How to Learn Easily/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
OBSERVATION AND THE TAKING OF NOTES
Our first more explicit discussion is on observation, (in the very broad and useful psychologic usage of the term) and then on the taking of notes. Most of our learning comes from this Cosmos, this "environment",—our surroundings, spiritual and material, finite and infinite. The relation between the Cosmos and our minds is dependent largely upon the process of observation, including the observing of our own minds. The term observation suggests an important element of learning; in fact, learning is unthinkable without it, especially perhaps in the natural sciences, of which there are now so many. Observation is obviously a form of note-taking; it is taking notes and writing them "on the tablets of the memory", on brain instead of on paper.
There are two kinds of observation. There is a primary knowledge of nature outdoors, and under somewhat artificial conditions in the laboratory; and then a secondary or mediate process, observation of books and of other, e.g., pictorial, descriptions of the original observations by others. Both of these forms of observation furnish material for note-taking.
Direct observation requires a habit of the continually sensitive and accurate use of the sense-organs; organs of movement-sensation, of hearing, of touch, smell, heat and cold, sometimes singly but sometimes, too, all at once.
Observation always should be explicit; in fact, unless it be explicit, it is not observation at all, but a form of "wool-gathering." In many cases it must be minutely explicit in order to be of any value. Further details often lend things a wholly new aspect, details which have not before been noticed, and thus lead sometimes to important discoveries. All of this process of observation involves a fine adjustment (by means of muscles and nerves and sometimes obvious glands) of the sense-organs. "Trifles make perfection but perfection is no trifle," and thus it is in this phase, the detailed phase, of observation.
On the other hand, observation must be also a process of observing things in their entirety and in their general relation to environment. We must not always miss the ocean's grandeur for study, however scientific, of the waves upon the shore, any more than we ought to miss the beauty of a forest because of the crowded trees. There is chance for varied observation in street-cars and in trains! Travel supplies the material for much observation and also the stimulus to use this power. Observation exercises the mind, while the travel tones us up and rests our organism. In general terms, direct observation is incompatible with book-study because it almost inevitably distracts the interest therefrom. This is one of the difficulties of travel, as used to be the mode, in order to study; we forget to study, and this inconsistency is natural.
Another matter: this habit of minute adjustment of the senses involves a disregarding of whatever is already familiar, so that, in a way, for effective observation we have really to be familiar with whatever we suppose we are familiar with; which is to say we really have to mind our P's and Q's, for observation, as it develops, requires intelligence.
Interest is absolutely necessary. Observation depends on interest, and with interest the observation-process becomes "reflex" or automatic and therefore easy. A boy's interest in girls, for example, and a girl's interest in the fashions are practical interests which uniformly, in normal boys and girls at least, lead to a process of observation, which thus goes on continually.
There is a great amount of labor required in observation. It is not a passive process, but on the other hand demands much effort, much bodily activity, the details of which are too technical for discussion in this sketch of the nature of observation. This process of sensory muscle-adaptation is called perception. A perception is an active reaction to some object around, and requires many fine muscular adjustments; indeed these are its physiologic essence.
Sense-training of the simplest sort is one of the most important of all the elements of education, but for the most part only the feeble-minded children have the advantages of it! But no one, scarcely, is too old or too normal to develop at least a greater efficiency in this the very basis of intelligence. The elementary educational system is at fault to omit sense-training whatever else it might have to omit to give it room! Natural, spontaneous sense-training comes from natural interests, but it is only a fraction of what it might become by being trained. Few people yet realize how utterly different things and events appear to different observers even under precisely the same objective conditions. Professor J. McKeen Cattell, of Columbia University, years ago made some striking demonstrations of this difference. A two-colored quadrangular card was exposed for a short time to a dozen or two intelligent persons singly, and when the drawings of what each "subject" saw were compared it was found that only two perceived the square red-and-green area alike, and these not exactly so, despite the mere chance of perceiving similarly. To quote the researcher's own words as given in the Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, 1899:—
"When a moving surface is exhibited as it passes under a window in a screen it appears larger than the window. If green is exhibited first for second, followed by red for second, the observer does not see green followed by red, but the two colors are seen side by side, variously arranged and intermingled, filling a larger area than the window through which they are seen. A series of physical and physiological processes in time makes for perception a spatial continuum. In this case, however, the same physical stimulus gives rise to entirely different perceptions with different observers, indicating that the processes of visual perception are largely built up by the individual.
"When in the ordinary vision of daily life the line of sight moves over objects, say the books on a shelf, each retinal element is successively stimulated, but the objects are seen simultaneously, side by side. In this case the intermittent stimulations may occur as rapidly rapi as 1000 per second without any fusion or blurring. This fact indicates that fusion and, indeed, all the phenomena of color-vision, are cerebral rather than retinal.
"These experiments, demonstrating as they do that a time series is perceived as a space continuum when this is advantageous for our reactions, show anew that our perceptions are not 'copies' of a physical world or correlates of simple physiological processes, but are dependent on experience and utility."
Thus sense-perception, observation, in the young child is far more even than it appears to be, for it builds the very foundations of the mind. How long is our system of general education for normal children to accept, but idly, the obvious reproach that the mental defectives at the present time in some schools (for example that founded and developed by Seguin and now ably directed by Dr. Walter Elmore Fernald in Waverley, Massachusetts), that the feeble minded are given more careful sense-training than is to be had by other more successful children in the "grades"?
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, at the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Washington, 1916, in the course of a timely paper entitled "The Changes Needed in American Secondary Education" spoke the long-necessary words for sense-training and for motor-training—obviously only complementary phases of the one and the same process carried on by nerve-circuits, muscles, and glands—in short for perceiving and doing as the basis of all education worth the getting and having. For ten years the present writer has been attempting to work out the psychobiology of this very matter, the sanction of the body and its life, each of us in his own personal apotheosis ere he dies. But the sceptics (in the university trustee-boards no more than in the city slums) will not learn the story—yet! But Dr. Eliot says:
"It follows from these considerations that the training of the senses should always have been a prime object in human education, at every stage from primary to professional. That prime object it has never been, and is not to-day. The kind of education the modern world has inherited from ancient times was based chiefly on literature. Its principal materials, beside some elementary mathematics, were sacred and profane writings, both prose and poetry, including descriptive narration, history, philosophy, and religion; but accompanying this tradition of language and literature was another highly useful transmission from ancient times—the study of the fine arts, with the many kinds of skill that are indispensable to artistic creation. Wherever in Europe the cultivation of the fine arts has survived in vigor, there the varied skill of the artist in music, painting, sculpture, and architecture has been a saving element in national education, although it affected strongly only a limited number of persons. The English nation was less influenced by artistic culture than the nations of the Continent. American secondary and higher education copied English models, and were also injuriously affected by the Puritan, Genevan, Scotch-Presbyterian, and Quaker disdain for the fine arts. As a result the programs of secondary schools in the United States allotted only an insignificant portion of school time to the cultivation of the senses through music and drawing; and, until lately, boys and girls in secondary schools did not have their attention directed to the fine arts by any outside or voluntary organizations. As a rule, the young men admitted to American colleges can neither draw nor sing; and they possess no other skill of eye, ear, or hand.
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Thus we have to learn to observe much as we have to learn to become skilful. Skill is the same process as accurate sense-perception; and voluntary attention is another psychophysical operation which involves perfect and general bodily control, and must be taken in a general and broad sense of bodily fitness. It includes at least five fundamental states and processes: (1) it involves vigor; (2) it involves a great deal of initiative; (3) it involves mental quickness (wit) and (4) sensitivity to every educating influence; and, (5) self-confidence is indispensable. Intelligence itself (which is only a larger name for skill) is but a fine adaptation to and appreciation of one's effective environment, spiritual and material. Skill in its essence is a cursive general voluntary power finely to adjust the muscles, and those used in the adaptations of the sense organs in some cases, especially. Since there is no mental process without muscular innervation, skill is obviously closely allied to intellect,—even though the syllogism here employed be imperfect. More than a hundred years ago the famous Pestalozzi said, as already quoted: "No learning without skill",—a dictum for pedagogy so basal as to be worth repetition for the sake of emphasis. The whole relation of the mind and body is involved in an actual demonstration of this proposition; but it certainly can be accomplished. Skill is potential imagination of the practically constructive sort, and this we shall discuss, as a means to easy learning, in a later chapter.
Professor Münsterberg, of Harvard University, offers much timely wisdom in this matter in one of his recent books:
"We cannot emphasize too much the similarity between the external and the internal actions, between the movements of the limbs and the movements of the thoughts. To remember, to invent, to attend, to observe, to reason, means above all to adjust inner impulses to the final aim, to suppress and inhibit those which interfere and to excite and reënforce those which lead forward. The training in external actions is practically the model process for the training in all psychical abilities. If we are to gather from the training in motor abilities the principles for the training in abilities in general, we ought to put emphasis on the following psychological factors. First, we must make use of the involuntary reflexes; secondly, we must make use of the instinct to imitation; thirdly, we must resolve the complex action to be learned into its elements; fourthly, we must reënforce the activity by suggestion; and lastly, we must mechanize the process by repetition.
"The involuntary motor impulses and reflexes are indeed the given material without which no development of voluntary powers can be understood. There are numberless short cuts and substitutions, but somehow all learning of an intentional activity starts from the experience of involuntary reactions which come up from the inborn psychophysical dispositions. In a corresponding way we have to accept the tendency to imitation as the inborn disposition which is not learned, but which precedes learning. No child could learn to speak who had not the instinctive impulse, first, to produce sounds, and secondly to imitate sounds. This imitation is at first imperfect, but it is just the incompleteness of the success which drives the child forward. The most essential further step is the resolution of the action into simpler motor functions, which slowly become combined. Whether the child learns reading or writing, dancing or swimming, carpentry or piano-playing, the whole set of simultaneous and successive movements must be built up by imitating the single actions which in themselves are useless for the final purpose.
"A skilful training demands no less the suppression of opposing impulses, and this is the place where suggestion has its chief task. Finally, there is no learning of motor ability without repetition: every new performance decreases the resistance in the motor path until the response to the stimulus becomes automatic. The formation of such habits is the significant end. The trained piano player does not exert his will for the special finger movements. As soon as the idea of playing controls his motor setting, the black dots on the paper produce the immediate impulse to the right finger-actions. It is evident that the coöperation of these five psychophysical factors demands the most perfect adjustment, if the result is to be reached in the shortest time, with the smallest effort and with the most finished effect. The desirable alternation between periods of training and periods of rest, the rhythm and rapidity of repetition of one group of movements before a new set is learned, the most economic analysis of the complex, the various habits of manipulation and control, the associations formed between the sensory impressions and the actions and many other factors must determine the advance."
These each and all are contributions, or might be well so used, as to how to learn easily at any age.
Professor J. B. Watson, of Johns Hopkins University, is at present engaged in elaborate research which will greatly extend the work of Bechterew in Petrograd and will show anew how easily made are many highly useful bodily associations through the extremely adaptive system of nerve-units. In a recent address before the American Psychological Association, he summarized the matter somewhat as follows, (in which "reflex" denotes the associate reaction in some cases):—
"As Bechterew's students affirm, we find that a simple way to produce the reflex is to give a sound-stimulus in conjunction with a strong electro-tactual stimulus. Bechterew's students use the reflex withdrawal of the foot: the subject sits with the bare foot resting on two metal electrodes. When the faradic stimulation is given, the foot is jerked up from the metal electrodes. The movements of the foot are recorded graphically upon smoked paper. . . . We found that the reflex appears in the finger as readily as in the toe. So satisfactory and convenient is this last method that we have adopted it in all our later work with human subjects. A bank of keys is provided which enables the experimenter (he is in a different room of course, from the subject) to give at will the sound of a bell coincidently with the current or separate from the current. In beginning work upon any new subject we first sound the bell alone to see if it will directly produce the reflex. We have never yet, even after repeated stimulations, been able to get the reflex evoked by the bell alone prior to the electro-tactual stimulation. We give next the bell and shock simultaneously for about five trials; then again offer the bell. If the reaction does not appear, we give five more stimulations with the bell and current simultaneously—etc. The conditioned reflex makes its appearance at first haltingly, i.e., it will appear once and then disappear. Punishment (faradism) is then given again. It may next appear twice in succession and again disappear. After a time it begins to appear regularly every time the bell is offered. In the best cases we begin to get a conditioned reflex after fourteen to thirty combined stimulations."
Such easily-formed new associations constitute the bodily basis, in part, of those numberless sets of delicate adjustments of the muscles and glands and sense organs on which depends that capability which, lacking a better word, we have termed skill. No constructive mental process, i.e., no learning, is possible without this marvellous ease of association-sets between the numerous different muscles and sense-organs of the learner, and between the learner as an individual and his surroundings or "environment" both of a material nature and of the kind we term spiritual or mental.
Nowhere are these hints as to the skilful motor basis of mental processes, e.g., learning, more appropriate than for the practice of observation. It must be noted, however, for future reference, that these same principles of facilitation will be applicable repeatedly in different phases of our counsel on easy-learning—in imagining, in studying, in reading, in thinking, in preparing for examination, and in actually performing this last climax of supposed educational cruelty.
More specifically for observation, however, and reduced to untechnical terms, expert observation requires concentrated attention (muscular adaptation under fine voluntary control) to the entire object or process under observation, both as to its details and as to its influencing surroundings. In other words, there must be adequate realization of the real nature of the object observed, and adapted attention to both its internal and its external relations. Such attention based on knowledge would seem to afford the best chance of the observation-process being efficiently productive of things new—new either to the individual or to the world as well. One might almost, though with some risk, epitomize the practical advice into informed, concentrated attention to the object and its relations.
There is a vast satisfaction, and almost a surprise, in active observation. There is no end, of course, to "the miracle of nature", and observation gives us an acquaintance with this miracle. Indeed it is observation alone which makes this endless marvel explicit in a student's mind.
Laboratory-work, shop-work, studio-work, field-work, and all the other familiar factors in present-day practical education, are but systematized material for first-hand observation. The wide success of this method of actual, first-hand doing (doing and observation are one) demonstrates its supreme importance and its thorough expediency despite its great expense of time and of money. In some professional schools it has probably gone too far; but in no elementary school the world over has it gone nearly far enough—if we exclude the kindergartens. Laboratory work makes "massive" the facts and the principles of science, fills them out and makes them solid and substantial so that they really affect the mind. For all laboratory-work a practical point of advice is, Follow the directions exactly and keep detailed and thoughtful notes of what you yourself particularly observe and learn in this practical manner. My experience in the psychological and physiological laboratories has been that that is the first definite step towards success, but very many students do not follow the directions accurately enough to be well guided in their work. Practical work is highly specialized and very complex; so that we should not fail to follow the directions exactly, all the while thinking how to develop the work. We should do no experiment save as a demonstration of some principle or of some extra-important fact. That is, we should do no mechanical work in a purely mechanical way. Most experiments done in a laboratory or problems worked out in field work are intended solely as demonstrations of some underlying principle, and if done in a mechanical way the exercise is worse than doing nothing at all and is not even rest. When true and thoughtful observation can be obtained thereby, laboratory work is the most rapidly mentally developing of all kinds of study. Demonstration of the extreme value of first-hand observation may be had in the vast amount of money and of time expended in the making, building, fitting, and running of academic and industrial laboratories. A school without adequate laboratories and assistants can be run for a small fraction of what it costs to run an institution with them, and that difference is very largely a matter of laboratory first-hand observational outfit and work. Without much money, then, such courses ought not be offered at all, and indigent schools should close up.
Actual statistics based on careful and elaborate experimentation have recently thrown new light on this matter of the relative values of different modes of instruction. For example, Doctor J. E. Mayman, of New York University, has studied physics in this regard, and reports:—
"On the basis of efficiency as measured by percental attainments, by lasting impressions on the minds of elementary school pupils, by persistence in memory, by encouragement of independent thought and self-reliance, and by popularity among the pupils the three methods rank as follows: First, experimental method; second, lecture method; third, book method. On the basis of minimal time consumption in the actual teaching of the lessons, of arousing and holding interest and attention, and of the minimal expenditure of mental and physical energy, they rank as follows: First, lecture method; second, experimental method; third, book method. On the basis of minimal time consumption by the teacher in the preparation of the lessons, they rank: First, book method; second, lecture method; third, experimental method. . . . Carefully-written notebook work and neatly-drawn diagrams of science apparatus do not increase the pupils' knowledge of elementary science. The work in elementary science must be concrete, and must be based on the daily experiences and observations of the pupil. Elementary science in elementary schools should be largely, if not entirely, qualitative, and not quantitative. As regards elementary science, elementary pupils cannot get the thought from the printed page. Simple diagrams are of no material aid."
These conclusions of Dr. Mayman speak for themselves.
One practical application of these results of trial and measurement is their demonstration of the great usefulness, in the education of a boy or girl, of home-laboratories, workshops, studios, printing-offices, museums, and so on, so often indeed found in the inner "sanctums" of boys especially—such of them at least as are fired with native energy and interest in things in general—sites of activities called by the boys themselves (at first) play.
But how much in human value is this play! and how vastly more could it be made the foundation of our school system! We certainly must remember effectively, making it a guide indeed to the reorganization which is on the way, that our system still is the system of Comenius, if not of the ancients, mostly traditional lore from a time when psychology and physiology, when the dependence of thought and of imagination and of feeling and of will on nerves and muscles and glands were still undreamed.
In the address just quoted, Dr. Eliot says:—
"The changes which ought to be made immediately in the programs of American secondary schools, in order to correct the glaring deficiencies of the present programs, are chiefly the introduction of more hand, ear, and eye work, such as drawing, carpentry, turning, music, sewing, and cooking; and the giving of much more time to the sciences of observation—chemistry, physics, biology, and geography, not political, but geological and ethnographical geography. These sciences should be taught in the most concrete manner possible—that is, in laboratories, with ample experimenting done by the individual pupil with his own eyes and hands, and in the field through the pupil's own observation guided by expert leaders. In secondary schools situated in the country the elements of agriculture should have an important place in the program, and the pupils should all work in the school gardens and experimental plats, both individually and in coöperation with others. In city schools a manual training should be given which should prepare a boy for any one of many different trades, not by familiarizing him with the details of actual work in any trade, but by giving him an all-round bodily vigor, a nervous system capable of multiform coördinated efforts, a liking for doing his best in competition with mates, and a widely applicable skill of eye and hand. Again, music should be given a substantial place in the program of every secondary school, in order that all the pupils may learn musical notation, and may get much practice in reading music and in singing. Drawing, both freehand and mechanical, should be given ample time in every secondary school program; because it is an admirable mode of expression which supplements language and is often to be preferred to it, lies at the foundation of excellence in many arts and trades, affords simultaneously good training for both eye and hand, and gives much enjoyment throughout life to the possessor of even a moderate amount of skill.
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"The suggested changes in American school programs will not make public school life harder or more fatiguing for the pupils. On the contrary, observational study and concrete teaching are more interesting to both children and adults than memory study of any sort; and whenever the interest of pupils is aroused, it brings out more concentrated attention and harder work, but causes less fatigue. The obvious utility of mental labor directed to a practical end increases the interest the pupils take in their work, and stimulates them to effective effort. To use a good tool or machine and get the results it is competent to produce when in skillful hands, is vastly more interesting than reading or hearing about the uses of such a tool or machine. Whenever, by the use of observational and concrete methods, the pupils' power of attention and of concentrated effort is developed, that power of attention once acquired can be exercised in other subjects. This principle holds true not only of manual or bodily labor but also of games and sports, and of coöperation in rhythmical movements, like dancing. The power of concentrated attention. won in carpentry, turning, forging, or farm work is easily transferred to work in reading, writing, and ciphering, or at a later stage in history, literature, and civics; so that the reduction in the so-called academic studies. made to allow the introduction of observational studies need not result in less attainment in the academic studies themselves.
"For this great improvement in the conduct of American secondary schools a good deal of preparation has already been made. The new schools of mechanic arts, the trade schools, the various endowed institutes for giving a sound training in applied science, and such institutions as the Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute are showing how to learn by actual seeing, hearing, touching, and doing, instead of by reading and committing to memory. They have proved that the mental powers, as well as the bodily powers, are strongly developed by the kind of instruction they give; so that nobody need apprehend that reduced attention to memory subjects, with increased attention to the training of the senses, the muscles, and the nerves, will result in a smaller capacity for sound thinking and for the exercise of an animating good will."
So much as to the taking of notes on the tablets of our memories. Next, as to the taking of notes on paper or (in the case of youthful remote pupils) on the slate.
It has been said sometimes even by adequate university professors of some subjects, "Do not take notes but train your minds!" Now this viewpoint is correct and perfectly sanctioned by psychology provided, always provided, that we immediately go home or to our rooms and run over in several good textbooks the very topic that we have just heard about in the lecture or recitation. The same thing may be accomplished by discussing a lecture with a party of fellow students. Otherwise, in almost all modern subjects, the taking of notes is absolutely essential. And these conditions are seldom met with in practice. In the first place, only a few students have a sufficiently complete list of textbooks on any one subject; and quite as few have the time or the occasion to review and discuss the topic or subject immediately after its presentation. Therefore the taking of notes would be one of expedience and is, on the whole, the best practicable means. Now, on certain subjects, even the suggested review, either in textbooks or by conversation, would be quite inadequate. Of a lecture on organic chemistry, for example, in which large numbers of complex compounds are discussed, only a small fraction could be retained by anyone, or, in any event, only at a wholly improper expenditure of nervous energy. The objections to note-taking were more reasonable two hundred years ago than they are now, for a century or two ago, a man of intelligence and diligence could learn pretty much everything valuable that there was to be learned. A man in a few years could learn all the science and a considerable part of the literary knowledge of the entire world. On the other hand, to-day science and learning in general are so divided up into specialties that no man can learn in a lifetime more than one per cent of the world's substantial knowledge. Hence, written notes must be taken so that they may be kept and their details and endless interrelations conned and learned at leisure outside the lecture or the recitation-room.
Another point, already stated, is that the memory is not developable. Technically, we cannot develop our memories. It is not like an ample chest (thorax) or a good disposition, but it is more like a big foot or a large ear: we are born with them and they cannot ordinarily be improved with expediency. We can train the use of our memories, but it has been demonstrated that to train the span of retention practically is impossible. Memory is a birth-gift—we have a good memory or a bad memory or an ordinary memory and we can learn how to use it.
Notes, then, become practically essential, and in part, too, because of the economy of nerve-force which the taking of notes implies. (We should not be guided generally in practice by what we actually can do it is what we can do economically that counts as of most value. In the matter of exposure, for example, it is not whether we are safely to run risks of getting pneumonia, but whether it is expedient or unwise to run these risks. It is economy to stay in the house for a few days whenever we have a bad infectious cold. So it is with nerve-expense.)
Notes are essential as a means to the formation of the habit of logical thought. It is essential that we should arrange notes so that the facts and principles in them are presented in a systematic manner and accurately and concisely. Done in this way, the taking of notes is the quickest method of putting the mind in like logical order.
Lectures, again, are full of facts and so are text-books, and one of the surest ways of providing the subconscious mind with ideas to use, is a studied and systematic arrangement of ample notes and the frequent abstracting of them. In this manner (probably through the motor activities required by the writing-process) the brain is impressed by a series of motor pathways as well as by a relatively ample number of sensory pathways. An important factor in note-taking is that the notes should be arranged scientifically, and that means logically—for example, like the adequate table of contents of an elaborate scientific book. The mind works continually on the principles of symbols and of complexes, and notes are the best possible means of providing economical food to the brain and to the mind. We should have center-headings, side-headings, under-lines, and, in many cases, the use of different colored crayons for the impression of this essential logical subdivision. These manual means represent the many different sizes of type and type-faces in a printed book.
Another reason for the use of notebooks lies in the familiar fact that ideas may come out of the associating mind and yet be wholly lost to that mind unless secured for future incorporation. In the composition of articles, the elaboration of explanations or of hypotheses, and especially in psychological and mathematical analysis, this necessity for fixing the elusive ideas is often conspicuous. Effective mind is what counts; knowledge, systems of ideas, purposes, understanding which may be used. Sturt, the idealistic logician at Oxford, expresses it well: "Truth-seeking and truth-finding are subordinate to the formation of purposes and the satisfaction of desires." Many new products, especially if somewhat incongruous with the working mind, wholly escape, and perhaps escape for good, unless recorded where, in the practical sense, they may be learned, that is made usable,—for this usability is included in all real learning, in the kindergarten as well as in the seminar.
As corollary of this approbation of note-taking is their value, often tremendous, as cues or stimuli of knowledge and thought after—perhaps many years after—the notes are made. Every thinker and every writer realizes this thoroughly. His notes serve the purposes of the sketches of the painter or the recorded themes, motifs, and "snatches" of the creative musician. In general the old-time and now outworn adynamic notion of mind has sometimes unduly prejudiced the value of notes, oftentimes the seed of a rich harvest, immediate or remote. It is perhaps not generally enough realized that a mind may produce things and then utterly lose them.
A notebook should be made of large pages, loose pages preferably, and unruled, so that we shall not be confined to handwriting of a certain size. If unruled paper is used we have not only a chance for much more freedom in that respect, but a chance also for pictures. An 8 × 11 inch note-book is ideal. Pocket notebooks are extremely important. We should take a notebook with us almost wherever we go, if we are strongly ambitious to learn broadly and accurately as the years go past. These "commonplace books" in a way serve also as a history of our education.
In the taking of notes the use of abbreviations is of the utmost importance. We should develop easily a code of our own; shorthand is almost indispensable for the student, but we can easily develop a useful system of abbreviations of our personal invention much more quickly than we realize; in the passing years such a system will save much time. These abbreviations are for the purpose of saving time, not paper. In lieu of a fountain pen, use plenty of soft pencils; and acquire the habit of using many colored grease-crayons.
Diagrams are sometimes of immense importance in the taking of notes; in general they are of value as much according to their simplicity as at other times according to their complexity; so we must not refuse to copy a diagram because, as we often hear, "I cannot draw." We acquire the habit of drawing diagrams much faster than we realize, and, when drawn, each expresses much for the use of the associative mind. The making of graphs is of great importance because a graph oftentimes expresses more than could whole pages of technical description,—and far better, too.
Reviewing notes is of much importance. Prof. H. A. Peterson, of the Illinois State Normal University, says on the measured effects of reviewing:[2]—
"The purpose of the study is to get some measures of what reviews accomplish under conditions similar to those of school work. The subjects were normal school students in classes of from 45 to 75. The class was divided into two groups of about equal ability determined by means of a prose-substance test. All were then given 24 minutes for studying a passage 2½ lines long, followed by an immediate recall (written) for which a maximum of 12 minutes was allowed. The aim was to reproduce as much of the substance as possible. In grading, one point was allowed for each idea. A week later while one group was occupied with the class work, the other reviewed and re-wrote the passage, the purpose of this re-writing being simply for fixation. Two and one half minutes were again allowed for reading and a maximum of 12 minutes for writing. In some classes there were three groups, the third group receiving a second review two weeks after learning. Three, four, six, or eighteen weeks after first studying the passage, the final recall which measured the effect of the review came.
"The results so far are: After three weeks the one-review group recalls 1.89 times as much as the no-review group. After six weeks the one-review group recalls about 1.33 times as much as the no-review group, and after eighteen weeks the superiority of the former has sunk to about 25 per cent. After six weeks the two-review group recalls about twice as much as the no-review group, and after eighteen weeks the former recalls 1.8 times as much as the latter.
"While the reviews here used were undoubtedly thorough, the results probably exceed the most common expectations. While the effect of the review, like that of the first learning, decreases rapidly at first, and later more slowly, a substantial residue remains after the sixth week. All of the results were obtained from the use of a single historical selection of only moderate difficulty."
The reason for these results we do not need to discuss in detail. They depend on the principles of habit-formation, that universal process underlying all that lives, which later on we shall have need of considering briefly in sundry connections.
Laboratory notebooks are extremely important in education. They are so especially because they constitute the records of discovery and research so far as we, at least, are concerned. Laboratory or field work on nature at first hand, so far as we are concerned, really is research and discovery no matter if the facts have been discovered by others before us.
Notes nearly always should be in our own words. Otherwise they are "cribs" for the mind's use and properly not notes at all. A good lecture is explanation and not dictation of a set of cribs; not description but explanation. In some schools there is far too much lecturing and far too little studied review of textbooks by means of recitation. The same is equally true of books as of lectures. Notes are of no real educative use unless or until they have been sufficiently worked over in our minds as to be expressed readily in our own words. Therefore, the importance of using our own English. There is no rule for this better, perhaps, than taking notes "just as we would talk them to a little sister seven years old at home" simple and direct and explicit.
The subconscious mind fuses and retains the facts on the principles of symbolic action, and continually elaborates them. That is one of the important reasons for taking adequate notes. Each note should serve as a symbol by which the mind (and nervous system) can get hold of it and connect it for use with other facts and other principles already secured.
We should keep our notes always posted up. I do not mean summarized daily in writing, but I do mean posted up in the brain. Notes which are not reviewed become dead notes (rests) in a few days! It is not really necessary to summarize notes in writing in the notebook, but in keeping them mentally posted up we train the mind always to be abstracting. We should make notes as we would like our minds to be: First, abundant; second, accurate; third, logical; and, fourth, free.
Another thing worth considering, perhaps, is the importance and practical value of preserving notebooks (the same being true of textbooks). In the first place, they often are practically useful later on in our careers. Many of the courses given by students soon after leaving school are practically the reproduction of the lectures which they have had in school! Second, good notes are part of the mind just as our mothers and our sweethearts and our childhood-homes are parts of our personality (see James's "Me"). More than that, our sons and daughters may, and probably will, value them at some future time. In a later discussion we shall consider our notebooks in relation to examinations.
Another important thing in the taking and the learning of notes is the forgetting of things which should be forgotten. It has been said by some psychologist that forgetting is only less important than remembering. By glancing over our notes we may select the important things and neglect the dead and adynamic things which are to be forgotten passively. Nothing once impressed, it seems, ever leaves the brain, save by gross loss of cerebral tissue; the impression in some form continues during life. What we actually have in our recallable working minds is, then, only a small fraction of what in some mysterious manner is impressed in our brains. So it is true that only a relatively small portion of the notes can be remembered properly; the rest may be forgotten. Some things are quick, and become active agents in our education; but some, too, are wholly dead for us, and are (and should be) lost out of our effective minds.