Study Tips from 1782

Advice from an accomplished autodidact

William of Schaumburg-Lippe, founder of the academy at the Wilhelmstein

Born in 1755, Gerhard Scharnhorst grew up in a family too poor to send its children to school for more than short periods of time. Thus, from an early age, he and his siblings took charge of their own educations, working together to learn such things as arithmetic and the standard variety of the German language. (Like many other subjects of the Prince-Elector of Hanover, Scharnhorst spoke a dialect that had more in common with Dutch than the language of Goethe and Schiller.)

In his teenage years, Scharnhorst committed himself to an intensive program of self-directed preparation for the entrance examination for the Wilhelmstein, a remarkable school for military engineers and artillery officers located in a castle on an island on a lake. In the course of doing this, he taught himself English, French, mathematics, and a great deal of military history. He also worked on those skills which he had neglected in his childhood, particularly handwriting and spelling.

During his four years at the Wilhelmstein, Scharnhorst made good use, not merely of the knowledge he had acquired in his many years as an autodidact, but also of the many techniques he had employed to learn various subjects. Indeed, as students at the Wilhelmstein studied by means of the tutorial method, the methods that Scharnhorst used while enrolled there differed little from those he had employed as a self-directed learner.

In 1782, Scharnhorst founded The Military Library. In the very first issue of that journal, he published an article in which he described some of the techniques of self-tuition that he had used. The text that follows is a verbatim translation of the first few paragraphs of that piece.

On Self-Directed Study

Give yourself an assignment every day, and allow nothing to prevent you from doing this.  This doesn’t mean that you should treat this work like a chore.  Rather, if you want to study a particular subject, divide it into a series of specific lessons.  If, motivated by interest, you go beyond these, so much the better.

If, however, this does not happen, follow your lesson anyway.  More often than not, interest will come with time.  You must often review specific facts.  If you don’t, you will forget them.

When you read a book, underline in pencil whatever you did not know before and whatever strikes you as interesting, rereading such passages until they have made an indelible impression on your mind. In pedestrian matters, a regular method will help you more than either genius or skill. If you fail to follow a sensible method of study, you will end up confusing yourself and missing your mark.

Start by engaging everything as simply, but comprehensively, as you can. Don’t attempt to learn things by heart, to burden your memory, but get to the heart of the matter, so that, when you start applying what you have learned, the rules will make themselves known.

You can can get an overview of the way things hang together by reducing the whole to its essence. Imagine the general layout of a campaign before looking into individual movements and engagements. A small sketch, which depicts the most important movements, rivers, town, mountains, and the like, will greatly enhance your ability to envision things.

The same applies to mathematics. Briefly grasp proportions, equations, and sequences; reduce them to the mean, so that, at the very least, the result sticks in your mind and you have it close at hand whenever you need to apply it.

For Further Reading:

Charles Edward White Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, 1755-1801 (Warwick: Helion, 2021)

Bruce I. Gudmundsson “The Education of the Enlightened Soldier” Marine Corps University Journal Spring 2008

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Learning French in 1782