The best methods of instruction in the ordinary school aim at the expression of thought in language. If a thing has been well said, the teacher and the examiner are apt to make no further inquiries. Although the expression of thought in written or spoken language is a species of doing, there is often a wide chasm between getting a thing said and having it done. Many of the reforms and revolutions thought out by university professors never get beyond the room in which they lecture or the page on which they formulate their ideas. The freedom of speech in the universities never troubles a despotic government until the ideas of the professors and students show signs of passing into the life of the nation. The difference between speech and action, between the man of words and the man of deeds, has long been felt and emphasized. The favorite method of teaching by lectures, and requiring the pupil to take notes, fails utterly if it stops with mere telling how a thing is to be done, and is not followed by actual doing on the part of the learner. Work in the shop, in the field, and in the factory often proves more effective in fitting a boy to earn a living than the theoretical instruction of the schools. The advantage of doing over telling as a means of learning has led to the formulation of the maxim, “We learn to do by doing,” and some educational reformers have announced the maxim as a principle of education universal in its application. Hence it is worth while to clarify its meaning and to ascertain its limitations. In so doing, we shall get a glimpse of the true relation between thinking and doing.
[Sidenote: The maxim applied to medicine and surgery.]
A young man possessed of unbounded faith in this maxim came to town for the purpose of practising medicine and surgery. He announced that if any persons got sick he proposed to give them medicine in the hope of learning the physiological and therapeutic effects of the various drugs. If any limbs were to be amputated, he was willing to try his hand, in the hope of ultimately learning how to perform surgical operations. He was too simple to succeed as a quack. He did not get a single patient; the people wisely gave him no opportunity of learning to do by doing.