Undigested Knowledge

Undigested Knowledge

Over the course of one's education, one finds different styles and methods that apply to them directly, and work for them personally. For my own life, there have been different ideas of learning that have indeed helped, and some that have hindered my learning process. In book six, entitled Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning, Newman discusses the concept of over educating...

"I will tell you Gentleman, what has been the practical error of the last twenty years--not to load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which is really is, but enlargement, which is not; of considering an acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons, and the possession of clever duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent lecturers, and membership with scientific institutions, and the sight of the experiments of a platform and the specimens of a museum, that all this was not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things now are to learned at once, not first one thing, then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without toil; without grounding, without advance, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth is the wonder of the age."

Im wondering what exactly Newman is talking about here. It seems to be quite a radical way to think about a style of educating one's self, is this a working method? The text alone should spark a discussion, but what exactly is Newman trying to get at?