LEARNING HOW TO LEARN snt,—i have read with interest and
a good deal of sympathy Dr. David Thomson's article Specialisation? in your issue of May 20th, and it occurs to me that your readers (and possibly Dr. Thomson himself) may like to have their attention drawn to a pamphlet by Miss Dorothy Sayers entitled The Lost Tools of Learning (Methuen). In this pamphlet, which was originally a lecture delivered in this department, Miss Sayers pleads for a mastery of the tools of learning before an attack is made on the subjects of learning, and for a modern version of the mediaeval dis- tinction between the trivium, which had to do with tools, and the quadrivium, which had to do with subjects. This mediaeval principle is surely sound, and supports Dr. Thomson's contention that the " basic function of schools * to teach people to learn and to think."—I am, etc.,
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