more
use of words. One of the first things that Mr. Galton discovered was
that this appeared to be the case with the members of the Royal Society
whom he questioned as to their mental images. I should say, therefore,
that constant exercise in verbal memorizing must still be an
indispensable feature in all sound education. Nothing is more
deplorable than that inarticulate and helpless sort of mind that is
reminded by everything of some quotation, case, or anecdote, which it
cannot now exactly recollect. Nothing, on the other hand, is more
convenient to its possessor, or more delightful to his comrades, than a
mind able, in telling a story, to give the exact words of the dialogue
or to furnish a quotation accurate and complete. In every branch of
study there are happily turned, concise, and handy formulas which in an
incomparable way sum up results. The mind that can retain such formulas
is in so far a superior mind, and the communication of them to the pupil
ought always to be one of the teacher's favorite tasks.
In learning 'by heart,' there are, however, efficient and inefficient
methods; and, by making the pupil skilful in the best method, the
teacher can both interest him and abridge the task. The best method is
of course not to 'hammer in' the sentences, by mere reiteration, but to
analyze them, and think. For example, if the pupil should have to learn
this last sentence, let him first strip out its grammatical core, and
learn, "The best method is not to hammer in, but to analyze," and then
add the amplificative and restrictive clauses, bit by bit, thus: "The
best method is of course not to hammer in _the sentences_, but to
analyze _them and think_." Then finally insert the words '_by mere
reiteration_,' and the sentence is complete, and both better understood
and quicker remembered than by a more purely mechanical method.
* * * * *
In conclusion, I must say a word about the contributions to
our knowledge of memory which have recently come from the
laboratory-psychologists. Many of the enthusiasts for scientific or
brass-instrument child-study are taking accurate measurements of
children's elementary faculties, and among these what we may call
_immediate memory_ admits of easy measurement. All we need do is to
exhibit to the child a series of letters, syllables, figures, pictures,
or what-not, at intervals of one, two, three, or more seconds, or to
sound a similar series of names at the same intervals, within his
hearing, and then see how completely he can reproduce the list, either
directly, or after an interval of ten, twenty, or sixty seconds, or some
longer space of time. According to the results of this exercise, the
pupils may be rated in a memory-scale; and some persons go so far as to
think that the teacher should modify her treatment of the child
according to the strength or feebleness of its faculty as thus made
known.
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