Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-08-16
VICE OF TAKING NOTES.
System of instruction Blamed for De-
fects in Education.

From the Saturday Review.
We know hardly anything more rritat-
ing than 10 find person you are trying to
make understand simple proposition in
stead of attending to you diving into his
pockets to find a note book. When II Is
finally extricated. he has forgotten all you
said. rather never heard it, and you have
to repeat the whole story. He struggles to
put 1t down and loses the sense doing so.
No ordinary being can repress contempt
for his fellow-man when he sees this pro-
cess going on. The fact is that by this
habit of taking notes we cease to be in
telligent beings. We abdicate from our
understandings: instead of taking In what
is said and making own minds act
upon it so that it becomes an intelli-
gent idea. we trust to a mechanical trick
to reproduce the words said. II we are for
one moment without the note machine we
are lost We are helpless babies. Every
day ones ears are offended by hearing men
going about raving at the loss of their note
book exactly the man does when he has
lost his key. Naturally, for his written
notes are as much and as literally the key
to his intelligence as his other keys to his
drawers. His understanding is fast locked.
He has reduced himself to the pitiable con-
dition of an idiot that has no memory, or
of one who has lost 1t by disease. The pro-
cess. of course. Is found In all stages: some
men are just beginning to impair their
memories and intelligence: others have
weakened 1t permanently; others have al
most destroyed it.
Surely habit which leads to these re-
suits is as truly vice as cigarette smoking
or dram drinking. Men become the slaves
of their note books as Of tobacco and
drink And as we especially lament cigar
cite smoking in babies and drinking in
young men, we resent the suggestion OF
the note taking vice to boys and girls at
school. Every schoolmaster and school,
mistress that trains children to trust to
paper instead of memory for facts and ideas
ought to be publicly prosecuted as cor
rupter of youth. There Is plenty of corrup-
ton besides the corruption OF morals.
Writing is a mere mechanical trick. and has
no legitimate but for the transmission
of thoughts to those you cannot get at
easily by word of mouth. For man to use
ii as an instrument for conveying his own
thoughts to himself those of another
which he has heard from the thinkers lips.
and girl should be trained to spurn the help
of notes, pen and paper as a device merely
allowable at times to relieve excessive strain
on the mind; crutch for those naturally
deficient or a stick allowable In steep
slippery places. They would despise
schoolfellow who. sound In body. became so
dependent on his stick that he could never
walk without leaning on 1t. instead Of treat
ing 1t as plaything, a thing. IL taken at
ALL to swing carry lightly for nine
tenths of the walk. And as the arch-horror.
there should be put before their eyes the
common case of a man who confesses he
cannot string together a sentence, cannot
think. unless he has a pen In his hand and
paper before him: melancholy degenerate.
a whole man, sound in limb and wind who
has made himself unable to walk without
a crutch.