The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Study, by George Fillmore Swain

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Title: How to Study

Author: George Fillmore Swain

Release Date: October 21, 2009 [EBook #30309]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO STUDY ***

Produced by Al Haines

HOW TO STUDY

BY

GEORGE FILLMORE SWAIN, LL. D.

GORDON MCKAY PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING IN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY; PAST-PRESIDENT, AM. SOC. C. E.; FORMERLY
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOSTON TRANSIT COMMISSION;
CONSULTING ENGINEER

FIRST EDITION

FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION

TOTAL ISSUE, 45,000

McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.

NEW YORK: 370 SEVENTH AVENUE

LONDON: 6 & 8 BOUVERIE ST., E. C. 4

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE

McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

{v}

PREFACE

The present paper has been suggested by a long experience in teaching,
in which the writer has been continually surprised at the ignorance
manifested by students in the higher classes of our technical schools
and universities, or graduates from such schools, with reference to
proper methods of study. If his experience is a reliable guide, &
large majority of the graduates from such schools, as well as some
teachers in them, have not acquired proper habits and methods of study,
and have devoted little or no attention to the consideration of the
subject, vital though it is.

It is undoubtedly true that training in the proper habits and methods
of study should be inculcated by each individual teacher in the course
of his work, and exemplified by the occurrences in his class room. The
individual teacher can do much in this direction, and indeed the writer
may say that probably the most important part of his instruction during
the past thirty-five years has been teaching his students how to study
and how to think logically, by constant reiteration of principles in
the class room and by making any failure {vi} on the part of a student
the occasion for pointing out how such failure arose from improper
methods of study or reasoning.

Nevertheless, it has seemed to the writer desirable to