Education
‹ 6 · Outline · 8 ›
7.Methods of teaching and learning
7a.Understanding versus rote memory and cramming
See also: Memory and Imagination 3c
Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44
- p. 8Study and thought must go together; renewing the old with new knowledge fits one to teach.read · scan
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 220We should not act and speak merely as children taught by parents.read · scan
Michel de Montaigne, Of the Institution and Education of ChildrenVol. 32
- p. 36–37Pupils should sift everything and accept nothing on mere authority, weighing Aristotle, Stoics and Epicureans alike.read · scan
- p. 37Pupil must make borrowed opinions his own, like bees making honey; study should make him better, wiser and honester.read · scan
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the SciencesVol. 34
- p. 55Discipleship makes students less wise when they only defer to their author.read · scan
- p. 55–57Had he been taught the truths without labour, he would never have acquired the skill to discover more.read · scan
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's ProgressVol. 15
- p. 32–33Christian is told to bear in mind what he has been shown, lest false guides lead him to death.read · scan
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37
- p. 43Criticizes loading children's memories with rules; teach by practice under the tutor's eye.read · scan
- p. 44Give children few rules and teach by gentle admonition and practice, not rebukes.read · scan
- p. 149–150Forcing boys to memorize great parcels of authors is useless and disgusts them; languages are learned by reading and talking.read · scan
- p. 151Locke rejects rote learning in grammar-schools as based on old custom rather than observation or reason.read · scan
- p. 151–152Rote repetition of whole pages mends neither memory nor mind; princes are not so taught; give children something worth remembering daily.read · scan
- p. 154–155Teach simple things gradually, one simple idea at a time; teaching others fixes learning in memory.read · scan
William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1
- p. 321–322Youth are made scholars not men; taught words and rules too early while natural knowledge and sensible things are neglected.read · scan
Jonathan Swift, A Letter of Advice to a Young PoetVol. 27
- p. 109–110Recommends reading the classics and old authors, but making their sentiments one's own through judgment.read · scan
- p. 110–111Satirizes shortcuts to learning: abstracts, abridgments and indexes let one seem learned with little reading.read · scan
Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1
- p. 146–147Franklin drafts Kinnersley's lectures with experiments ordered so earlier ones aid understanding later ones.read · scan
Edmund Burke, On Taste: Introductory DiscourseVol. 24
- p. 11–12The best teaching approaches the method of investigation, setting the reader on the track of invention.read · scan
William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28
- p. 358Education should awaken faculties and teach a little profoundly; one history read wisely teaches all histories; gifted teachers matter more than many books.read · scan
Michael Faraday, The Forces of MatterVol. 30
- p. 19Lecturer urges young audience to understand rather than merely recognize toy experiments.read · scan
- p. 21Lecturer plans a board list of forces to help the audience recall lessons.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5
- p. 6The scholar's office and the influences that school him are introduced; he degenerates into a mere thinker or parrot.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity CollegeVol. 5
- p. 29Instruction is only provocation; the truth must be found true within oneself.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-RelianceVol. 5
- p. 71Men repeat sayings by rote like children learning from tutors, until they come to understand and let the words go.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25
- p. 10Father explained ideas on civilization, government, morality, required restatement in his own words, and chose books showing energy overcoming difficulties.read · scan
- p. 13–15Father explained reasons for tasks; free history-writing versus compulsory verse-writing aided readiness of expression.read · scan
- p. 17Father's method: daily accounts, searching questions, explanations that served as a nucleus for later understanding.read · scan
- p. 23Father's method: lectures on walks, written accounts rewritten until clear, explanations given only after difficulties felt, forming a thinker.read · scan
- p. 24Father avoided cram; made understanding precede teaching and forced the boy to find out things himself, not merely memorise.read · scan
- p. 46Writing chapter abstracts under his father's censorship compelled precision in conceiving and expressing doctrines.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, On LibertyVol. 25
- p. 229–230Cultivating the understanding consists in learning the grounds of one's own opinions.read · scan
7b.Learning by doing, practice and experience
Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44
- p. 5Learning joined to immediate practice brings pleasure.read · scan
- p. 42Book learning of poems is useless if a man cannot govern or answer for himself.read · scan
- p. 64Apprentices learn a trade in a shop, a gentleman reaches truth by study; disciples taught trivia lack root.read · scan
Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9
- p. 219Young advocates practice in court with no deference, beginning where they should end, like schoolboys with Homer.read · scan
Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. AugustineVol. 7
- p. 11He learned speech not by set method from his elders but by his own practice and memory.read · scan
Niccolò Machiavelli, The PrinceVol. 36
- p. 49Habitual meditation on military contingencies prepared Philopoemen for any complication.read · scan
Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36
- p. 171–172Those with a year's experience in husbandry instruct newcomers, who then teach others, preventing ignorance and scarcity.read · scan
- p. 177–178Youth learn husbandry in schools and by practice in the country, brought up as in play.read · scan
Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31
- p. 252–254The jail is said to teach all arts, eloquence and wit; adversity as instructor.read · scan
Michel de Montaigne, Of the Institution and Education of ChildrenVol. 32
- p. 37Bookish learning by rote is imperfect; learning needs practice, experience of life, society and travel to correct one's wits.read · scan
- p. 58Pupil should act his lessons, not merely know them; learning judged by conduct, learning as a law of life.read · scan
Abraham Cowley, Of AgricultureVol. 27
- p. 65–66Professors should teach practical, experimental knowledge rather than pompous lectures from classical authors.read · scan
William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1
- p. 322Things should be preferred to languages; children learn better by making tools and building than by memorizing rules.read · scan
Jonathan Swift, A Letter of Advice to a Young PoetVol. 27
- p. 107–108Challenges the belief that a good poet must be a good scholar, against practice and experience.read · scan
- p. 108–109Learning is no more necessary to a poet than knowing the theory of light to a painter.read · scan
Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1
- p. 50–51Keimer hires Franklin at high wages to train raw cheap hands, planning then to dismiss him.read · scan
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsVol. 10
- p. 121–122Long apprenticeship raises the expense of education as a barrier to entering a trade.read · scan
- p. 125Trades need only weeks of instruction; working as a journeyman would educate more effectively than lengthy apprenticeship.read · scan
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Introduction to the PropyläenVol. 39
- p. 254–255Announces concern with the training of the artist: he must study and imitate Nature, learning by experience through development; genius needs outside help to bridge nature and art.read · scan
Friedrich Schiller, William TellVol. 26
- p. 428–429Tell insists his sons learn the bow early: early practice makes the master, and self-reliance.read · scan
William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 617Michael brings the boy to the field, corrects and trains him in shepherding.read · scan
William Ellery Channing, On the Elevation of the Laboring ClassesVol. 28
- p. 314Manual labor is a school giving energy of purpose and character, more important than learning of other schools.read · scan
Michael Faraday, The Forces of MatterVol. 30
- p. 27Advises careful home repetition of the experiment.read · scan
Michael Faraday, The Chemical History of a CandleVol. 30
- p. 148Faraday urges boys to make home experiments and turn toys into philosophy.read · scan
- p. 148–149Home experiments suggested for learners.read · scan
Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at EdinburghVol. 25
- p. 378Doubts the salutary effect of vocal education, seeking something that takes hold more closely.read · scan
- p. 379Criticizes vocal education that only teaches the tongue to wag; proposes Goethe's mute, practical education from Wilhelm Meister.read · scan
- p. 382Envisions a future education presided over by the wisest men, training in practicality, with speech only when followed by action.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man the ReformerVol. 5
- p. 47Those who do the work have gotten the education, only the buyer the commodity.read · scan
- p. 48A father can bequeath goods to his son but not the skill and experience that made them; the heir is burdened rather than formed, implying inheritance cannot replace learning.read · scan
- p. 48–50Labor is God's education: only he who learns labor's secrets becomes a master; protected, pampered upbringing of the rich produces a puny dependent person.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, New England ReformersVol. 5
- p. 256Schooling gives words, not things; students cannot use their hands or know nature; education should be practical and learn by doing.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, BeautyVol. 5
- p. 297Books approach slowly what we most wish to know; the boy gazing at shells had juster views than the man of nomenclature.read · scan
Hans Christian Andersen, TalesVol. 17
- p. 312–313The mother drills the young storks in flying, correcting posture and steps until they succeed.read · scan
- p. 313–314The young storks are tested at the grand review and earn the highest mark.read · scan
Charles Tennyson Turner, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 921A globe teaches the child to mark and know sea and land by tint and outline.read · scan
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23
- p. 59Mate's remark contrasts Harvard schooling with the hard manual labor Dana now faces.read · scan
- p. 149Necessity, the mother of invention, taught Dana to sew and mend; he reads and writes while Nicholas cannot.read · scan
7c.Teaching by stories, poetry and pleasing fictions
See also: Virtue and Vice 11c · Poetry 5a · History 1b
Aristophanes, The FrogsVol. 8
- p. 466–469Poets' pupils are contrasted: Aeschylus' rough warriors versus Euripides' smart, clever men, showing drama shapes citizens.read · scan
- p. 469–470Poets are judged by whether they trained citizens to be better townsmen; Aeschylus says his drama made heroic men, Euripides' made them worse.read · scan
- p. 470–472Poets have taught religious rites, healing, farming and martial valor; poet as teacher of the citizens.read · scan
- p. 472–473Schoolteachers teach boys but poets teach men; Euripides' lessons taught youth to debate and challenge orders.read · scan
Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16
- p. 65–66The mendicants say their tale, engraved on the understanding, would serve as a lesson to one who would be admonished.read · scan
Edmund Spenser, Prefatory Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh on the Faerie QueeneVol. 39
- p. 61Doctrine by example is more profitable and gracious than by rule; Xenophon preferred to Plato.read · scan
Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of PoesyVol. 27
- p. 6Poetry's sweetness drew untamed wits to admire knowledge, feeding them before tougher sciences.read · scan
- p. 7–8Poetry's delights soften dull wits and prepare barbarous peoples to find pleasure in learning.read · scan
- p. 11–12Poetry delights to move men toward goodness and teaches them to know it.read · scan
- p. 17–18The question is whether feigned poetic image or regular philosophic instruction has more force in teaching.read · scan
- p. 18–19Stories lodge in memory and judgment better than abstract teaching.read · scan
- p. 19For one's own use and learning, a feigned ideal is more instructive than the true record.read · scan
- p. 20The stratagem of Zopyrus is as well learned from Xenophon's fiction as from Herodotus.read · scan
- p. 23–24Men, childish in the best things, learn through pleasing tales better than through bare philosophic definitions.read · scan
- p. 28Poetic images of worthy men instruct and stir the mind, teaching how to be worthy.read · scan
- p. 31–32Scholars carry verses of Virgil, Horace and Cato learned in youth as lifelong lessons; arts are taught in verse.read · scan
- p. 36Alexander left Aristotle but took Homer; Homer gave Greeks their first light of knowledge.read · scan
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's ProgressVol. 15
- p. 32Christian comes to the Interpreter to be shown profitable things, and is taught by a picture.read · scan
- p. 171Its riddles in wholesome strains yield readers profit for young and old.read · scan
- p. 211–212The house's emblems teach lessons that the pilgrims resolve to conform to.read · scan
John Dryden, Dedication of the AeneisVol. 13
- p. 5Poem's design is to instruct while delighting, forming the mind by example.read · scan
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37
- p. 131–132Give the child pleasant books like Aesop's Fables with pictures to draw him on; ordinary methods neglect such baits.read · scan
Charles Lamb, On the Tragedies of ShakspereVol. 27
- p. 303Hamlet abounds in maxims suited to moral instruction, but staging makes him a public schoolmaster.read · scan
- p. 303Stage conveys thought and feeling to those who would never learn it by reading, an inestimable acquisition.read · scan
Hans Christian Andersen, TalesVol. 17
- p. 284–285Mother says visiting the Garden of Paradise helps his education and bids him drink the spring of wisdom.read · scan
- p. 337Dispute over whether imaginative tales are proper to put into a child's head.read · scan
7d.Questioning, conversation and discussion as means of learning
Paul, The First Epistle of Paul to the CorinthiansVol. 45
- p. 509–510Be men in mind, not children; all may prophesy one by one that all may learn.read · scan
Luke, The Gospel According to LukeVol. 44
- p. 360–361The boy Jesus sits among teachers, hearing and questioning, and grows in wisdom.read · scan
Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of EpictetusVol. 2
- p. 152Learning requires mutual testing of minds rather than casual sightseeing.read · scan
Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9
- p. 354Evenings spent with readings, scholars and conversation; studies made more delightful by other occupations.read · scan
Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. AugustineVol. 7
- p. 47–48Friend was schoolfellow and playfellow; they shared kindred studies while Augustine taught rhetoric.read · scan
Michel de Montaigne, Of the Institution and Education of ChildrenVol. 32
- p. 40Pupil should learn courteous discussion, choose reasons carefully, and yield to truth wherever found, even from an adversary.read · scan
William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35
- p. 259Clerical conferences train and test ministers in Scripture exposition, with moderator, commendation and reproof, keeping them from idle vanities.read · scan
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning EducationVol. 37
- p. 82Locke urges tutors to converse and reason with pupils, asking their judgment on cases, rather than lecturing or setting disputes, so learning sinks deeper.read · scan
Benjamin Franklin, His AutobiographyVol. 1
- p. 56–57The club is a society of mutual improvement through essays and discussion.read · scan
- p. 58The club is the best school of philosophy, morality and politics; reading and rules improve conversation.read · scan
- p. 73–74Book-lovers in the colonies depended on imports; the Junto pooled books as a common benefit.read · scan
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Introduction to the PropyläenVol. 39
- p. 252–253The artist trains himself by attentive observation and learns from friends' conversation and letters; shared development records the stages of growth and instructs.read · scan
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a UniversityVol. 28
- p. 34Statesmanship is learned not from books but in Parliament, a sort of university of politics, through daily intercourse.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25
- p. 12Mill judges teaching children by means of one another inefficient, though teaching his sister taught him more thoroughly; not good moral discipline.read · scan
- p. 17Early drilling in dissecting bad arguments suits philosophical students before they have thoughts of their own.read · scan
- p. 18–20Plato's method is inestimable as education for precise thinking; father's teaching of elocution and its defect of abstraction without concrete example.read · scan
- p. 48Intellectual cultivation by writing, with discussions with his father, benefited him.read · scan
- p. 49Conversation with instructed men like Grote gave Mill instruction and sympathetic communion.read · scan
- p. 49–51Austin's conversation and moral influence, and Charles Austin's equality of footing, formed Mill's development from pupil to man among men.read · scan
- p. 53Society gave practice in oral discussion and Mill influence on younger members' mental progress.read · scan
- p. 77Young men's joint study group read and discussed political economy, thoroughly, for mutual improvement.read · scan
- p. 77–78Cooperative study groups reading texts together served as mutual instruction and testing of novel ideas.read · scan
- p. 79Reading-group conversations made Mill an independent thinker and formed his habit of never accepting half-solutions and pursuing a subject fully.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, On LibertyVol. 25
- p. 230Hearing adversaries' arguments only from one's own teachers, with their refutations, does not do justice to them.read · scan
- p. 238Modern instruction by teachers and books does not compel hearing both sides; students need training in negative criticism.read · scan
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