college graduates and experienced teachers. One day I asked them,
"When has a book been read properly?" The first reply came from a
state university graduate and school superintendent, in the words,
"One has read a book properly when one understands what is in it."
Most of the others assented to this answer. But when they were asked,
"Is a person under any obligations to judge the worth of the thought?"
they divided, some saying yes, others no. Then other questions arose,
and the class as a whole soon appeared to be quite at sea as to the
proper method of reading books. Perhaps the most interesting thing was
the fact that they seemed never to have thought seriously about the
matter. Fortunately Dr. Earhart has not overlooked teachers' methods
of study in her investigations. In a _questionnaire_ that was filled
out by 165 teachers, the latter were requested to state the principal
things that ought to be done in "thinking about a lesson." This was
practically the same test as was given to the 842 children before
mentioned. While at least twenty different things were named by these
teachers, the most frequent one was, "Finding the most important
points." [Footnote: _Ibid._, Chapter 5.] Yet only fifty-five out
of the 165 included even this. Only twenty-five, as Dr. Earhart says,
"felt, keenly enough to mention it, the necessity of finding the main
thought or problem." Forty admitted that they memorized more often
than they did anything else in their studying. Strange to say, a
larger percentage of children than of teachers mentioned finding the
main thought, and finding the more important facts, as two factors in
mastering a lesson. Water sometimes appears to rise higher than its
source.

About two-thirds of these 165 teachers [Footnote: _Ibid._, Chapter 5.]
declared that they had never received any systematic instruction about
how to study, and more than half of the remainder stated that they