is man did something more than merely
lecture. He assigned each one of his students a plat of ground on the
college farm. Upon this plat of ground, a definite experiment was to be
conducted. One of my experiments had to do with the smut of oats. I was
to try the effect of treating the seed with hot water in order to see
whether it would prevent the fungus from later destroying the ripening
grain. The very nature of the problem interested me intensely. I began
to wonder about the life-history of this fungus,--how it looked and how
it germinated and how it grew and wrought its destructive influence. It
was not long before I found myself spending some of my leisure moments
in the library trying to find out what was known concerning this
subject. I was not so successful as I might have been, but I am
confident that I learned more about parasitic fungi under the spur of
that curiosity than I should have done in five times the number of hours
spent in formal, meaningless study.

But the point of my experience is not that a problem interest had been
awakened, but rather that the white heat of that interest was not
utilized so completely as it might have been utilized in fixing upon my
mind some important details in the general method of running down
references and acquiring information. That was the moment to strike, and
one serious defect of our school organization to-day is that most
teachers, like my teacher at that time, have so much to do that anything
like individual attention at such moments is out of the question.

Next to individual attention, probably, the best way to overcome the
difficulty is to give class instruction in these matters,--to set aside
a definite period for teaching pupils the technique of using books. If
one could arouse a sufficiently general problem interest, this sort of
instruction could be made most effective. But even if the problem
interest is not general, I think that it is well to assume that it
exists in some pupils, at least, and to give them the benefit of class
instruction in the art of study,--even if some of the seed should fall
upon barren soil.

This aspect of teaching pupils how to study is particularly important in
the upper grades and the high school, where pupils have sufficiently
mastered the technique of reading to be intrusted with individual
problems, and where some reference books are commonly available. Chief
among these always is the dictionary, and to get pupils to use