Study Tips – Learning To Learn Part 1

FINDING INFORMATION

One of the criticisms frequently made of high-school and junior-high-school students is that, without using the internet and Google or Yahoo, they don’t know how to find information.

Unfortunately, this criticism is often true.

Given a specific assignment in the library, they wander aimlessly from the card catalogue to the reference room and then to the call desk, half expecting that the answers they seek will be handed over to them if they look perplexed. Or they gather twenty or fifty references at one end of a table and industriously begin to take complete notes on each, half expecting that the mere quantity of these will look like knowledge.

The ability to find information upon any given subject is absolutely essential in most high-school and college classes. We must be able to use the resources of a library — books, magazines, encyclopedias, dictionaries without hesitation and without difficulty. We must be able to find our way around the library — in the reference room, in the periodical room, at the card catalogue, with the various guides and references — with ease and with confidence.

In addition to knowing how to use the resources of the library, we must realize that information is not confined to one building or to the books catalogued there. We need to train ourselves to read newspapers and magazines, as well as books; to listen to radio broadcasts; to ask questions of our parents, teachers, and friends; and to watch what is going on around us every day in the year.

FINDING INFORMATION EVERY DAY

There are hundreds of ways of learning things every day — as all of us know. We learn things in our classrooms at school.

We learn other things by reading the newspapers or by listening to radio broadcasts. We gather new facts from reading books and magazines both in and out of school. No longer can we imagine that our education begins and ends with our attendance at school. No longer can we feel that our education comes entirely, or even primarily, from the pages of one, two, a dozen, or even a hundred books. Our education goes on always — twelve, eighteen, twenty-four hours a day.

This we know, you and I who are trying to find out what is happening throughout the world, who are trying to find reliable information upon which to base our ideas and our decisions. We know this, yet too often we go about collecting information carelessly, without plan, without purpose. In school we have the guidance of teachers; out of school we are on our own. That’s when we can use our time and energy wisely or foolishly the decision is up to us.

Now, of course, we can’t read all of the thousands of books and magazines that are published every month; we can’t listen to the hundreds of radio programs or see all the places of importance in our own community. We can, however, make some plans for using our time more profitably. Here are nine suggestions. Try some. It’s fun to know what goes on in the world.

1. Read a newspaper every day. Don’t limit yourself to the comics, the sports section, the fashion pages, and the society gossip. Read the news articles, the editorials, the letters to the editor, the columns by Drew Pearson, Samuel Grafton, Raymond Clapper; the foreign dispatches of Leland Stowe and others. Get your money’s worth from your newspaper.

2. Read a nationally known newspaper once in a while. Don’t limit yourself to your own home-town paper, but become familiar with newspapers such as the New York Times, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, or PM. Notice the differences between the papers in your own town and those of other cities.

3. Read one or two news magazines. Study the news summaries in these magazines. Notice how they differ from the newspaper reports. Read a different news magazine once in a while.

4. Read several opinion magazines, such as The New Republic, Harper’s, or Atlantic Monthly. Experiment with different magazines, reading some one month and others the next month. If you enjoy a particular magazine, form the habit of reading every issue.

5. Listen to the news commentators on your radio. Listen to the radio commentators who interpret the news and give their opinions of events. Listen to the broadcasts from Europe or Asia on which CBS, NBC, or Mutual correspondents in London, Moscow, or Chunking report the news of the day.

6. Choose motion pictures that portray realistically the world of yesterday and today. Go to the movies for entertainment, of course, but make an effort to see such pictures as Grapes of Wrath, Louis Pasteur, The Long Voyage Home, or Juarez. Get an understanding of American history, past and present, from seeing events and people portrayed on the screen.

7. Read novels and stories that deal realistically with important events and modern problems. If you are studying a particular period of history, for instance, read novels portraying people of that period. If you are interested in modern America, read some of the novels interpreting social, economic, and technological conditions during the last twenty years.

8. Become familiar with your own community. Spend some time visiting factories, social-welfare agencies, hospitals, museums, and other points of interest in your own city. Learn what other sections of your town are like, what other people are doing. See for yourself how a city functions from day to day.

9. Talk to people. When you really want to know something, ask questions! Talk to people who have opinions different from your own. Learn what other people think.