Maggie's Farm

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., : "The imitative or memorizing faculties only are cultivated, and little or no attention is paid to the thinking or reflective powers. Indeed it may almost be said that a child of any originality or with individual characteristics is looked upon as wholly out of place in a public school. ... To skate is as difficult as to write; probably more difficult. Yet in spite of hard teaching in the one case and no teaching in the other, the boy can skate beautifully, and he cannot write his native tongue at all."

"Scientific Common-school Education." Harper's Magazine,
November, 1880

The evil is most serious with young children because of their youth. Many of them, while making good progress in the three R's, outgrow their tendency to ask questions and to raise objections, in other words lose their mental boldness or originality, by the time they have attended school four years. But all along, from the kindergarten to the college, there is almost a likelihood that the self will be undermined while acquiring knowledge, and that, in consequence, one will become permanently weakened while supposedly being educated. In this respect it is dangerous to attend a school of any grade.

--How to Study and Teaching How to Study (1909) by F. M. McMurry

No doubt every one can recall peculiar methods study that he or some one else has at some time followed. During my attendance at high school, I often studied aloud at home along with several other temporary or permanent members of the family. I remember becoming exasperated at times by one of my girl companions. She not only read her history aloud, but as she read she stopped to repeat each sentence five times with great vigor. Although the din interfered with my own work, I could not help but admire her endurance; for the physical labor of mastering a lesson was certainly equal to that of a good farm hand, for the same period of time.

This way of studying history seemed ridiculous. But the method pursued by myself and several others in beginning algebra at about the time was not greatly superior. Our text-book contained several long sets of problems which were the terror of the class and scarcely one of which we able to solve alone. We had several friends, however, who could solve them and by calling upon them help, we obtained the "statement" for each one. All these statements I memorized, and in that way I was able to "pass off" the subject

A few years later, when a school principal, I had a fifteen-year-old boy in my school who was intolerably lazy. His ambition was temporarily aroused, however, when he bought a new book and began the study of history. He happened to be the first one called upon in the first recitation and he started off finely. But soon he stopped, in the middle of a sentence and sat down. When I asked him what was the matter, he simply replied that that was as far as he had got. Then, on glancing at the book, I saw that he had been reproducing the text verbatim and the last word that he had uttered was the last word on the first page.

These few examples suggest the extremes to which young people may go in their methods of study. The first instance might illustrate the muscular method of learning history; the second the memoriter method of reasoning in mathematics. I have never been able to imagine how the boy, in the third case, went about his task; hence, I can suggest no name for his method.

While these methods of study are ridiculous. I am not at all sure that they are in a high degree exceptional. The most extensive investigation of examples of this subject has been made by Dr Lida B. Earhart, and the facts that she has collected reveal a woeful ignorance of the whole subject of study.