John is a student. He is a very hardworking boy in the classroom and never misses classes. He does every class assignment and engages himself in self-given assignments. He spends the greater portion of his leisure hours in the classroom. Rarely does he go out for games because most of the games periods are spent in the classroom. John is always in the classroom both at normal periods and at abnormal periods. In fact, John is Studious but he has only one problem; he doesn’t pass well. Despite John’s studiousness, he doesn’t pass well because he doesn’t know how to study properly.

In the same school, there is also another boy called Matthew, John’s classmate. Matthew is also industrious but compared to John, he achieves greater. He attends classes but is never over-anxious about them. He does not allow studies to be laborious for him. His presence in the classroom is only at official and compulsory hours. Even when the classes are prolonged, he wears an unhappy countenance which betrays his fatigue. Being a lover of games, hardly does he miss it. Only circumstances beyond his control can impeded his going out for games. But Matthew has one advantage over John and over other John – like pupils in their class. He knows how to study and every little time spent in the classroom is never fruitless.

Now, John and Matthew both went in for an examination. One should expect that John, the more studious pupil, should far better. It was not like that, the reverse was the case, and John expected to finish the questions before the time given for it elapses. But contrary to his expectation, he had not finished answering the first half of the questions before the invigilator snatched his script from him. Why? It was not that the given time was not enough, but because he answered no question at first glance but spent more time than he should, racking his brain to search out the answer to every question before answering any on his paper. There were also numerous cancellations on his paper. At last John succeeded in attempting only six out of the ten questions.

In the marking room, the teachers were very much disappointed at John’s performance. Judging from how studious he is, they expected that John will be the best among all. However, John was among the poorest. Hardly did he pass the papers. Without mincing words, it was the teachers’ humane spirits coupled with what they knew John to be that made them pass him. When the students were placed according to their scores, John never appeared in the first twenty, out of the forty in class and he was not far from the last ten.

Now Matthew his fellow student did far better than John. Matthew attempted all the questions and answered many of them perfectly well. On the ones he failed to exhaust the answers, he was not so bad. When the answer sheets were collected, he handed over his with every ease. In fact the smiling face he wore needed nothing more to convince anybody that he was sure of success.

At the end Matthew came out with an admirable result. In fact, to sum it up, Matthew later appeared among the best pupils and that earned him felicitations.

A similar story is almost the same experiences amidst many pupils in many of our schools today. Some pupils are truly zealous, industrious and Studious but seldom do they achieve what they expected. This is enough evidence to establish the fact that ignorance of proper ways of studying must be the root cause of failure in studies from which, other causes and problems may arise. The case of Matthew and John lends credence to this.

Why then this paradox? Why is it that the bountiful Sower reaps sparingly and the Sower who sowed sparingly reaps bountifully? The reason is that the Sower who spares while he sows does rightly, wisely and used a good method. That is although Matthew does not spend much time in the classroom, but the little time spent is used wisely and the fruit is bounteous. On the contrary, although John is a bookworm, he achieves almost little or nothing.