exercise of choice by the student, in the subject-matter assigned, as
an act of impertinence. Evidently most study does not carry
assimilation beyond the first stage, in which the crude materials of
knowledge are merely collected. And this not because young people are
lazy and disobedient, but because they are practically taught to stop
there by their teachers. They tell the truth when, recalling practice,
they almost universally declare that studying is mainly memorizing;
and Helen Keller's complaint that she had to study so much that she
did not have time to think, expresses a very common experience.

Even if there were no difficulty in regard to initiative, therefore,
proper methods of study could not be acquired through imitation,
because instruction does not set up a model of study that is worthy of
imitation. Beyond doubt, the method of instruction would duplicate the
method of study if each were right, and thus an example might be put
before the student for him to follow. But there is no such example at
present, and while students are upbraided for not studying properly,
they are furnished no means of learning the right way.

_(2) Why the factors in study have been so neglected by teachers._

The reason for this strange neglect of the factors in study is
probably due principally to the exaggerated importance of the teacher.
Believing in the maxim "As is the teacher, so is the school," we have
placed the center of gravity of the school in the teacher. "The
tendency of the (normal) training school," says President Millis, "is
to make the teacher self-conscious, concerned about her own
performance, about whether she did this or that in the approved way,
whether her voice was properly modulated, whether she utilized
illustrative and supplementary material in due proportion, whether she