the art of study,
not only that they may study effectively in school, but also that they
may carry over the habits and methods of study thus acquired into the
tasks of later life. In other words, the topic that we are discussing is
but one phase of the problem of formal discipline,--the problem of
securing a transfer of training from a specific field to other fields;
and my purpose is to view this topic of "study" in the light of what we
know concerning the possibilities of transfer.

Let me take a specific example. I am not so much concerned with the
problem of getting a pupil to master a history lesson quickly and
effectively,--not how he may best assimilate the facts concerning the
Missouri Compromise, for example. My task is rather to determine how we
can make his mastery of the Missouri Compromise a lesson in the general
art of study,--how that mastery may help him develop what we used to
call the general power of study,--the capacity to apply an effective
method of study to other problems, perhaps, very far removed from the
history lesson; in other words, how that single lesson may help him in
the more general task of finding any type of information when he needs
it, of assimilating it once he has found it, and of applying it once he
has assimilated it.

In an audience of practical teachers, it is hardly necessary to
emphasize the significance of doing this very thing. From one point of
view, it may be asserted that the whole future of what we term general
education, as distinguished from technical or vocational education,
depends upon our ability to solve problems like this, and solve them
satisfactorily. We can never justify universal general education beyond
the merest rudiments unless we can demonstrate acceptably that the
training which general education furnishes will help the individual to
solve the everyday problems of his life. Either we must train the pupil
in a general way so that he will be able to acquire specialized skill
more quickly and more effectively than will the pupil who lacks this
general training; or we must give up a large part of the general-culture
courses that now occupy an important part in our elementary and
secondary curriculums, and replace these with technical and vocational
subjects that shall have for their purpose the development of
specialized efficiency.

All teachers, I take it, are alive to the grave dangers of the latter
policy. Whether we have thought the matter through