John McGuinnes writes: "Since meeting Ray Baxter, watching him teach and observing his effect on hundreds of students, I have come to place him in a venerated pantheon of teachers I have known, who contribute to what Postman and Weingartner described as the "continuing struggle against the veneration of crap". The activity it describes strikes terror into the hearts of those pseudo-educators who want students to be submissive, grateful, uncritical and regurgitative. Ray, on the contrary, revels in search, unorthodoxy, creativity and challenge - and sees that his students would best contribute to the universities and colleges they go on to, by carrying on that tradition. In the most noble sense he stands side by side with Postman and Weingartner in seeing good teaching as a "subversive activity". He sees teaching as an exercise in liberation. That said, he is also acutely aware of the skills needed by students to give credibility to their intellectual jousts with tutors, their forays into research literature and their critical analysis of the orthodoxies of the day.

In his book Ray tackles a vast array of skills - everything from spelling and grammar, through data assembly and analysis, on to structured argument, logic and persuasion, culminating in a real grasp of inferential values, conclusions and defensible positions. Readers of this book come to realise that the exploratory adventure of education is much more complex and satisfying than a pub gripe or a club moan; they learn that it is a disciplined, skilled, descriptive, analytical, critical sifting of material, which permits creative, judicious, challenging positions to be assembled and defended. I know, because as an external examiner of the course for three years, I met the students and read their work. I also saw the developmental power of the course modules. Students beginning hesitantly, almost apologetically, growing in confidence and skill as the course progressed, producing powerful and cogent dissertations as final pieces of work. Ray would be the first to acknowledge the powerful influence of his teaching colleagues on that student growth - and they would be equally eager to recognise that the clarity of the course materials he produced, the meticulous developmental sequences established and the skilful gradation of tasks asked of the students, created precisely the right balance of support and challenge to encourage the students to take the risks involved in learning. I am consequently delighted that Ray has decided to crystallise a lifetime's work into this text. I am confident that it will be invaluable, both to course tutors and to students themselves. I am also honoured that he has invited me to make this introductory statement to his book.

In an article I wrote in 1993 about the so-called reforms of education initiated by the 1988 Education Act, I commented on the almost total absence of respect for persons that is involved in taking us away from the view of humans as intrinsically valuable, as being the driving force of education, towards that cold and implacable master, the market place, where human beings are seen as commodities with only consequential not intrinsic value. We are no longer to be educated because we have, every one of us, an inviolable core of worth and dignity; the state is now to invest in us to the extent that we look capable of offering a financial return on the investment. We have Darwin in the class room - crude, insensitive pragmatism, survival of the fittest, and a criminally negligent waste of talent. The teaching Ray Baxter offers celebrates the worth of every student he works with. (I write wondering whether Ray would get me to put that last preposition somewhere else - and I know that if he did, he would do it with the kind of gentle courtesy and respect that would leave me feeling not put down, but somehow enhanced. That is good teaching.)
Users of this book will find here a storehouse of helpful ideas, encouragement and guidance, as they embark on the adventure of education.

Ray Baxter may have retired, but he is still an educator.

Study skills, writing essays, lifelong learning,  essay writing, studying, examinations, note-taking, lectures, homework, reading, library skills, passing exams, taking notes, speed reading,  are all dealt with in "Studying Successfully" by Ray Baxter.