College Teaching
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Title: College Teaching
Author: Paul Klapper
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COLLEGE TEACHING
STUDIES IN
METHODS OF TEACHING IN
THE COLLEGE
Edited by
PAUL KLAPPER, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Education
The College of the City of New York
with an
Introduction by
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, LL.D.
President of Columbia University
Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
WORLD BOOK COMPANY
1920
WORLD BOOK COMPANY
THE HOUSE OF APPLIED KNOWLEDGE
Established, 1905, by Caspar W. Hodgson
YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK
2126, PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO
A treasure of wisdom is stored in the colleges of the land. The
teachers are the custodians of knowledge that makes life free and
progressive. This book aims to make the college teacher effective in
handing down this heritage of knowledge, rich and vital, that will
develop in youth the power of right thinking and the courage of right
living. Thus _College Teaching_ carries out the ideal of service as
expressed in the motto of the World Book Company, "Books that Apply
the World's Knowledge to the World's Needs".
Copyright, 1920, by World Book Company
Copyright in Great Britain
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
The student of general problems of education or of elementary
education finds an extensive literature of varying worth. In the last
decade our secondary schools have undergone radical reorganization and
have assumed new functions. A rich literature on every phase of the
high school is rapidly developing to keep pace with the needs and the
progress of secondary education. The literature on college education
in general and college pedagogy in particular is surprisingly
undeveloped. This dearth is not caused by the absence of problem, for
indeed there is room for much improvement in the organization, the
administration, and the pedagogy of the college. Investigators of
these problems have been considerably discouraged by the facts they
have gathered. This volume is conceived in the hope of stimulating an
interest in the quality of college teaching and initiating a
scientific study of college pedagogy. The field is almost virgin, and
the need for constructive programs is acute. We therefore ask for our
effort the indulgence that is usually accorded a pioneer.
In this age of specialization of study it is evident that no college
teacher, however wide his experience and extensive his education, can
speak with authority on the teaching of all the subjects in the
college curriculum, or even of all the major ones. For this reason
this volume is the product of a coöperating authorship. The editor
devotes himself to the study of general methods of teaching that apply
to almost all subjects and to most teaching situations. In addition,
he coördinates the work of the other contributors. He realizes that
there exists among college professors an active hostility to the study
of pedagogy. The professors feel that one who knows his subject can
teach it. The contributors have been purposely selected in order to
dispel this hostility. They are, one and all, men of undisputed
scholarship who have realized the need of a mode of presentation that
will make their knowledge alive.
Books of multiple authorship often possess too wide a diversity of
viewpoints. The reader comes away with no underlying thought and no
controlling principles. To overcome this defect, so common in books of
this type, a tentative outline was formulated, setting forth a
desirable mode of treating, in the confines of one chapter, the
teaching of any subject in the college curriculum. This outline was
submitted to all contributors for critical analysis and constructive
criticism. The original plan was later modified in accordance with the
suggestions of the contributors. This final outline, which follows,
was then sent to the contributors with the full understanding that
each writer was free to make such modifications as his specialty
demanded and his judgment dictated. This outline is followed in most
of the chapters and gives the book that unifying element necessary in
any book and vital in a work of so large a coöperating authorship.
The editor begs to acknowledge his indebtedness to the many
contributors who have given generously of their time and their labor
with no hope of compensation beyond the ultimate appreciation of those
college teachers who are eager to learn from the experience of others
so that they may the better serve their students.
TENTATIVE OUTLINE FOR THE TEACHING OF ---- IN THE COLLEGE
I. Aim of Subject _X_ in the College Curriculum:
Is it taught for disciplinary values? What are they?
Is it taught for cultural reasons?
Is it taught to give necessary information?
Is it taught to prepare for professional studies?
Is the aim single or eclectic? Do the aims vary for different
groups of students? Does this apply to all the courses in your
specialty? How does the aim govern the methods of teaching?
II. Place of the Subject in the College Curriculum:
In what year or years should it be taught?
What part of the college course--in terms of time or
credits--should be allotted to it?
What is the practice in other colleges?
What course or courses in this subject should be part of the
general curriculum or be prescribed for students in art, in
science, in modern languages, or in the preprofessional or
professional groups?
III. Organization of the Subject in the College Course:
Desired sequence of courses in this subject.
What is the basis of this sequence? Gradation of successive
difficulties or logical sequence of facts?
Should these courses be elective or prescribed? All prescribed?
For all groups of students?
In what years should the elective work be offered?
IV. Discussion of Methods of Teaching this Subject:
Place and relative worth of lecture method, laboratory work,
recitations, research, case method, field work, assignment from a
single text or reference reading, etc.
Discussion of such problems as the following:
Shall the first course in chemistry be a general and extensive
course summing up the scope of chemistry, its function in organic
and inorganic nature, with no laboratory work other than the
experimentation by the instructor?
Should students in the social sciences study the subject
deductively from a book or should the book be postponed and the
instructor present a series of problems from the social life of
the student so that the analysis of these may lead the student to
formulate many of the generalizations that are given early in a
textbook course?
Should college mathematics be presented as a series of subjects,
e.g., algebra (advanced), solid geometry, trigonometry,
analytical geometry, calculus, etc.? Would it be better to
present the subject as a single and unified whole in two or three
semesters?
Should a student study his mathematics as it is developed in his
book,--viz., as an intellectual product of a matured mind
familiar with the subject,--or should the subject grow gradually
in a more or less unorganized form from a series of mechanical,
engineering, building, nautical, surveying, and structural
problems that can be found in the life and environment of the
student?
V. Moot Questions in the Teaching of this Subject.
VI. How judge whether the subject has been of worth to the student?
How test whether the aims of this subject have been realized?
How test how much the student has carried away? What means,
methods, and indices exist aside from the traditional
examination?
VII. Bibliography on the Pedagogy of this Subject as Far as It Applies
to College Teaching. The aim of the bibliography
should be to give worth-while contributions that present
elaborations of what is here presented or points of view and
modes of procedure that differ from those here set forth.
PAUL KLAPPER
_The College of the City of New York_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xiii
By NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, Ph.D., LL.D. President of Columbia
University. Author of _The Meaning of Education_, _True and False
Democracy_, etc. Editor of _Educational Review_
PART ONE--THE INTRODUCTORY STUDIES
CHAPTER
I HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 3
By STEPHEN PIERCE DUGGAN, Ph.D. Professor of Education, The
College of the City of New York. Author of _A Student's
History of Education_
II PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING 31
By SIDNEY E. MEZES, Ph.D., LL.D. President of The College of
the City of New York. Formerly President of University of
Texas. Author of _Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_
III GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING 43
By PAUL KLAPPER, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Education, The
College of the City of New York. Author of _Principles of
Educational Practice_, _The Teaching of English_, etc.
PART TWO--THE SCIENCES
IV THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGY 85
By T. W. GALLOWAY, Ph.D., Litt.D. Professor of Zoölogy,
Beloit College. Author of _Textbook of Zoölogy_, _Biology of
Sex for Parents and Teachers_, _Use of Motives in Moral
Education_, etc.
V THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY 110
By LOUIS KAHLENBERG, PH.D. Director of the Course in
Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry, University of
Wisconsin. Author of _Outlines of Chemistry_, _Laboratory
Exercises in Chemistry_, _Chemistry Analysis_, _Chemistry
and Its Relation to Daily Life_, etc.
VI THE TEACHING OF PHYSICS 126
By HARVEY B. LEMON, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Physics,
University of Chicago
VII THE TEACHING OF GEOLOGY 142
By T. C. CHAMBERLIN, Ph.D., LL.D., Sc.D. Professor and Head
of Department of Geology and Director of Walker Museum,
University of Chicago. Author of _Geology of Wisconsin_,
_The Origin of the Earth_. Editor of _The Journal of Geology_
VIII THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS 161
By G. A. MILLER, Ph.D. Professor of Mathematics, University
of Illinois. Author of _Determinants_, _Mathematical
Monographs_ (co-author), _Theory and Applications of Groups
of Finite Order_ (co-author), _Historical Introduction to the
Mathematical Literature_, etc. Co-editor of _American Year
Book_ and _Encyclopédie des Sciences Mathématiques_
IX PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE 183
By THOMAS A. STOREY, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Hygiene, The
College of the City of New York. State Inspector of Physical
Training, New York. Secretary-General, Fourth International
Congress of School Hygiene, Buffalo, 1913. Executive-Secretary,
United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board. Author
of various contributions to standard works on physiology,
hygiene, and physical training
PART THREE--THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
X THE TEACHING OF ECONOMICS 217
By FRANK A. FETTER, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Political
Economy, Princeton University. Author of _Economic
Principles and Modern Economic Problems_
XI THE TEACHING OF SOCIOLOGY 241
By ARTHUR J. TODD, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology and Director
of the Training Course for Social and Civic Work, University
of Minnesota. Author of _The Primitive Family as an
Educational Factor_, _Theories of Social Progress_
XII THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
A. American History 256
By HENRY W. ELSON, A.M., Litt.D. President of Thiel College.
Formerly Professor of History, Ohio University. Author of
_History of the United States_, _The Story of the Old World_
(with Cornelia E. MacMullan), etc.
B. Modern European History 263
By EDWARD KREHBIEL, Ph.D. Professor of Modern European
History, Leland Stanford University. Author of _The
Interdict_, _Nationalism_, _War and Society_
XIII THE TEACHING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 279
By CHARLES GROVE HAINES, Ph.D. Professor of Government,
University of Texas. Author of _Conflict over Judicial
Powers in the United States prior to 1870_, _The American
Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy_, _The Teaching of
Government_ (Report of Committee on Instruction, Political
Science Association)
XIV THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 302
By FRANK THILLY, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy, Dean
of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University.
Author of _Introduction to Ethics_, _History of Philosophy_
XV THE TEACHING OF ETHICS 320
By HENRY NEUMANN, Ph.D. Leader of the Brooklyn Society for
Ethical Culture. Formerly of the Department of Education,
The College of the City of New York, Author of _Moral Values
in Secondary Education_
XVI THE TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY 334
By ROBERT S. WOODWORTH, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology,
Columbia University. Author of _Dynamic Psychology_, _Le
Mouvement_, _Care of the Body_, _Elements of Physiological
Psychology_ (with George Trumbull Ladd)
XVII THE TEACHING OF EDUCATION
A. Teaching the History of Education 347
By HERMAN H. HORNE, Ph.D. (Harvard). Professor of the
History of Education and the History of Philosophy, New
York University. Author of _The Philosophy of Education_,
_The Psychological Principles of Education_, _Free Will and
Human Responsibility_, etc.
B. Teaching Educational Theory 359
By FREDERICK E. BOLTON, Ph.D. Dean of the College of
Education, University of Washington. Author of _Principles
of Education_, _The Secondary School System of Germany_
PART FOUR--THE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
XVIII THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 379
By CALEB T. WINCHESTER, L.H.D. Professor of English
Literature, Wesleyan University. Author of _Some Principles
of Literary Criticism_, _A Group of English Essayists_,
_William Wordsworth: How to Know Him_, etc.
XIX THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 389
By HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Ph.D. Adviser in Literary Composition,
Yale University. Author of _The Short Story in English_,
_College Sons and College Fathers_, etc.
XX THE TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 404
By WILLIAM K. PRENTICE, Ph.D. Professor of Greek, Princeton
University, Author of _Greek and Latin inscriptions in Syria_
XXI THE TEACHING OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES 424
By WILLIAM A. NITZE, Ph.D. Professor and Head of Department
of Romance Languages, University of Chicago. Author of _The
Grail Romance_, _Glastonbury and the Holy Grail_, _Handbook
of French Phonetics_, etc. Contributor to _New International
Encyclopedia_
XXII THE TEACHING OF GERMAN 440
By E. PROKOSCH, Ph.D. Late Professor of Germanic Languages,
University of Texas. Author of _Teaching of German in
Secondary Schools_, _Phonetic Lessons in German_, _Sounds
and History of the German Language_, etc.
PART FIVE--THE ARTS
XXIII THE TEACHING OF MUSIC 457
By EDWARD DICKINISON, Litt.D. Professor of History and
Criticism of Music, Oberlin College. Author of _Music in the
History of the Western Church_, _The Study of the History of
Music_, _The Education of a Music Lover_, _Music and the
Higher Education_
XXIV THE TEACHING OF ART 475
By HOLMES SMITH, A.M. Professor of Drawing and the History
of Art, Washington University. Author of various articles
in magazines on art topics
PART SIX--VOCATIONAL SUBJECTS
XXV THE TEACHING OF ENGINEERING SUBJECTS 501
By IRA O. BAKER, C.E., D. Eng'g. Professor of Civil
Engineering, University of Illinois. Author of _Treatise on
Masonry Construction_, _Treatise on Roads and Pavements_
XXVI THE TEACHING OF MECHANICAL DRAWING 525
By JAMES D. PHILLIPS, B.S. Assistant Dean and Professor of
Drawing, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin,
Author of _Elements of Descriptive Geometry_ (with A. V.
Millar), _Mechanical Drawing for Secondary Schools_ (with
F. O. Crawshaw), _Mechanical Drawing for Colleges and
Universities_ (with H. D. Orth) and HERBERT D. ORTH, B.S.
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Drawing and Descriptive
Geometry, University of Wisconsin. Author of _Mechanical
Drawing for Colleges and Universities_ (with J. D. Phillips)
XXVII THE TEACHING OF JOURNALISM 533
By TALCOTT WILLIAMS, A.M. LL.D., Litt.D. Director, School of
Journalism, Columbia University
XXVIII BUSINESS EDUCATION 555
By FREDERICK B. ROBINSON, Ph.D. Professor of Economics and
Dean of the School of Business and Civic Administration,
College of the City of New York
INDEX 577
INTRODUCTION
It is characteristic of the American people to have profound faith in
the power of education. Since Colonial days the American college has
played a large part in American life and has trained an overwhelming
proportion of the leaders of American opinion. There was a time when
the American college was a relatively simple institution of a uniform
type, but that time has passed. The term "college" is now used in a
variety of significations, a number of which are very new and very
modern indeed. Some of these uses of the term are quite indefensible,
as when one speaks of a college of engineering, or of law, or of
medicine, or of journalism, or of architecture. Such use of the word
merely confuses and makes impossible clear thinking as to educational
institutions and educational aims.
The term "college" can be properly used only of an institution which
offers training in the liberal arts and sciences to youth who have
completed a standard secondary school course of study. The purpose of
college teaching is to lay the foundation for intelligent and
effective specialization later on, to open the mind to new
interpretations and new understandings both of man and of nature, and
to give instruction in those standards of judgment and appreciation,
the possession and application of which are the marks of the truly
educated and cultivated man. The size of a college is a matter of
small importance, except that under modern conditions a large college
and one in immediate contact with the life of a university is almost
certain to command larger intellectual resources than is an
institution of a different type. The important thing about a college
is its spirit, its clearness of aim, its steadiness of purpose, and
the opportunity which it affords for direct personal contact between
teacher and student. Given these, the question of size is unimportant.
There was a time when it was felt, probably correctly, that a
satisfactory college training could be had by requiring all students
to follow a single prescribed course of study. At that time, college
students were drawn almost exclusively from families and homes of a
single type or kind. Their purposes in after-life were similar, and
their range of intellectual sympathy, while intense, was rather
narrow. The last fifty years have changed all this. College students
are now drawn from families and homes of every conceivable type and
kind. Their purposes in after-life are very different, while new
subjects of study have been multiplied many fold. The old and useful
tradition of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, together with a little
history and literature, as the chief elements in a college course of
study, had to give way when first the natural sciences, and then the
social sciences, claimed attention and when even these older subjects
of study were themselves subdivided into many parts.
These changes forced a change in the old-fashioned program of college
study, and led to the various substitutes for it that now exist.
Whether a college prefers the elective system of study, or the group
system, or some other method of combining instruction that is regarded
as fundamental with other instruction that is regarded as less so, the
fact is that all these are simply different kinds of attempt to meet a
new condition which is the natural result of intellectual and economic
changes. Just now the college is in a state of transition. It is not
at all clear precisely what its status will be a generation hence, or
how far present tendencies may continue to increase, or how far they
may be counteracted by a swing of the pendulum in the opposite
direction. Therefore this is a time to describe rather than to
dogmatize, and it is description which is the characteristic mark of
the important series of papers which constitute the several chapters
in the present volume.
A careful reading of these papers is commended not only to the great
army of college teachers and college students, but to that still
greater army of those who, whether as alumni or as parents or as
citizens, are deeply concerned with the preservation of the influence
and character of the American college for its effect upon our
national standards of thought and action.
American colleges are of two distinct types, and it may be that the
future has in store a different position for each type. The true
distinction between colleges is according as they are separate or are
incorporated in a university system, and not at all as to whether they
are large or small. A separate college, such as Amherst or Beloit or
Grinnell or Pomona, has its own peculiar problems of support and
administration. The university college, on the other hand, such as
Columbia or Harvard or Chicago or the college of any state university,
has quite different problems of support and of administration. It is
not unlikely that the distinction between these two types of college
will become more sharply marked as years go by, and that eventually
they will appear to be two distinct institutions rather than two types
of one and the same institution.
Meanwhile, we have to deal with the college as it is, in all its
varied forms, but characteristically American whatever its form. The
American college has little or no resemblance to the English Public
School or to the French Lycée or to the German Gymnasium. It is
something more than any one of these, and at the same time something
less. It differs from them all very much as the conditions of American
life differ from those of English or of French or of German life. The
college may or may not involve residence, but when it does involve
residence, it is at its best. It is then that the largest amount of
carefully ordered and stimulating influence can be brought to bear
upon the daily life of growing and expanding youth, and it is then and
only then, that youth can get the inestimable benefits which follow
from daily and hourly contact with others of like age, like tastes,
like habits, and like purposes. Indeed, it has often been said that
the college gives more through its opportunities which attach to
residence, than through its opportunities which attach to instruction.
Almost every conceivable problem that can arise in college life and
college work, is discussed in the following pages. It is now coming
to be understood that the health of the college student is as much a
matter of concern as his instruction, and that a college is not doing
its full duty by those who seek its doors, when it merely provides
libraries, laboratories, and skillful teachers. It must also provide
for such conditions of residence, of food, of exercise, and of
frequent medical examination and inspection, as shall protect and
preserve the health of those who come to take advantage of its
instruction.
There is one other point which should not be overlooked, and that is
the literally immense influence exerted in America by that solidarity
of college sentiment and college opinion which is kept alive by
organizations of former college students scattered throughout the
land. This, again, is a peculiarly American development, and it serves
to unite the college and public sentiment much more closely than any
formal tie could possibly do. Indeed, it illustrates how completely
the American people claim the college as their own. The man or woman
who has once been a college student never ceases to be a member of
that particular college or to labor to extend its influence and to
increase its usefulness.
Every reader of this volume should approach it in a spirit of
sympathetic understanding of American higher education, and of the
college as the oldest instrument of that higher education and still
one of the chief elements in it.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
_Columbia University_
PART ONE
THE INTRODUCTORY STUDIES
CHAPTER
I HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE
_Stephen P. Duggan_
II PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING
_Sidney E. Mezes_
III GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING
_Paul Klapper_
I
HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE
1. THE COLONIAL PERIOD
=The predominance of the religious motive=
The American colonies were founded chiefly by Englishmen who came to
America for a variety of reasons. Some of these were economic and
political, but the most important of their reasons was the desire to
practice their religious convictions with greater freedom than was
permitted at home. Apart from the state religion, however, all the
colonists were animated by a love for English institutions which they
transplanted to the New World, and among these institutions were the
grammar school and the college. Wherever the Reformation had been
chiefly a religious rather than a political and ecclesiastical
movement, the interest in education and the effect upon it were direct
and immediate. This was true where Calvinism prevailed, as in the
Netherlands, Scotland, and among the Puritans in England. Hence it is
natural to find that the first effective movements in America toward
the establishment of educational institutions, both elementary and
higher, should have taken place in New England.
A large proportion of university graduates were included among the
settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were chiefly graduates
of Cambridge, which had always been religiously more tolerant than
Oxford, and especially of Emmanuel College, which was the stronghold
of Puritanism at Cambridge. It was natural that these men, leaders in
the affairs of the colony, should want to establish a New Cambridge
University, but it is astonishing that they were able to do so as
early as 1636, only six years after the founding of this colony. Two
years later the college was named after John Harvard, a clergyman and
a graduate of Emmanuel, who upon his death bequeathed half his estate
and all his fine library of three hundred volumes to the college. The
religious motive predominated in the founding of Harvard, for though
the colonists longed "to advance learning and perpetuate it to
posterity," they were actuated chiefly by dread "to leave an
illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present Ministers shall
lie in the Dust."
Harvard remained the sole instrument in the colonies for that purpose
for more than half a century. In 1693 the College of William and Mary
was founded in Virginia, with the most generous endowment of any
pre-Revolutionary college, generous because of the help received from
the mother country. It was the child of the Church of England, and its
president and its professors had to subscribe to the Thirty-nine
Articles. Subscription to a religious creed was also demanded of the
president and tutors of the third American college, founded in 1701.
This Collegiate Institute, as it was called, moved from place to place
for more than a decade, but finally it settled permanently in New
Haven in 1717. It afterward received the name of Yale College in honor
of Elihu Yale, who had given it generous assistance.
As a result of the founding of these three institutions, the New
England and the Southern colonies had their need for ministers fairly
well supplied, but this was not yet true of the Middle colonies.
However, the Presbyterians had become particularly strong in the
Middle colonies, and their religious zeal resulted in the
establishment of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University,
in 1746.
A few years later Benjamin Franklin advanced for the college a new
_raison d'être_. In 1749 he published a pamphlet entitled "Proposals
Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," in which he
advocated the establishment of an academy whose purpose was not the
training of ministers but the secular one of developing the practical
virtue necessary in the opening up of a new country. The Academy was
opened in 1751, and the charter, granted in 1755, designated the
institution as "The College, Academy, and Charitable School of
Philadelphia." Though the extremely modern organization and curriculum
suggested by Franklin were not realized, the institution, which was
afterward called "The University of Pennsylvania," offered the most
liberal curriculum of any college in the colonies up to the
Revolution.
The human motive was uppermost also in the establishment of King's
College in 1754. The colonial assembly desired its establishment to
enhance the welfare and reputation of the colony, and the only
connection between the college and the Church of England lay in the
requirement that the president should be a communicant of that church
and that the morning and evening service of the college should be
performed out of the liturgy of that church. But the religious motive
again comes to the fore in the establishment of Brown University at
Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, primarily to train ministers for
the Baptist churches; of Queens, afterwards named Rutgers, in 1766, to
provide ministers for the Dutch Reformed churches; and of Dartmouth,
in 1769, from which it was hoped at first that the evangelization of
the Indians would proceed.
=Character of the colonial college=
These colonial colleges in their histories bear a great resemblance to
one another. They were almost all born in poverty and led a desperate
financial existence for many years. In some cases survival was
possible only as the result of the untiring self-sacrifice of some
great personality like Eleazar Wheelock, the first president of
Dartmouth; in all cases, of the devotion of teachers and officers.
Their beginnings were all small; in some cases the president was the
only member of the instructing staff and taught all the subjects of
the curriculum. The students were few in number, the equipment was
simple, the buildings usually consisting of a house for the president,
in which he often heard recitations, a dormitory for the students, and
a college hall. Libraries, laboratories, and recreational facilities
were usually conspicuous by their absence. In fact, as the curriculum
consisted almost exclusively of philosophy, Greek, Latin, rhetoric,
and a little mathematics, there was no great need of much equipment.
The classics were taught by the intensive grammatical method; in
philosophy there was a great deal of dialectical disputation;
rhetoric was studied as an aid to oratory; mathematics included only
arithmetic and geometry. The aim of instruction was, not to give a
wide acquaintance with many fields of knowledge for cultural and
appreciative purposes, but rather to develop power through intensive
exercise upon a restricted curriculum. But the value of the materials
utilized to produce power which would function in oratory, debate, and
diplomacy is splendidly illustrated in the decades before the
Revolution. The contest between the colonies and the mother country
was essentially a rational contest in which questions of
constitutional law and, indeed, of the fundamental principles of civil
and political existence were debated. Splendidly did the leaders of
public opinion in the colonies, almost every one of whom was a
graduate of a colonial college, defend the cause of the colonists in
pamphlet and debate. And when debate was followed by war, twenty-five
per cent of the twenty-five hundred graduates of the colonial colleges
were found in the military service of their country. At the close of
the struggle for independence, it was again upon the shoulders of the
men who had gained vision and character in the colonial colleges that
the burden fell of organizing the mutually suspicious and antagonistic
colonies into one nation. Space will not permit even of the
enumeration of the great leaders who graduated from all the colonial
colleges, but an idea of the service rendered by those institutions to
the new nation may be obtained by mentioning the names of a few
statesmen who received their instruction in one of the least of them,
William and Mary. In its classrooms were taught Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Randolph, James Monroe, and John Marshall.
2. THE NATIONAL ERA
=French influence=
French influence upon American political and intellectual life had
become quite pronounced as the result of the contact between the
leaders of the two peoples during and after the Revolution. That
influence was reflected in the colleges. Instruction in the French
language was offered in several of the colleges before the close of
the eighteenth century, and a chair of French was established at
Columbia as early as 1779 and at William and Mary in 1793. The
secularizing influence of the French united also with the
democratizing influence of the Revolution in diminishing the influence
of the church upon the colleges and emphasizing the influence of the
State and especially the relations between college and people. Of the
fourteen colleges founded between 1776 and 1800, the majority were
established upon a non-sectarian basis. These included institutions of
a private nature like Washington and Lee, Bowdoin, and Union, as well
as institutions closely related to the state governments like the
Universities of North Carolina and of Vermont. There can hardly be any
doubt that the French system of centralized administration in civil
affairs influenced the establishment of the University of the State of
New York. The University of the State of New York is not a local
institution, but a body of nine regents elected by the legislature to
control the administration of education throughout the State of New
York. Though organized by Alexander Hamilton, it was in all
probability much influenced by John Jay, who returned from France in
1784. But the most potent factor in the spread of French influence in
the early history of our country was Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson
was American minister to France, he studied the French system of
education and embodied ideas taken from it in the organization of the
University of Virginia. This occupied much of his attention during the
last two decades of his life. The University was to be entirely
non-sectarian and had for its purpose (1) to form statesmen,
legislators, and judges for the commonwealth; (2) to expand the
principles and structure of government, the laws which regulate the
intercourse of states, and a sound spirit of legislation; (3) to
harmonize and promote the interests of all forms of industry, chiefly
by well-informed views of political economy; (4) to develop the
reasoning faculties of youth and to broaden their minds and develop
their character; (5) to enlighten them with knowledge, especially of
the physical sciences which will advance the material welfare of the
people. These progressive views of what the college should aim to do
were associated with equally advanced views of college administration,
such as the elective system and the importation of professors from
abroad. The remarkable vision, constructive imagination, courage, and
faith of Jefferson in his break with what was traditional and
authoritative in education has been justified by the fine career of
the university which he founded.
=The state universities system=
All the colleges that were established before the Revolution, and most
of those between the Revolution and the year 1800, had received direct
assistance from the colonial or state government either in grants of
land, money, the proceeds of lotteries, or special taxes. Most of
them, however, were dependent upon private foundations and controlled
by denominational bodies. The secularizing influence from France, the
growing interest in civic and political affairs, and the democratic
spirit resulting from the Revolution combined to develop a distrust of
the colleges as they were organized and a desire to bring them under
the control of the state. This was apparent in 1779, when the
legislature of Pennsylvania withdrew the charter of the college of
Philadelphia and created a new corporation to be known as "The
Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania"; it was shown
in 1787 when Columbia College was granted a new charter by the state
legislature, under which the board of trustees were all drawn from the
Board of Regents of the State; it was made most evident in 1816 when
the legislature of New Hampshire transformed Dartmouth College into a
university without the consent of the board of trustees and empowered
the governor and council to appoint a Board of Overseers. In the
celebrated Dartmouth College case, 1819, the old board of trustees,
when defeated before the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in their suit
for the recovery of property which had been seized, carried the case
to the Supreme Court of the United States and engaged Daniel Webster
as their counsel. The Court declared the act of the New Hampshire
legislature in violation of the provision of the Constitution of the
United States which reads that "No state shall pass any ... law
impairing the obligation of contracts." The decision drew a sharp
distinction between public and private corporations, and a necessary
inference was that most of the existing institutions for higher
education were in the latter class. The result was to strengthen the
rising demand for publicly controlled institutions. The Southern and
Western states across the Alleghanies that were on the point of
framing state constitutions made provision for state universities
under state control.
The intention to provide higher education freely for the people had
already received its greatest impetus in an Act of Congress passed
shortly after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the
organization of the Northwest Territory. By that act two entire
townships of public land were reserved to the states to be erected out
of the territory, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be devoted
to the establishment of a state university. These universities
followed swiftly upon the establishment of new states, and the
democratic ideal that prevailed is shown in the determination that the
state university was to be the crown of the public educational system
of the state. This is well illustrated in the provision of the
constitution of Indiana, adopted in the very year of the Dartmouth
College decision, 1819, which reads, "It shall be the duty of the
General Assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by
law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation
from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be
gratis and equally open to all." Circumstances did permit in the
following year, and the provisions of the bill materialized. The
national policy of granting public lands for educational purposes to
new states was continued, and one or two townships were devoted in
each case to the establishment of a state university. National
assistance to higher education was given on an immense scale in 1862,
when the Morrill Act was passed providing for the grant of 30,000
acres of land for each representative and senator, to be devoted to
the support in each state of a higher institution of learning, in
which technical and agricultural branches should be taught. Within
twenty years every state in the Union had taken advantage of this
splendid endowment, either to found a new state university which would
comply with the requirements as regards courses of instruction or to
establish an agricultural college as an independent institution, or in
connection with some already existing institution. Not only do some of
the finest state universities like those of California, Illinois, and
Minnesota owe their origins to the Morrill Act, but others owe to it
their real beginnings as institutions of collegiate grade. Up to the
passage of the Morrill Act a dozen state universities struggled to
maintain themselves with meager revenues and few students. They were
trying to do broad academic work, but by no means reached the
standards of the strong colleges in the eastern part of the country.
The establishment of state-supported and state-controlled universities
in the commonwealths organized after the close of the eighteenth
century by no means put an end to the establishment of colleges upon
religious foundations. Denominational zeal was very strong in the
decades preceding the Civil War, and the church was the center of
community life in the newly settled regions. The need to provide an
intelligent ministry and also a higher civilization led to the
establishment of many small sectarian colleges in the new states.
Despite the fact that practically all of them would today be
considered only of secondary grade, they accomplished a splendid work
and provided ideals and standards of intellectual life in a new
country whose population was engaged chiefly in supplying the physical
needs of life. The response made in the Civil War by the institutions
of higher education throughout the United States, whether privately or
publicly supported, was a magnificent return for the sacrifices
endured in their establishment and maintenance. Everywhere throughout
the North the colleges were depleted of instructors and students who
had entered the ranks, and in the South nearly all the colleges were
compelled to close their doors. Upon the shoulders of their graduates
fell the burden of directing civil and military affairs in state and
nation.
3. THE MODERN ERA
Were a visitor to Harvard or Columbia in 1860 to revisit it today, the
changes he would observe would be startling. The elective system,
graduate studies, professional and technical schools, an allied
woman's college, and a summer session are a few of the most noticeable
activities incorporated since 1860. It would be impossible to set any
date for the beginning of this transformation, so gradual and subtle
has it been, but the accession of Dr. Charles W. Eliot to the
presidency of Harvard College in 1869 and the establishment of Johns
Hopkins University in 1876 are definite landmarks.
This chapter is a history of the American college, and space will not
permit of a detailed description of these activities but simply of a
narration of the way they developed and of the forces which brought
them into being.
=The curriculum and the elective system=
It has already been mentioned that the curriculum of the average
American college at the beginning of the nineteenth century differed
but little from the curriculum followed in the middle of the
seventeenth. The reason is simple. The curriculum is based upon the
biological principle of adaptation to environment, and the environment
of the average American of 1800 differed but slightly from his
ancestor of a century and a half previous. The growth of the
curriculum follows, slowly it is often true, upon the growth of
knowledge. The growth of knowledge during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries was slow and insignificant compared to its
marvelous growth in the nineteenth century, particularly in the last
half of it. The great discoveries in science, first in chemistry, then
in physics and biology, resulted in their gradually displacing much of
the logic and philosophy which had maintained the prime place in the
old curriculum. The interest aroused in the French language and
literature by our Revolution; in the Spanish by the South American
wars of independence; and in the German by the distinguished scholars
who studied in the German universities during the middle decades of
the nineteenth century, caused a demand that those languages as well
as English have a place in the curriculum. This could be secured only
by making them partly alternatives to the classical languages. The
Industrial Revolution, based as it was upon the application of science
to industry, not only gave an impetus to the establishment of
technical schools, but by revolutionizing the production and
distribution of wealth pushed into the curriculum the science that
deals with wealth, political economy. The growth of cities that
followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the conflicts
between the interests of classes,--viz., landowners, capitalists, and
laborers,--the rapid decay of feudalism and the spread of political
democracy following the French Revolution, the expansion of commerce
to all corners of the globe and the resulting development of
colonialism, all these human interests gave a new meaning to the study
of history and politics which caused them to secure a place of great
prominence in the curriculum during the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.
It is perfectly obvious that as the time at the student's disposal
remained the same, if he were to pursue even a part of the new subject
matter that was gradually admitted into the curriculum, the course of
study could no longer remain wholly prescribed and he would have to be
granted some freedom of choice. The growth in number of students also
produced changes in administration favorable to the introduction of
the elective system. In the early history of the American college one
instructor taught a single class in all subjects, and it was not until
1776 that the transfer was made at Harvard from the teaching of
classes by one instructor to the teaching of each subject by one
instructor. With increase in numbers the students were unable to
receive in each year instruction by every member of the teaching
staff. In spite of the quite obvious advantages of the elective
system, it was obstinately resisted by the defenders of the classics
and also of orthodox religion and at first made but slow progress.
Thomas Jefferson gave it the first great impetus when he made it an
essential element in the organization of the University of Virginia in
1825. Francis Wayland, president of Brown University and one of the
few college presidents of his day who were educators in the modern
sense, made a splendid exposition and defense of it in 1850 in his
"Report to the Corporation of Brown University on Changes in the
System of Collegiate Education." But the elective system waited upon
the elevation of Charles W. Eliot to the presidency of Harvard in 1869
for its general realization; in 1872 the senior year at Harvard became
wholly elective; in 1879, the junior year; in 1884, the sophomore
year; and in 1894 the single absolute requirement that remained in the
entire college course was English A. The action of Harvard was rapidly
imitated to a more or less thorough extent throughout the country.
Probably no two colleges administer the elective system in the same
way. There has been a considerable revulsion of opinion against
unrestricted election of individual subjects. In many colleges the
subjects of the curriculum were arranged into groups which must be
elected _in toto_. This resulted in the multiplication of bachelor's
degrees, each indicating the special course--arts, science,
philosophy, or literature--which had been followed. At the present
time the tendency is to prescribe the subjects considered essential to
a liberal education chiefly in the first two years and to permit
election among groups of related courses in the last two. This has
maintained the unity that formerly prevailed and introduced greater
breadth into the curriculum. It has also brought the new bachelor's
degrees into disfavor, and today the majority of the best colleges
give only the A.B. degree for the regular academic course. Valuable
modifications in the elective system are constantly being adopted. One
such is the preceptorial system at Princeton and elsewhere, under
which the preceptors personally supervise the reading and study of a
small group of students and can therefore advise them from personal
knowledge of their capacity. Another is the system of honor courses
adopted at Columbia and elsewhere, whereby a distinction is made
between mere "passmen" and students desirous of attaining high rank in
courses that are carefully organized in sequence.
=German Influence and graduate study=
The introduction of new subjects into the curriculum of the college
and the adoption by it of the elective system owe much to German
influence upon American education. Though this influence was partly
exerted by the study of the German language and literature, it
resulted chiefly from the residence of American students at German
universities. The first American to be granted the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy from a German university was Edward Everett, who received
it at Göttingen in 1817. He was followed by George Ticknor, George
Bancroft, Henry W. Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, Frederick Henry
Hedge, William Dwight Whitney, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, and a host of
scholars who shed luster upon American education and scholarship in
the mid-nineteenth century. Most of these men became associated with
American colleges in some capacity and had a profound influence upon
their ideals, organization, and methods of teaching. They came back
devoted advocates of wide and deep scholarship, of independent
research, and of the need of such scholastic tools as libraries and
laboratories. But especially did they give an impetus to the movement
in favor of freedom of choice (_Lernfreiheit_) in studies. Only by the
adoption of such a principle could the pronounced tastes or needs of
individual students be satisfied.
Some slight effort had been made in the first four decades of the
nineteenth century by a few of the colleges to conform to the desire
of students for further study in some chosen field, but the results
were negligible. In 1847 Yale established a "department of philosophy
and the arts for scientific and graduate study leading to the degree
of bachelor of philosophy." The first degree of doctor of philosophy
was bestowed in 1861, but a distinct graduate school was not organized
until 1872. Harvard announced in the same year the establishment of a
graduate department to which only holders of the bachelor's degree
would be admitted and in which the degrees of doctor of philosophy and
doctor of science would be conferred. The graduate department was not
made a separate school, however, until 1890.
The greatest impetus to the establishment of graduate schools in the
American universities was made by the establishment of Johns Hopkins
University in 1876. Upon its foundation the chief aim was announced to
be the development of instruction in the methods of scientific
research. The influence of this institution upon the development of
higher education in the United States has been incalculably great.
Johns Hopkins was not a transplanted German university. The unique
place of the college in American education was shown by the fact that
graduate schools have followed the lead of Johns Hopkins in building
upon the college. Even Clark University at Worcester, founded in 1889
upon a purely graduate basis, established an undergraduate college in
1902.
One of the most gratifying features of higher education in the United
States during the past quarter century has been the extension of
graduate schools to the strong state universities. Research work in
them usually began in the school of agriculture, where the intensive
study of the sciences, particularly chemistry and biology, had such
splendid results in improved farming and dairying that legislatures
were gradually persuaded to extend the support for research to purely
liberal studies. With the growth and development of graduate schools
in this country, the practice of going to Europe for advanced
specialized study has abated considerably. It will probably so
continue in the future, particularly with regard to Germany. On the
other hand, should the new ideal of international good will become a
living reality, education through a wide system of exchange professors
and students may be expected to make its contribution.
=Technical and professional study=
While the graduate school was built upon the college, the technical
school grew up by the side of it or upon an independent foundation.
The first technical school was established at Troy, New York, in 1824,
and was called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, after its founder,
Stephen Van Rensselaer. For a score of years no other development of
consequence was made, but in 1847 the foundations were made of what
have since become the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and the
Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. The passage of the Morrill Act in
1862 had a quickening effect on education in engineering and
agriculture. In the decade from 1860 to 1870 some twenty-two technical
institutions were founded, most of them by the aid of the land grants.
The most important of them is the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where instruction was first given in 1865 and which has
exerted by far the greatest influence upon the development of
scientific and technical education. The best technical schools require
a high school diploma for admission and have a four-year course of
study, but the only technical school on a graduate basis is the School
of Mines at Columbia University.
Professional education in theology, law, and medicine in the United
States was conducted chiefly upon the apprenticeship system down into
the nineteenth century. Though chairs of divinity existed in the
colonial colleges in the eighteenth century, systematic preparation
for the ministry was not generally attempted and the prospective
minister usually came under the special care of a prominent clergyman
who prepared him for the profession. In 1819 Harvard established a
separate faculty of divinity, and three years later Yale founded a
theological department. Since then about fifty colleges and
universities have established theological faculties and about 125
independent theological schools have been founded as the result of
denominational zeal. A majority of all these institutions require at
least a high school diploma for admission; half of them require a
college degree. Nearly all offer a three-year course of study and
confer the degree of bachelor of divinity.
Previous to the Civil War the great majority of legal practitioners
obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of
Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia
in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to
establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a
feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became associated with it in
1830. Up to 1870 but three terms of study were required for a degree;
until 1877 students were admitted without examination, and special
students were admitted without examination as late as 1893. Since then
the advance in standards has been very rapid, and in 1899 Harvard
placed its law school upon a graduate basis. Though but few others
have emulated Harvard in this respect, the improvement in legal
education during the past two decades has been marked. Of the 120 law
schools today, the great majority are connected with colleges and
universities, demand a high school diploma for admission, maintain a
three-year course of study, and confer the degree of LL.B. Twenty-four
per cent of the twenty thousand students are college graduates. In
some of the best schools the inductive method of study--i.e., the
"case method"--has superseded the lecture, and in practically all the
moot court is a prominent feature.
Entrance into the medical profession in colonial times was obtained by
apprenticeship in the office of a practicing physician. The first
permanent medical school was the medical college of Philadelphia,
which was established in 1765 and which became an integral part of the
University of Pennsylvania in 1791. Columbia, Harvard, and Dartmouth
also founded schools before the close of the eighteenth century, and
these were slowly followed by other colleges in the early decades of
the nineteenth century. During almost the entire nineteenth century
medical education in the United States was kept on a low plane by the
existence of large numbers of proprietary medical "colleges" organized
for profit, requiring only the most meager entrance qualifications,
giving poor instruction, and having very inadequate equipment in the
way of laboratories and clinics. In fact, medical education did not
obtain a high standard until the establishment of the Johns Hopkins
Medical School in 1893. Since then the efforts of the medical schools
connected with the strong universities and of the Rockefeller
Foundation to raise the minimum standard of medical education have
resulted in the elimination of the weakest medical schools. The total
number fell from 150 in 1900 to 100 in 1914. Not all of these demand a
high school diploma for admission, though the tendency is to stiffen
entrance requirements, but all have a four-year course of study. In
most institutions experience in laboratory, clinic, and hospital has
superseded the old lecture system as the method of instruction.
Closely associated with the progress in medicine and to a great extent
similar in history has been the progress in dentistry and pharmacy.
There are now fifty schools of dentistry, with nearly 9000 students,
and seventy-two schools of pharmacy, with nearly 6000 students.
One of the most gratifying advances in professional education has been
that of the teacher. Practically all the state universities and many
of the universities and colleges upon private foundations have
established either departments or schools of education which require
at least the same entrance qualifications as does the college proper
and in many cases confine the work to the junior and senior years.
Teachers College of Columbia University is on a graduate basis. Though
many of the 250 training and normal schools throughout the country do
not require a high school diploma for admission, the tendency is
wholly in that direction. In no field of professional education has
the application of scientific principles to actual practice made such
progress as in that of the teacher.
=College education for women--The independent college=
Few movements in the history of American education had more important
results than the academy movement which prevailed during the period
between the Revolution and the Civil War. Possibly the principle upon
which the new nation was established, i.e., the privilege of every
individual to make the most of himself, influenced the founders of
the academies to make provision for the education of girls beyond the
mere rudiments. Certainly this aspect of the movement had a
far-reaching influence. Some of the earliest of the academies admitted
girls as well as boys from the beginning, and some soon became
exclusively female. When it became evident from the work of the
academies that sex differences were not of as great importance as had
been supposed, it was not a long step to higher education. Some of the
academies added a year or two to the curriculum and took on the more
dignified name of "seminary." In this transition period the influence
of a few great personalities was profound, and even a brief sketch of
the history of women's education cannot omit to mention the splendid
work of Emma Willard and Mary Lyon. Mrs. Willard was an exponent of
the belief that freedom of development for the individual was the
greatest desideratum for humanity. She not only diffused this idea in
her addresses and writings but tried to utilize it in the
establishment in 1814 of the Troy Female Seminary, which was the
forerunner of many others throughout the country. Mary Lyon was rather
the representative of the religious influence in education, the
embodiment of the belief that to do one's duty is the great purpose in
life. In 1837 she founded Mount Holyoke Seminary, which had an
influence of inestimable value in sending well-equipped women
throughout the country a teachers. The importance of this service was
particularly evident during the period of the Civil War.
Although a number of excellent institutions for women bearing the name
of college were founded before the Civil War, the first one of really
highest rank was Vassar College, which opened its doors to students in
1865. Smith and Wellesley were founded in 1875, and Bryn Mawr in 1885.
These four colleges are in every respect the equal of the best
colleges for men. They are the most important of a dozen independent
colleges for women, almost all of which are situated in the East. To
establish the independent college was the chief method adopted in the
older parts of the country to solve the problem of women's higher
education, rather than to reorganize colleges for men where
conditions were already established.
=The development of coeducation=
The independent college is not the method that has prevailed in the
West. When the inspiration to higher education for women arrived west
of the Alleghanies, conditions, especially lack of resources,
practically necessitated coeducation. Oberlin, founded in 1834, was
the first fully coeducational institution of college grade in the
world. In 1841 three women received from it the bachelor's degree, the
first to get it. Oberlin's success had a pronounced influence on the
state universities, which, it was argued, should be open and free to
all citizens, since they were supported by public taxation. Almost all
the state universities and the great majority of the colleges and
universities on private foundations are today coeducational. The
results predicted by pessimists, viz., that the physical health of
women would suffer, that their intellectual capacity would depreciate
scholarship, and that the interests of the family would be menaced,
have not eventuated.
=The affiliated college for women=
The spread of coeducation in the state universities of the West and
the South and its presence in the newer private universities like
Cornell and Chicago had an influence upon the older universities of
the East. This influence has resulted in a third method of solving the
problem of women's education; viz., the establishment of the
affiliated college. Several universities have established women's
colleges, sometimes under the same and sometimes under a different
board of trustees, to provide the collegiate education for women which
is given to men by the undergraduate departments. Barnard College,
affiliated with Columbia University, Radcliffe College, affiliated
with Harvard University, Woman's College, affiliated with Brown
University, the College for Women, affiliated with the Western Reserve
University, and the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women,
affiliated with Tulane University, have all been founded within the
past forty years.
=Graduate and professional studies for women=
All the universities for men except Princeton and Johns Hopkins and
all the fully coeducational institutions admit women upon the same
terms as men to graduate work. Graduate work is also undertaken with
excellent results in some of the independent women's colleges, as at
Bryn Mawr. Professional education for women has been coeducational
from the beginning, with the exception of medicine. The prejudice
against coeducation in that profession was so strong that five women's
medical schools were organized, but they provide instruction for
little more than a quarter of the women medical students. The increase
in the number of women in professional schools has not by any means
kept pace with the increase in the colleges. It appears that, with the
exception of teaching, woman is not to be a very important sector in
the learned professions in the near future.
=Undergraduate life--Fraternities=
Nothing differentiates more clearly the American college from European
institutions of higher education than the kind of non-scholastic
activities undertaken by the students. From the very beginning the
college became a place of residence as well as of study for students
from a distance, and the dormitory was an essential element in its
life. With increase in numbers, especially after the Revolution, when
all distinctions of birth or family were abolished, students naturally
divided into groups. The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded
in 1776 at William and Mary, with a patriotic and literary purpose,
and membership in it has practically ever since been confined to
graduates who have attained high scholastic standing. When one speaks
of college fraternities, however, he does not refer to Phi B K, but to
one of the intercollegiate social organizations which have chapters in
several colleges organized somewhat upon the plan of a club and whose
members live in a chapter house. The first such fraternity was founded
at Yale in 1821, but it was limited to the senior class. The three
fraternities established at Union in 1825-1827 form the foundation of
the present system. The fraternities spread rapidly and are today very
numerous. There are about thirty of national importance, having about
a thousand chapters and a quarter of a million members. The fraternity
system is bitterly attacked as being undemocratic, expensive, emphasizing
social rather than scholastic attainments, and, generally speaking, a
divisive rather than a unifying factor in college life. Hence some
colleges have abolished it. Fraternities have been defended, however,
as promoting close fellowship and even helping to develop character.
So strongly are they entrenched, not only in undergraduate but also in
alumni affection, that they probably form a permanent element in
college life.
=Religious life=
The early American college was primarily a place to prepare for the
ministry, and personal piety was a matter of official enforcement. For
a number of reasons religious zeal declined in the eighteenth century.
After the Revolution, under the influence of the new political
theories and of French skepticism the percentage of students
professing to be active Christians fell very low. In the early
nineteenth century the interest of students in religion increased, and
religious organizations in a number of colleges were founded.
Practically all of these later gave way to the Young Men's Christian
Association, which has now over 50,000 members organized in almost all
the colleges of the country save the Roman Catholic. The religious
interests of Roman Catholic students are in many colleges served by
the Newman Clubs and similar organizations, and of Jewish students by
the Menorah Society. The religion of college students has become less
a matter of form and speech and more a matter of service--social
service of many kinds at home and missionary service abroad.
=Physical education=
The educational reformers of Europe in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries placed great emphasis upon a more complete
physical training. This interest was felt in the United States, and
simple gymnastic apparatus was set up at Harvard and Yale in 1826. The
movement spread very slowly, however, due probably to ignorance of its
real physiological import. Since the Civil War the development of the
gymnastic system has been rapid, and now practically every first-class
college has its gymnasium, attendance upon which is compulsory, and
some have their stadium and natatorium. Of independent origin but
hastened by the spread of the gymnasium is the vast athletic interest
of undergraduates. Its earliest form, conducted on a considerable
scale, was rowing. The first rowing club was formed at Yale in 1843,
and the first intercollegiate race was rowed on Lake Winnepesaukee in
1852, Harvard defeating Yale. Rowing is now a form of athletics at
every college where facilities permit. The first baseball nine was
formed at Princeton in 1859, and the game spread rapidly to all the
other colleges. Football in a desultory and unorganized way made its
appearance early in the nineteenth century. As early as 1840 an annual
game was played at Yale between the freshmen and the sophomores, but
the establishment of a regular football association dates from 1872,
also at Yale. In the following year an intercollegiate organization
was formed, and since then football has increased in popularity at the
colleges to such an extent that just as baseball has become the great
national game, so has football become the great American collegiate
game. Track athletics is the most recent form of athletic sports to be
introduced into the college, and most colleges now have their field
days. In addition to these four major forms of college sports, tennis,
lacrosse, basketball, and swimming also have a prominent place. The
four major sports are usually under the control of special athletic
associations, which spend large sums of money and have a great
influence with the students. In fact, so great has become the interest
of college students in athletics that much fear has been expressed
about its influence upon scholastic work, and voices are not lacking
demanding its curtailment.[1] Military training is a phase of physical
education which, though it had earlier found a place in the land-grant
institutions, came to the fore as a part of the colleges' contribution
to winning the world war. Students' Army Training Corps were
established at many of the higher institutions of the country, and the
academic studies were made to correlate with the military work as a
nucleus. At the present time, however, the colleges are putting their
work back on a pre-war basis, and it seems most unlikely that military
training will survive as a corporate part of their work.
=Student literary activities--College journalism=
Journalism, though its actual performance is limited to a small number
of students, has had an honored place as an undergraduate activity for
almost a hundred years. It served first as a means of developing
literary ability among the students, afterwards as a vehicle for
college news, and now there has been added to these purposes the
uniting of alumni and undergraduates. Hence we find among college
journals dailies, monthlies, and quarterlies, some of them humorous
and some with a serious literary purpose. Journalism is not the only
method of expressing undergraduate thought. There has been a great
revival of intracollegiate and of intercollegiate debating in recent
years. Literary societies for debating the great issues preceding the
Revolution was the first development of undergraduate life, and every
college before and after the Revolution had strong societies. As
undergraduate interests increased in number, and especially as the
fraternity system began to spread, debating societies assumed a
relatively less important place, but in the past two decades great
interest has been revived in them. The glee club, or choral society,
along with the college orchestra, minister to the specialized
interests of some students, and the dramatic association to those of
others. One significant result of such activities has been to
establish a nexus between the college and community life.
=Student self-government=
One other feature of undergraduate life cannot be overlooked; viz.,
student self-government. The college student today is two or three
years older than was his predecessor of fifty or sixty years ago.
Moreover, with the great increase in the number of students has come a
parallel increase in complexity of administration and in the duties of
the college professor. Finally, a sounder psychology has taught the
wisdom of placing in the hands of the students the control of many
activities which they can supervise better than the faculty. As a
result of these and of other influences, in many colleges today all
extra-scholastic activities are either supervised by the student
council, the members of which are elected by the students, or by a
joint body of student and faculty members. The effect in almost every
instance has been the diminution of friction between the faculty and
students and the development of better relations between them. In some
colleges the honor system is found, under which even proctoring at
examinations does not exist, as all disciplinary matters, including
the decision in serious offenses like cheating, rest with the student
council. Student self-government is only one evidence of the
democratization that has taken place in the administration of the
college during the past two decades. Even more noticeable than student
self-government is the tendency recently manifested to transfer more
of the control of the government of the college from the board of
trustees to the faculty.
=New opportunities in higher education=
With the extension of commerce and the attempt to bring it under
efficient organization in the nineteenth century, the demand has been
made upon the colleges to train experts in this field. Germany was the
first to engage in it, and just before the war probably led the world.
France and England have remained relatively indifferent. In America,
the so-called "business college" proved entirely too narrow in scope,
and beginning with the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the
University of Pennsylvania (1881), the higher institutions have begun
to train for this important field. Some of the colleges of commerce,
like those of Dartmouth and Harvard, demand extensive liberal
preparation; others, like Wharton and the schools connected with the
state universities, coördinate their liberal and vocational work; a
few, like that of New York University, give almost exclusive attention
to the practical element.
Two other movements might be mentioned as illustrating the attempt to
extend the opportunity for higher education to an ever increasing
number of people. One is the development of extension courses and the
other the offering of evening work to those who cannot attend the
regular sessions. These are both steps in the direction of equality
of opportunity which is the ultimate aim of education in a democratic
country.
=The future of the college in American education--Relation to secondary
schools=
The college preceded the high school in time, and when the high school
began its career in the middle of the nineteenth century it was made
tributary to the college in all essentials. By deciding requirements
for admission, the college practically prescribed the curriculum of
the high school; by conducting examinations itself it practically
determined methods of teaching in the high school. But a remarkable
change in these respects has taken place in the past two decades. The
high school, which is almost omnipresent in our country, has attained
independence and today organizes its curricula without much reference
to the college. If there be any domination in college entrance
requirements today, it is rather the high school that dominates. Over
a large part of the country, especially in states maintaining state
universities, there are now no examinations for entrance to college.
The college accepts all graduates of _accredited_ high schools--i.e.,
high schools that the state university decides maintain proper
secondary standards. This growth in strength and independence has been
accompanied by a lengthening of the high school course from two years
in the middle of the last century to four years at the present time.
=The junior college=
With the introduction of the principle of promotion by subject instead
of by class, the strong high schools have been enabled to undertake to
teach subjects in their last years which were formerly taught in the
first years of the college. They have done this so well that the
practice has grown up in some parts of the country, especially on the
Pacific Coast, of extending the course of the high school to six years
and of completing in them the work of the first two years of college.
This enables more young men and women throughout the state to receive
collegiate education, and as the best-equipped teachers in the high
schools are usually in the last years and the worst-equipped teachers
in the college are usually in the first years, the system makes for
better education. Moreover, it relieves the state universities of the
crowds of students in the first two years and permits overworked
professors to concentrate upon the advanced work of the last two years
and upon research work in the graduate schools. A system which offers
so many advantages and is so popular both in the high school and the
university bids fair to spread.
=The abbreviated and condensed college course=
While the movement making for the elimination of the college from
below has been taking place in the West, another movement having the
same effect has been taking place in the East, only the pressure has
been from above. The tendency is spreading for the professional
schools of the strong universities to demand a college degree for
admission. If the full four years of the college are demanded in
addition to the four years of the secondary school and the eight years
of the elementary school, the great majority of students will begin
their professional education at twenty-two and their professional
careers at twenty-six, and they will hardly be self-supporting before
thirty. This seems an unreasonably long period of preparation compared
to that required in other progressive countries. The German student,
for example, begins his professional studies immediately upon
graduation from the gymnasium at eighteen. Hence the demand has arisen
for a shortening of the college course. This demand has been met in
several ways. In some colleges the courses have been arranged in such
a way that the bright and industrious student may complete the work
required for graduation in three years. In others, as at Harvard, the
student may elect in his senior year the studies of the first year of
the professional school. Another tendency in the same direction is to
permit students in the junior and even in the sophomore years to elect
subjects of a vocational nature. This has been bitterly contested by
those who hold that the minimum essentials of liberal culture should
be acquired before vocational specialization begins. Columbia
_permits_ a student to complete his college and professional studies
in six years, and at the end of that time he receives both the
bachelor's and the professional degrees.
It is to be noted, however, that these solutions of the problem and,
in fact, most other solutions that have been suggested, apply only to
a college connected with a university; they could not be administered
in the independent college. But a movement has developed in the Middle
West which may result in another solution; i.e., the Junior College.
It can be best understood by reference to the policy of the University
of Chicago. That institution divides its undergraduate course into two
parts: a Junior College of two years, the completion of whose course
brings with it the title of Associate in Arts, and a Senior College of
two years, the completion of whose course is rewarded with the regular
bachelor's degree. There have become affiliated with the University of
Chicago a considerable number of colleges throughout the Mississippi
Valley which have frankly become Junior Colleges and confine their
work to the freshman and sophomore years. And this has become true of
other universities. It would seem inevitable that the bachelor's
degree will finally be granted at the end of the Junior College and
some other degree, perhaps the master's, which has an anomalous place
in American education in any case, at the end of the Senior College.
This has, in fact, been suggested by President Butler. The University
of Chicago has also struck out in another new direction. Provided a
certain amount of work is done in residence at the University, the
remainder may be completed _in absentia_, i.e., through
correspondence courses.
The Junior College movement has had the excellent result of inducing
many weak colleges to confine their work to what they really can
afford to do. Many parts of our country have a surplus of colleges,
chiefly denominational. Ohio alone has more than fifty. The cost of
maintaining dormitories, laboratories, libraries, apparatus, and other
equipment and paying respectable salaries cannot be met by the tuition
fees in any college. The college must either have a large
income-producing endowment, which few have, or must receive gifts
sufficient to meet expenses. Gifts to colleges and universities form
one of the finest evidences of interest in higher education in the
United States, and reach really colossal proportions. In the past
fifty years, during which this form of generosity has prevailed, over
600 million dollars have been given, and in 1914 gifts from private
sources amounted to more than 30 million dollars. Most of this money
is given to the non-sectarian institutions and not to the small
denominational colleges scattered over the country. As they are in
addition unable to compete with the state universities, they are for
every reason justified in becoming Junior Colleges. But this does not
apply to the old independent colleges, such as Amherst, Williams,
Dartmouth, etc., which have loyal and wealthy alumni associations.
They have the support necessary to retain the four-year course and
seem determined to do so.
Just what the outcome of the whole question of shortening the college
course may be is not now evident. That concessions in time must be
made to the demand for an earlier beginning of professional education
seems certain. That the saving should be made in the college course is
not so certain. A sounder pedagogy seems to indicate that one year, if
not two, can be saved in the period from the sixth to the eighteenth
year. It is probable that the arbitrary division of American education
into elementary, secondary, collegiate, and university, each with a
stated number of years, will give way to a real unification of the
educational process. Most Americans would regret to see the college,
the unique product of American education, which has had such an
honorable part in the development of our civilization, disappear in
the unifying process.
STEPHEN PIERCE DUGGAN
_College of the City of New York_
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography on the American college is almost inexhaustible. The
list here given is confined to the best books that have appeared since
1900.
ANGELL, J. B. _Selected Addresses._ New York, 1912.
Association of American Universities. Proceedings of the Annual
Conference.
BUTLER, N. M. _Education in the United States._ New York, 1900.
CATTELL, J. M. _University Control._ New York, 1913.
CRAWFORD, W. H. (editor). _The American College._ New York, 1915.
(Papers by Faunce, Shorey, Haskins, Rhees, Thwing, Finley, Few,
Slocum, Meiklejohn, Claxton.)
Cyclopedia of Education, article on "American College." New York,
1911.
DEXTER, E. G. _History of Education in the United States._ New York,
1904.
DRAPER, A. S. _American Education._ Boston, 1909.
FLEXNER, A. _The American College: A Criticism._ General Education
Board, New York, 1908.
FOSTER, W. T. _Administration of the College Curriculum._ Boston,
1911.
HARPER, W. R. _The Trend in Higher Education._ Chicago, 1905.
KINGSLEY, C. D. _College Entrance Requirements._ United States Bureau
of Education, 1913.
MACLEAN, G. E. _Present Standards of Higher Education in the United
States._ United States Bureau of Education, 1913.
National Association of State Universities in the United States of
America. Annual Transactions and Proceedings.
RISK, R. K. _America at College._ London, 1908.
SNOW, L. F. _College Curriculum in the United States._ New York, 1907.
THWING, C. F. _History of Higher Education in the United States._ New
York, 1906.
---- _The American College; What It Is and What It May Become._ New
York, 1914.
---- _College Administration._ New York, 1900.
WEST, A. F. _Short Papers on American Liberal Education._ New York,
1907.
Footnotes:
[1] W. T. Foster in N.E.A. Reports, 1915.
II
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING
=Introduction=
Were this chapter to be a discussion of schemes of training, now in
operation, that had been devised to prepare teachers for colleges, it
could not be written, for there are no such schemes. Many elementary
and secondary teachers have undergone training for their life work, as
investigators have, by a different regimen, of course, for theirs. But
if college and university teachers do their work well, it is because
they are born with competence for their calling, or were self-taught,
or happened to grow into competence accidentally, as a by-product of
training for other and partly alien ends, or learned to teach by
teaching.
There are able college men, presidents and others, who view this
situation with equanimity, if not with satisfaction. Teachers are
born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than
specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely
for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native
teaching faculty, and mechanize our class procedure, it is objected.
Had the subject of training for college teaching been discussed, no
doubt other objections would have been advanced. But it has not been
discussed, as will be seen from the very scant bibliography at the end
of the chapter. No plan of training for college teaching is in
operation, and no discussion of such a plan can be found. Each of a
half-dozen men has argued his individual views, and elicited no reply.
This state of facts notwithstanding, the subject is well worth
discussing, and one may even venture to prophesy that in a decade, or
at latest two, the subject will have a respectable literature, and
enough training plans will be in operation to permit fruitful
comparisons.
When specific training is first urged for specialized work, there
always is opposition. The outgoing generation remembers the opposition
to specialized training for law, medicine, and engineering, to say
nothing of farming, school teaching and business. But in spite of
obstructive and retarding objections, specialized types of training
for specialized types of work have grown in number and favor, and
today we are being shown convincingly that nations which have declined
to set up the fundamental types of special training find themselves
able to make effective only a fraction of their resources. The
majority of the personnel in every higher calling has about average
native aptitude for it, and it is just the average man who can be
improved in competence for any work by training directed to that end
rather than to another. This is, of course, true of college teaching.
=How the college teacher has been and is trained=
In early days in this country the great majority of college teachers
were clergymen, trained in most cases abroad. Later bookish graduates
came to be the chief source of supply, their appointment in their own
colleges, and infrequently in others, following close upon their
graduation. Well into the third quarter of last century college
faculties were selected almost exclusively from these two types,
representatives of the former decreasing and of the latter increasing
in relative number. Neither type was specifically trained for teaching
in colleges or elsewhere.
With the founding and developing of Johns Hopkins University a new era
in higher education opened in this country. The paucity of exact
scholarship came to be known, and the country's need of scholarship to
be appreciated. In colleges grown from English seedlings we sought to
implant grafts from German universities. Independent colleges and
colleges within universities, while still called upon by American
traditions and needs to prepare their students for enlightened living
by means of a broadening and liberating training, came to be manned
preponderatingly by narrowly specialized investigators, withdrawn from
everyday life, with concentrated interests focused upon subjects or
parts of subjects, rather than upon students. Little thought was, or
is yet, given to the preparation of college teachers for their duties
as teachers, and that little rested, and still in large measure rests,
satisfied with the assumption that by some unexplained and it may be
inexplicable transfer of competence a man closeted and intensively
trained to search for truth in books and laboratories emerges after
three or more years well equipped for divining and developing the
mental processes and interests of freshmen.
Once fairly examined, this assumption lacks plausibility. "We consider
the Ph.D. a scholar's degree and not a teacher's degree," says the
dean of one of our leading graduate schools, and yet preparation for
this scholar's degree has been and is practically the only formal
preparation open to college teachers in this country.
=Equipment needed by college teachers=
It goes without saying that scholarship is one of the basal needs of
college teachers, a scholarship that keeps alive, and is human and
contagious. But it should be remembered that there are several kinds
of scholarship, and it is pertinent to ask what kind college teachers
need. Should they, for instance, model themselves on the broad
shrewdness and alluring scholarly mellowness of James Russell Lowell
or on the untiring encyclopedic exactitude and minuteness of Von
Helmholz? Or is there an even better ideal or ideals _for them_? I
would suggest that the teacher's knowledge of his subject should,
essentially, be of a kind that would keep him in intellectual sympathy
with the undeveloped minds of his students, and this means chiefly two
things. The more points of contact of his knowledge with the past
experience and future plans of his students the teacher has at his
command, the better teacher he will be; for he can use them, not as
resting places, but as points of departure for the development of
phases of his subject outside the students' experience. And secondly,
the teacher should see his subject entire, with its parts, as rich in
number and detail as possible, each in its proper place within the
whole. For the students' knowledge of the subject is vague and
general; he is trying to place it, and many other new things, in some
kind of a coherent setting; in fact, he is in college largely for the
very purpose of working out some sort of rudimentary scheme of things.
The duty of the college teacher is to help him in this quite as much
as to teach him a particular subject. And, besides, each particular
subject can be best taught if advantage is taken of every opportunity
to attach it to the only knowledge of it the student has, vague and
general though it be. Highly specialized and dehumanized knowledge is
not as useful for the college teacher as broad and vital knowledge,
which is, of course, much harder to acquire. Even in the case of
"disciplinary" subjects, there is no gain in concealing the human
bearings. The teacher should be trained to seize opportunities in the
classroom and out to help the student, through his subject and his
maturer life experience, to see the bearing of what he is learning on
the life about him and on the life he is to lead. This is the college
teacher's richest opportunity and the opportunity that tries him most
shrewdly. If he is to rise to it, his entire equipment, native and
acquired, must come into play.
What else does the teacher need? So that he may select the best and
continue to improve them, he needs a knowledge of the different
methods and aims in the teaching of his subject, and, so far as
possible, of the results attained by each. Too much of college
teaching is a blind groping, chartless and without compass. Instead of
expecting each inexperienced teacher to start afresh, he should set
out armed with the epitomized and digested teaching experience of
those that have gone before him.
Finally, the teacher needs a sympathetic and expert understanding of
the thinking and feeling of college students. This should be his
controlling interest. The teacher, his interest in his subject, and in
all else except the student, should be instrumental, not final. Every
available strand of continuity between studenthood and teacherhood
should thereafter be preserved.
This need suggests a capital weakness of the training for the
doctorate in philosophy as a preparation for teaching. As it proceeds
it shifts the interest from undergraduate student to scholarly
specialty, and steadily snaps the ties that bound the budding
investigator to his college days. It also explains the greatness of
some college teachers and personalities before the eighties. Their
degrees in arts were their licenses to teach. They suffered no drastic
loss of touch with undergraduate thought and life. In the early years
of their teaching this sympathetic and kindly understanding was fresh
and strong, and they used it in their classroom and wove it into the
tissue of their tutorial activities. A discerning observer of college
faculties can even today discover in them men and women who entered
them by the same door as these great ones of old, irregularly as we
would say now,--without the hallmark, and whose good teaching is a
surprise to their doctored colleagues. In one institution I know of,
the best five teachers some years ago were all of this type. The
training of college teachers might well, it therefore seems, include
an apprenticeship, beginning with, or in exceptional cases before,
graduation from college.
=The college legislator and administrator=
But the duties and opportunities of the college teacher do not stop at
the door leading from his classroom. In addition to dealing directly
with students, individually and in groups, and even, if possible, with
their families, as he grows in service he becomes, as faculty member
and committeeman, a college legislator and administrator. In
exercising these important functions he needs the equipment that would
aid him to take the central point of view, a background of scholarly
knowledge of what education in general and college education in
particular are in their methods and in their social functions and
purposes. There is too much departmental logrolling, as well as too
much beating of the air in faculty meetings, and too many excursions
into the blue in faculty legislation and administration arrangements.
The educational views of faculty members greatly need to be steadied,
ordered, and appreciably broadened and deepened by a developed and
trained habit of thinking educationally under the safeguards of
scientific method and on the basis of an adequate supply of facts.
That pedagogy has made but the smallest beginning of gathering and
ordering such facts and developing a scientific method in this field
is not a valid objection. These tasks are no more difficult than
others that have been compared, as _they_ will be, the sooner for
being imposed.
It is significant that coincident with sharp and widespread criticism
of the American college (justified in part by what college teachers
have been made into by their training), appear demands on the part of
faculties for more power. In this connection it may be remembered that
autocracy is the simplest and easiest form of government, and that
history shows that it can at least be made to work with less brains
and training than are required for the working of democracy. As
American colleges and universities have grown in complexity and
responsibility, their faculties have lost power because they did not
acquire the larger competence that was the indispensable condition of
even reasonably successful democratic control. It is highly desirable
that the power of faculties should increase to the point of
preponderance. But the added power they will probably acquire will not
be retained unless faculty members learn their business much better
than they now know it in most institutions. Thomas Jefferson, when
asked which would come to dominate, the states or the federal
government, replied that in the long run each of the opposed pair
would prevail in the functions in which it proved the more competent.
=A tentative scheme of training for college teachers=
To outline a scheme of such importance without any experience to
examine as a basis is a very bold undertaking, and one that can hope
for but partial success. What I shall propose, however, is similar to
the proposals of Pitkin (5), Horne (11), and Wolfe (14), my only
predecessors in this rash enterprise. The general spirit and purpose
of our proposals are the same. But we disagree more or less in
details--which is fortunate, as it may encourage discussion of the
subject, which is the thing most needed. Indeed, a lively sense of
this need has led me to venture some unpopular assertions. It may also
be admitted that the desiderata for teachers mentioned above are not
likely to be all insured by any system of training.
The proposal submitted for discussion is that a three-year graduate
course be established, its spirit and purpose being to train young men
to become _college_ teachers. This course should lead to a doctorate;
e.g., to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, or of Doctor of
Philosophy in Teaching, or of Docendi Doctor. What degree is selected
is, in the long run, relatively unimportant, provided the course is
soundly conducive to its end.
The course might well be divided into three parts, having the
approximate relative value in time and effort of two fifths, two
fifths, and one fifth. These parts should proceed simultaneously
throughout the three years, the first being an apprenticeship--under
supervision, of course--in the functions of the college teacher, the
second a broad course of study and investigation of the subject to be
taught, and the third a course of pedagogical study and investigation.
Let me suggest a minimum of detail within these outlines.
The apprentice teacher would, naturally, do the least classroom
teaching during his first year, and the most during his last. He would
also each year "advise" a group of freshman in studies and in life, or
coöperate with students in the conduct of athletics, dramatics,
publication work, or other "activities." On all this apprentice work
he would report, and in all he would be guided and supervised
appropriately by the department whose subject he was teaching, by the
department of education, and by other departments concerned. This and
other parts of the training would attract others in addition to
narrowly bookish graduates, something much to be desired (other parts
would eliminate those not bookish enough), and would tend to keep
alive in all apprentices an interest in students, especially in
student character, and to prevent them from thinking of students as
disembodied minds.
The course of study and investigation in the subject to be taught
should be based on adequate undergraduate work in the same and allied
fields, and should be something like the honor course in Oxford or
Cambridge (or our _old_ M.A. course) in its conduct and purpose; it
should hark back to our collegiate origin in England. The work should
be in charge of a don, a widely and wisely read and a very human
guide, philosopher, and friend. Stated class meetings and precise
count of hours of attendance should receive little emphasis. But wide
reading of the subject, in a spirit that breeds contagion, running off
into a study, in books, laboratories, and meetings, of the human and
practical bearings of the subject, should be required, and enough
conference with the don should be had to enable him to judge and
criticize the student's plan and amount of work, to test his mettle in
handling the subject, and to aid him to grasp it as a whole and in its
chief subdivisions, and to get glimpses of its bearings on and place
in human life. This part of the training should lead up to and
culminate in a thesis dealing with some major phase of the subject
comprehendingly in its setting and connections. Naturally this program
could be carried out most successfully with the social subjects, which
lend themselves easily to culture, like history or philosophy, and
less completely with the exact subjects, which are better fitted for
precise discipline, like mathematics. But if treated, as far as
possible, after the manner indicated, even the latter could be made
better instruments for the training of college teachers than they are
now in narrow specialization for the Ph.D. degree. Among returning
Rhodes scholars some excellent material for dons could be found.
The fifth of the course directed to pedagogy should include a very
brief study of the methods of teaching the chosen subject, with
glimpses into teaching methods in general; and courses in the history
and philosophy of education, with emphasis on, but by no means
exclusive dealing with, the educational and social functions of the
college. It might include an intensive investigation of some
relatively simple college problem in preparation for future faculty
membership. All this should, of course, be intimately articulated with
the student's apprenticeship work. Such a course of pedagogical study
should furnish a basis for better teaching methods and for helpful
self-criticism therein; should encourage the formation of a habit of
thinking and working out educational problems scientifically with eyes
open to the purpose of the college as a whole; and should discourage
departmental selfishness in legislation and administration.
=Incidental advantage=
The college would, under this plan, have some of its teaching done at
minimum cost by student teachers, who should receive only the graduate
scholarship or fellowship now customary for Ph. D. candidates. Care
would be necessary to prevent the assignment to them of mere routine
hackwork without training value. It is safe to say that, though
slightly less mature, their services, being supervised, would be more
valuable than those rendered during their first few years of teaching
by most better-paid winners of the doctorate of philosophy, who, if
they do so at all, grope their way to usefulness as teachers, with
little aid from others more experienced.
With good teaching prepared for, required, and adequately rewarded (a
point to be developed later), somewhat longer schedules could properly
be assigned and further economy effected. Schedules would, of course,
have to be kept short enough to allow ample time for reading, for some
writing, and for faculty and committee work in later years. But time
would not be required by _college_ teachers for specialized research,
and the freedom from such tasks resulting for them would be a blessed
relief to many who are now compelled to assume a virtue they have not,
and to conceal the love of teaching they have. And when we bear in
mind the heavy mass of uninspired and unimportant hackwork that is now
dumped on the scholarly world, we shall welcome the prospect of a
lightened burden for ourselves.
The need of students, especially of freshmen, for advisers is widely
recognized. They come into a new freedom exercised in a new
environment. This makes for bewilderment that involves loss of
precious time and opportunities, and presents perils which involve
possible injuries to many and certain injuries to some. Efforts, many
and various, to constitute a body of advisers chosen from among
faculty members have met with but little success. With few exceptions
the task is not congenial to those who now man our faculties, and for
that and other reasons they are ill fitted for it. But a greater
measure of success has been attained, even under present conditions,
when the coöperation of volunteers from among seniors and graduate
students has been had. This suggests that the problem might come
nearer solution when some dependence came to be placed upon the
services of apprentices. Such service would be a part of their regular
work having a bearing on their future career, and would therefore be
supervised and rest on sustained interest and the consciousness that
it was counting.
Finally, young student teachers would, under proper encouragement and
arrangement, help materially to bridge the gulf, that is broader than
is wholesome, between a faculty of mature men and young students. The
mixing of these different generations, so far as possible, is much to
be desired, difficult as it is to accomplish.
=Consequent change of plan in appointments and promotions=
This is not the place to discuss the details of appointment and
promotion plans, interesting and important as they are. But it is
evident that the scheme of training outlined, if adopted, would call
for changes in present practices.
The appointing authorities of colleges looking for young teachers
could ascertain their strong and weak points as they developed during
their apprenticeship in classrooms and in other educational
activities, as well as the quality and trend of their scholarship.
They would not rest satisfied with ascertaining the minute corner of
the field of philosophy, history, or physics in which a man
recommended had done research. Records could be kept throwing
much-needed light on the teaching ability, scholarship, and
personality of candidates for appointment. In selecting _college_
teachers, appointing authorities would value this evidence and would
come to prefer teaching power to investigating ability.
Moreover, the record keeping, and, no doubt, some of the supervision
begun during the apprentice years would continue during the early
instructorial years. This would render it possible to evaluate and to
value effectiveness in teaching in making promotions. Ambitious
teachers would no longer be practically forced, as their only resort,
to neglect their students and give their best energies to publication
in order to make a name and get a call, in the interest of promotion.
The expert teacher would have a chance and a dignity equal to that of
the skilled investigator. The individual could follow, and not be
penalized for so doing, his own bent and the line of his highest
capacity.
=Training of investigators=
The training now given in graduate schools here and elsewhere for the
doctorate in philosophy will, of course, continue, and increase rather
than diminish. Investigators will be preferred in research, in
universities, and in some colleges and college departments. They will
be increasingly prized in the government service and in important
branches of industry. The recent terrible experiences burn into our
minds the imperative need strong nations have of exact knowledge and
of skill that has a scientific edge. And the specific training for
these great tasks will be stronger when it is based on a college
course in which highly effective and whole-hearted teaching is valued
and rewarded.
SIDNEY E. MEZES
_College of the City of New York_
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANONYMOUS. Confessions of One Behind the Times. _Atlantic_, Vol. 3,
pages 353-356, March, 1913.
CANBY, H. S. The Professor. _Harpers_, April, 1913.
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bulletin No. 2,
May, 1908, pages 55-57.
FLEXNER, ABRAHAM. Adjusting the College to American Life. _Science_,
Vol. 29, pages 361-372.
HANDSCHIN, C. H. Inbreeding in the Instructional Corps of American
Colleges and Universities. _Science_, Vol. 32, pages 707-709.
November, 1910.
HOLLIDAY, CARL. Our "Doctored" Colleges. _School and Society_, Vol. 2,
pages 782-784. November 27, 1915.
HORNE, HERMAN H. The Study of Education by Prospective College
Instructors. _School Review_, Vol. 16, March, 1908, pages 162-170.
PITKIN, W. B. Training College Teachers. _Popular Science_, Vol. 74,
pages 588-595. June, 1909.
Report of the Committee on Standards of American Universities.
_Science_, Vol. 29, page 172. November 17, 1908.
ROBINSON, MABEL L. Need of Supervision in College Teaching. _School
and Society_, Vol. 2, pages 514-519, October 9, 1915.
SANDERSON, E. D. Definiteness of Appointment and Tenure. _Science_,
Vol. 39, pages 890-896, June, 1914.
STEWART, Charles A. Appointment and Promotion of College Instructors.
_Educational Review_, Vol. 44, 1912, pages 249-256.
WILCZYNSKI, E. J. Appointments in College and Universities. _Science_,
February 28, 1909; Vol. 29, pages 336ff.
WOLFE, A. B. The Graduate School, Faculty Responsibility, and the
Training of University Teachers. _School and Society_, September 16,
1916.
III
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING
=Status of teaching in the colleges=
The investigator of educational practices and methods of teaching is
impressed with an unmistakable educational anti-climax, for the
conviction grows on him that elementary school teaching is on a
relatively high plane, that secondary school teaching is not as
effective, and that collegiate teaching, with rare exceptions, is
ineffective and in urgent need of reform. A superficial survey of
educational literature of the last ten years shows that while the
problem of the high school is now receiving earnest attention,
elementary education continues to absorb the earnest efforts of an
army of vitally interested investigators. The field of college
pedagogics is still virgin soil, and no significant or extensive
program for improved methods of teaching has yet been advanced.
Three earnest and intelligent students representing three colleges of
undisputed standing were asked informally about their instructors for
the current semester. Nothing was said to make these students aware
that their judgment would hold any significance beyond the friendly
conversation. The summary of opinions is offered, not because the
investigation is complete and affords a basis for scientific
conclusion, but because it reflects typical college teaching in three
recognized institutions of more than average standing.
STUDENT NO. I | STUDENT NO. II | STUDENT NO. III
| |
_Teacher A_: A popular | _Teacher A_: A good | _Teacher A_: A very
and interesting | teacher of mathematics.| popular teacher of
teacher. Talks | He assigns a new lesson| English. If the final
enthusiastically, but | for home study. The | examination is given
talks all the time. | next day he asks | by another teacher, I
Lessons assigned are | questions on the | may not have enough
not heard. Students | lesson. The answers are| specific facts to
seldom recite. Written | written out on the | pass. We began Chaucer
quizzes on themes of | blackboards. After | last week. He spent a
assigned reading are | fifteen minutes all | good part of each
rated by an assistant. | students take their | session reading to us.
The work comes back | seats and the work on | All of us were
with an A, a C, or a D,| the blackboard is taken| surprised to find how
but we do not know why | up for explanation. He | much more the text
the rating was given. | explains every | meant than after our
Frequently two students| difficulty very | own reading. In the
who worked together are| clearly. We rarely | last session we went
marked B and D | cover the lesson. Some | to our book on
respectively for the | topics go unexplained | literature and tried
same work. Sometimes a | because during the next| to justify the
a student who "cribbed"| hour the blackboard | characterization which
his outline from | problems are based on | the author gives of
another who actually | the lesson. If I | Chaucer. The class
"worked it up" receives| understood the second | agreed with all in the
a higher mark than was | half of each lesson as | book except in one
given for the original.| clearly as the first, | characterization. In
| I would feel hopeful | the composition work we
| of a good grade in the | took up the structure
| final examination. | of short narratives.
| | The assignment was to
| | find narratives in
| | current periodicals,
| | in the writings of
| | standard authors, in
| | newspapers, and then
| | attempt to find whether
| | the structure we
| | studied was followed.
| | In each case we had to
| | justify any departure
| | from the standard.
| | There was little time
| | for the footnotes in
| | Chaucer. I hope we are
| | not asked for these on
| | the final examination.
| |
| |
_Teacher B_: Rather an | _Teacher B_: A dry | _Teacher B_: A very
interesting teacher; | course in Art History | conscientious teacher
assigns lessons from a | and Appreciation. We | of chemistry. He gives
book. At the beginning | take up the history of | us a ten-minute written
of the hour he asks | architecture, painting,| quiz each hour on the
questions on the text | and sculpture. The | work in the book or on
but is soon carried | names of the best | the matter discussed in
away and rambles along | artists are mentioned, | the last lecture. The
for the period, | and their many works | rest of the hour is
touching on every | confuse us. We memorize| spent in explanation of
subject. We never | Praxiteles, Phidias, | difficult points and in
complete a chapter or | Myron, the ancient | the application of what
topic. The succeeding | cairns, the parts of an| we learned of industry
hour we take the next | Egyptian temple. | and physiology. It is
chapter, which meets | Pictures are shown on | surprising to see the
the same fate. Written | the screen. I elected | interest the class
tests determine the | this course in the hope| shows in the chemical
students' rank. The | that it would teach me | explanations of things
grade for the written | something about | we never noticed
test is announced, but | pictures, how to judge | before.
the papers are not | them and give me |
returned and one never | standards of beauty, |
knows why the papers | etc., but it has been |
were rated C or D. | history and not |
| appreciation so far. |
| We do not see any |
| beauty in the pictures |
| of old madonnas. Even |
| the religious ones |
| among us say this. |
| |
| |
_Teacher C_: | _Teacher C_: A good, | _Teacher C_: A scholarly
A conscientious teacher| clear, effective | instructor in history.
in physics. He assigns | lecturer in chemistry. | He assigns thirty to
a definite lesson for | Every lesson we learn a| forty pages in English
each recitation of the | definite principle and | History, and then he
term. At the beginning | its application. The | lectures to us about
of the hour students go| laboratory work of each| the topics discussed by
to the board to write | is related to the | the author. He points
out answers to | lecture and throws | out errors in dates and
questions on the | interesting side lights| places. Occasionally he
lesson. The hour is | on it. We have quiz | calls on a student. At
spent listening to the | sections once a week. | the end of each month
recitation of each | Here the work is oral | he gives a written test.
student and the | and written. | We remember little of
explanation of | | what we learned and
difficult points. We | | must "bone away" at
never cover more than | | about 200 to 300 pages.
one half of the lesson:| | His English is
sometimes only one | | delightful and we enjoy
third. The next hour | | listening at times,
the questions are on | | but I seem to retain
the new lesson, not on | | so little. "Yes, half
the incompleted portion| | the term is up. We are
of the former lesson. | | beginning the reign of
My knowledge of physics| | Henry VII."
is punctuated by areas | |
of ignorance. These | |
alternate with topics | |
that I think I | |
understand clearly. | |
| |
| |
_Teacher D_: A quiet, | _Teacher D_: A very | _Teacher D_: A very
modest man. Sits back | strict teacher of | enthusiastic lecturer
comfortably in his seat| English literature. He | in economics. He
and asks questions on | assigns text for study,| explains the important
assigned texts. The | and we must be prepared| principles in
questions review the | for detailed questions | economics. We follow
text, and he explains | on each of the great | in a printed syllabus,
in further detail the | writers. He is very | so that it is
facts in the book. The | strict and detailed. We| unnecessary to take
conscientious and | had to know all the | notes. He talks well
capable student finds | fifteen qualities of | and makes things clear.
him superfluous; the | Macaulay's style. "No, | We are given assignments
indifferent student | we did not read | in S----'s "Elements of
remains unmoved by his | Macaulay this term: we | Economics," on which we
phlegmatic | study from a history of| are questioned by
presentation; the poor | English literature that| another teacher. "Is
student finds him a | tells us all about the | the work in the quiz
help; the shirk who | master writers." | section related directly
listens and takes notes| | to the lectures?
is saved studying at | | Sometimes. No, we do
home. | | not take current
| | economic problems. These
| | are given in a later
| | elective course."
| |
| |
_Teacher E_: A good | _Teacher E_: A quiet, | _Teacher E_: An
teacher of Latin. He | dignified gentleman who| instructor in
explains the work, | teaches us psychology. | psychology. His hours
hears the lessons, | A chapter is assigned | are weary and dreary.
gives drills, calls on | in the book, and the | A chapter is assigned
almost everybody every | hour is spent hearing | in X's "Elements of
hour. The written work | students recite on the | Psychology." He asks a
is returned properly | text. He sticks closely| question or two and
corrected and rated. | to the book. He | then repeats what the
| explains clearly when | author tells us, even
| the book is not clear | using the illustrations
| or not specific enough.| and diagrams found in
| The hours drag, for the| the text. Sometimes a
| book is good and those | student reads a paper
| who studied the lessons| which he prepared. "No,
| weary at what seems to | we do not get very much
| us needless repetition.| out of these papers
| | read by students. But
| | then we get just as
| | little from the
| | instructor. No, we
| | never apply the
| | psychology to our own
| | thinking nor to
| | teaching nor to the
| | behavior of children
| | or adults."
| |
| |
_Teacher F_: One | _Teacher F_: A learned | _Teacher F_: A
cannot pass judgment on| Latin scholar who is | forbidding but very
this teacher of | very enthusiastic about| strict Latin teacher.
mechanical drawing. He | his specialty. The | His questions are fast
gives out a problem, | students exhibit | and numerous and the
works a type on the | cheerful tolerance. He | hesitating student is
board, and then | assigns a given number | lost. He assigns at
distributes the plates.| of lines per day. These| least twenty-five per
We draw. He helps us | we prepare at home. In | cent more per lesson
when we ask for aid, | class we give a | than any other
otherwise he walks | translation in English | instructor. The hour is
about the room. I | that has distorted | spent in translating,
suppose one cannot show| phrases and clauses | parsing, and quizzing
teaching ability in | lest we be accused of | on historical and
such a subject. | dishonesty in | mythological allusions.
| preparation. The rest | Every "pony" user is
| of the time is spent on| soon caught, because
| questions of syntax, | he is asked so many
| references, footnotes, | questions on each
| and the identification | sentence. There is a
| of the of the real and | distinct relief when
| mythological characters| the hour is over because
| in the text. The | he is constantly at you.
| teacher is animated and| "Will I take the next
| effective. | course in Latin? Not
| | unless I must. This is
| | prescribed work. It
| | can't end too soon for
| | me, nor for the others
| | in the class."
The student of scientific and statistical measurements in education
may object to attaching any importance to these informal
characterizations of college teachers by undergraduates. College
teachers interested in the pedagogical aspects of their subject, and
college administrators who spend time observing class instruction will
concede that these young men were not at all unfortunate in their
teachers. The significance of these characterizations is not that
college teachers vary in teaching efficiency, but rather that
inefficient college teaching is general, and that the causes of this
inefficiency are such as respond readily to simple remedial measures
very well known to elementary and high school teachers.
=Causes of ineffective college teaching=
It may be well to note the chief causes of ineffective college
teaching before directing attention to a remedial program:
(a) Many college teachers hold to be true the time-honored fallacy
that the only equipment for successful teaching is a thorough
knowledge of the subject. They do not stop to square their belief with
actual facts. They overlook the examples of their colleagues possessed
of undisputed scholarship who are failures in the classroom. They fail
to realize that there are psychological and pedagogical aspects of the
teaching art which demand careful organization, skilful gradation and
a happy selection of illustrations intimately related to the lives of
the students.
(_b_) Closely related to this first cause of ineffective teaching is a
lack of sympathetic understanding of the student's viewpoint. The
scholarly teacher, deep in the intricacies and speculations of his
specialty, is often impatient with the groping of the beginner. He may
not realize that the student before him, apparently indifferent to the
most vital aspects of his subject, has potentialities for development
in it. His interest in his researches and his vision of the
far-reaching human relations of his subject may blind him to the
difficulties that beset the path of the beginner.
(_c_) The inferiority of college teaching in many institutions can
often be traced to the absence of constructive supervision. The
supervising officer in elementary and secondary schools makes
systematic visits to the classrooms of young or ineffective teachers,
observes their work, offers remedial suggestions, and tries to infuse
a professional interest in the technique of teaching. In the college
such supervision would usually stir deep resentment. The college
teacher is, in matters of teaching, a law unto himself. He sees little
of the actual teaching of his colleagues; they see as little of his.
His contact with the head of his department, and his departmental and
faculty meetings, are usually limited to discussions of college policy
and of the sequence and content of courses. Methods of teaching are
rarely, if ever, brought up for discussion. The results are
inevitable. Weaknesses in teaching are perpetuated, while the devices
and practices of an effective teacher remain unknown to his
colleagues.
(_d_) A fourth factor which accounts for much of the inefficiency in
college pedagogics is made the thesis of Dr. Mezes' chapter on "The
Training of the College Teacher." The college teacher, unlike teachers
in other grades of an educational system, is expected to teach without
a knowledge of educational aims and ideals, and without a knowledge of
the psychological principles which should guide him in his work. The
prospective college teacher, having given evidence of scholarship
alone, has intrusted to him, the noisy, expressive, and rapidly
developing, youth. We set up no standards aside from character and
scholarship. We do not demand evidence of teaching ability, a
knowledge of applied psychology and of accepted teaching practices,
skill in presentation, power of organizing material in graded
sequence, or ability to frame a series of questions designed to
stimulate and sustain the self-activity of the pupils. The born
college teacher remains the successful teacher. The poor college
teacher finds no agent which tends to raise his teaching to a higher
level. The temperamentally unfit are not weeded out. But teaching is
an art, and like all arts it requires conscientious professional
preparation, the mastery of underlying scientific principles, and
practice under supervision scrupulous in its attention to technique.
We have here outlined a few of the causes which keep college teaching
on a low plane. The remedial measures are in each case too obvious to
mention. It remains for college authorities to formulate a
well-conceived and adjustable program of means and methods of ridding
college teaching of those forces which keep it in a discouraging
state. It is our purpose in the remainder of this chapter not to
evolve a system of pedagogics, but rather to touch on the most vital
principles in teaching which must be borne in mind if college teaching
is to be rendered pedagogically comparable to elementary and secondary
teaching. We shall confine ourselves to teaching practices which are
applicable to all subjects in the college curriculum.
PRINCIPLES IN COLLEGE TEACHING
=A clearly conceived aim must control all teaching=
One of the very first elements in good teaching is the clear
recognition of a well-defined aim that gives purpose and direction to
all that is attempted in a lesson or in a period. The chief cause of
poor teaching is aimless teaching, in which the sole object seems to
be to fill the allotted time with talking about the facts of a given
subject. We sit patiently through a recitation in English literature.
Act I, Scene 1 of _Hamlet_ had been assigned for home study and is now
the text for the hour. Questions are asked on the dramatic structure
of this scene, on versification, on the meaning of words and
expressions now obsolete, on peculiarities of syntax, and finally a
question or two on a character portrayal. The bell brings these
questions to an abrupt end. Ask teacher and students the aim of all
these questions. To the former, they are means of testing the
students' knowledge of a variety of facts of language and literature;
to the latter they mean little, and serve only to repress a living
interest and appreciation of living literary text. How much more
effective the hour in English literature would have been if the entire
act had been assigned with a view to giving the students an insight
into the dramatic structure of each scene in this act and of the act
as a whole. All the questions would then bear on dramatic movement, on
the dramatist's technique, on his way of arousing interest in his
story, on devices for giving the cause and the development of the
action. In the opening scene we read:
_Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle._
_Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo._
BER. Who's there?
FRAN. Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself.
BER. Long live the King!
FRAN. Bernardo?
BER. He.
FRAN. You come most carefully upon your hour.
BER. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRAN. For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold. And I am sick
at heart.
BER. Have you had a quiet guard?
Here we see the guard on duty challenged by his relief, a most unusual
procedure. Why does this experienced guard so far forget the customary
forms as to challenge the guard on duty? What possible reason can
there be for this? How would you read the second line? What words must
be emphasized to show the surprise of the challenged guard? If the
entire hour were given to the whole of Act I and all the questions
sought to reveal to the students Shakespeare's power of dramatic
structure, a definite and lasting impression would be carried away.
Act I should be assigned again, but with a different aim. The teacher
now seeks to make clear to the student the dramatist's method of
character portrayal. A third hour may be spent on certain portions of
this act in which attention is given to significant facts of language,
choice of words, or poetic form. When a guiding aim controls, all
questions, suggestions, explanations, and illustrations tend to create
in the mind of the pupil a rich and unified impression. Where no
distinct aim gives direction to the work, the student is confused by a
variety of facts--isolated facts--that are displaced by another group
of disjointed bits of information. Aimless teaching leads to mental
wandering on the part of the student; teaching governed by a definite
aim leads to mental development and to the acquisition of new
viewpoints and new power.
=The educational aim vs. the instructional aim=
We must distinguish clearly between the general or educational aim and
the specific or instructional aim. The former sums up the hope of an
entire course or an entire subject. In the teaching of literature we
hope to develop a vital interest in reading, a discriminating taste,
an enlivened imagination and a quickened perception which enable the
student to visualize the situations and to acquire the thought on the
printed page. The instructional aim, however, is much more specific;
it posits a task that can be accomplished in a very limited time; it
seeks to give an insight into Shakespeare's mastery of words, or into
his power of character portrayal, or into his methods of enhancing
dramatic interest. Each of these two types of aims has its
unmistakable influence on methods of teaching.
=The variety of aims that may govern teaching=
What aim should we select to guide us in formulating principles of
collegiate teaching? The question is almost basic, for the selection
of a proper aim gives color and direction to all our teaching. In
brief, the aim may be one of the following:
(_a_) _The informational aim._ A given course in chemistry or physics
may be designed to sum up for the student the vital facts necessary
for an intelligent comprehension of common phenomena. With such an
aim, it is obvious that only so much laboratory work will be assigned
as will give the student a general knowledge of the tools and methods
of laboratory work; that the major portion of the work will be divided
into occasional lectures, regular book assignments, and extensive
applications of knowledge gained to surrounding chemical and physical
phenomena. A language course may seek to give pupils a stock of words
designed to develop power to read the language in a very short time.
Obviously, grammatical work and translations into the mother tongue
will now be minimized, and those devices which give the eye the power
to find thought in new symbols will be emphasized. There is no
standard for determining the relative importance of this informational
or utilitarian aim when compared to other aims. The significant thing
is, not so much to discover its relative importance, but, having
adopted it, to devise methods which clearly tend to bring the students
to an effective realization of it.
(_b_) _The disciplinary aim._ On the other hand, the controlling aim
in any subject may be to develop the power to reason about natural
phenomena, the power to observe, and the power to discriminate between
vital and inconsequential details. If this be the aim, the assignment
of subject matter must be reduced, the phenomena studied must be
submitted in the forms of problems, first-hand observations must be
made, and students must be led to see the errors in their observations
and their reasoning. The course which is extensive in subject matter
and which relies on the lecture method sacrifices mental discipline
for information. From the teaching point of view, the result of the
time-honored quarrel between the disciplinists and the utilitarians is
not so important as the adoption of a definite aim, and the
formulation of consistent methods of teaching in order to attain that
aim. Ineffective teaching is not caused by the selection of the one
aim or of the other, but by systems of instruction devoid of any aim
at all.
(_c_) _The appreciative or æsthetic aim._ It is obvious that a subject
may be taught for the power it develops for æsthetic appreciation of
the arts of life. We have here a legitimate aim of coördinate
importance with the two preceding ones; and if we adopt it, the vital
thing in teaching is to allow this appreciative aim to mold all
instructional effort. It is obvious that a college course in æsthetics
must be inspirational, must seek to develop a real appreciation of the
beauty of line, of color and of sound. Such a course must, therefore,
encourage contact with the products of art, rather than promote the
study of texts on the history of any of the arts. So, too, courses in
music or in literature which do not send the student away with an
intense desire to hear, to see, to feel the masterpieces of music or
literature must be judged dismal failures. The formalization of an art
course given to the general student, kills the live material and
leaves the student himself cold.
(_d_) _The aim to teach technique._ An effective college course may
select for its aim the development of the technique of a given
subject. It is obvious that a science course governed by this aim will
emphasize the laboratory method at the expense of information; that a
course in the social sciences will seek to cover less ground but will
develop in the student the power to find facts and use them to
formulate an intelligent conclusion; that a course in biology will
minimize names, classifications and structures, but will emphasize
field and laboratory work and the modes of utilizing the data thus
discovered. We must repeat the statement made before, that no one can
set himself up as the final arbiter of the claims of these contending
aims. They are all vitally necessary for a thorough understanding of
life's problems. The significant conclusion for teaching is that one
or more of these aims must be consciously chosen and that content and
method must be determined by them absolutely. Teaching for the sake of
teaching consumes time and makes drafts on energy, but it leaves the
student no richer in power and with no truer understanding.
=Should the aim be modified for varying groups of students?=
It is obvious that no general law can be formulated for the adjustment
of aims to the needs of students. Teachers have usually found it
necessary to change the aim, the content, and the method of a course
according to the needs of different classes of students. In one of our
colleges science students are required to take two years of Latin. The
course offered these young men gives the ordinary drill in grammar,
translation, and analysis of Cæsar, Cicero, and Vergil, as well as
practice in prose composition in which nondescript and disjointed
English sentences, grammatically correct, are turned into incorrect
Latin. This description, without any changes whatever, applies also to
the course given in the introductory years in Latin to students
specializing in the arts. Even a superficial analysis reveals a
different set of needs in the two classes of students which can be
served only by a corresponding difference in content and mode of
teaching. A student who takes French or German because he wants enough
mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals
about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which
appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational
phases of these languages.
There are courses that are foundational and that must therefore be
governed by an eclectic aim. In the first course in college physics it
is obvious that we must teach the necessary facts of the subject as
well as its method. These aspects of the work must be emphasized with
equal force for all students; no differentiation need be made for
future medical or engineering students or for prospective teachers of
the subject in secondary schools. Generally speaking, initial courses
in a department are governed by an eclectic aim, but in the advanced
courses there must be constant adjustment to the needs of various
groups. An eclectic aim can be as effective an instrument in enhancing
the quality of teaching as a single, clear-cut aim, provided there is
a clear recognition of the relative importance of the ends set up, and
provided a definite plan is evolved to attain them.
The aim or aims of a subject or a lesson, once formulated, must always
be kept before the students as well as before the teacher. Every pupil
must know the ends to be attained in the course he is taking, and as
work progresses he must experience a growing realization that the
class is moving toward these ends. The subject matter of the course,
the method of instruction, the assigned task, now glow with interest
which springs from work clearly motivated. The average student plods
through his semester from a sense of duty or obedience rather than
from a conviction of the worth of both subject matter and method.
=Value of clearly defined aims=
Not only must the general aim be indicated to the student, but he must
also be made acquainted with the specific aim. Where students have
been acquainted with the specific task that must be accomplished in a
given period, concentration and coöperation with the instructor are
easier; the students can, at stages in the lesson, anticipate
succeeding steps; their answers have greater relevancy, their thought
is more sequential and flows more readily along the path planned by
the instructor. A specific aim for each lesson makes for economy, for
it is a standard of relevancy for both student and teacher. The
student whose answer or observation is irrelevant is asked to recall
the aim of the lesson and to judge the pertinence of his contribution.
The instructor given to wandering far afield finds that a clearly
fixed aim is an aid in keeping him in the prescribed path. Too many
college hours, especially in the social sciences, find the instructor
beginning with his subject but ending anywhere in the field of human
knowledge. These wanderings are entertaining enough, but they
dissipate the energies of the students and produce a mental flabbiness
already too well developed in the average college student.
=Motivation in college teaching=
A second factor which contributes much toward the effectiveness of
college teaching is the principle of motivation. So long as most of
the college course is prescribed, course by course, students will be
found pursuing certain studies without an intelligent understanding of
their social or mental worth. Ask the student "doing" prescribed logic
to explain the value of the course. In friendly or intimate discussion
with him, elicit his conception of the utilitarian or disciplinary
worth of the prescribed Latin or mathematics in the arts course. He
sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in
many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft
this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has
learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction
in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and
voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by the
institution or by the instructor. It is obvious that such instruction
is stultifying to the teacher and can never develop in the student a
liberal and cultured outlook upon life.
The principle of motivation in teaching seeks to justify to the
student the experience that is presented as part of his college
course. It is obvious that this motivation need not always be
explained in terms of utilitarian values. A student of college age can
be made to realize the mental, the cultural, or the inspirational
values that justify the prescription of certain courses. The college
instructor who tries to motivate courses in the appreciation of music
or painting finds no great difficulty in leading his students to an
enthusiastic conviction of their inspirational value. It is well
worth taking the student into our confidence in these matters of aim
and value. We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who
makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses.
We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness
and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We
constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task;
we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in
our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as
it is in life--for what is teaching if not the process of repeating
life's experiences?
In the principle of motivation lies the most successful solution of
the problem of interest in teaching. We have too long persisted in the
"sugarcoating" conception of interest. We have regarded it as a
process of "making agreeable." Interest has therefore been looked upon
as a fictitious element introduced into teaching merely to inveigle
the mind of the student into a consideration of what we are offering
it. Our modern psychology teaches a truer conception of interest: a
feeling accompanying self-expression. Interest has been defined as a
feeling of worth in experience. Where this feeling of worth is
aroused, the individual expresses his activity to attain the end that
he perceives. Every act, every effort, to attain this end is
accompanied by a distinctive feeling known as interest. When a class
is quiet and gives itself to the teacher, it is obedient and polite,
but not necessarily interested. The class that looks tolerantly at the
stereopticon views that the instructor presents, or listens to the
reading of the professor of English, is amused but not necessarily
interested. But when the students ask questions about the pictures or
ask the professor of English for further references, then have we
evidence of real interest. Interest is, therefore, an active attitude
toward life's experience. Rational motivation is almost a guarantee of
this active attitude of interest.
Intelligent motivation in teaching has far-reaching values for both
student and teacher. It stirs interest and guarantees attention and
thus tends to keep aroused the activity of the students. It
establishes an end toward which all effort of teacher and student must
bend. It enables the student to follow a line of thought more
intelligently, and occasionally to anticipate conclusions. For the
teacher it serves as a standard, in terms of which he reorganizes his
subject matter, judges the value of each topic, and omits socially
useless matter which has too long been retained in the course in the
fond hope that it will in some way develop the mind.
=Beginning at the point of contact=
The instructor who strives to motivate the subject matter he teaches
usually begins with that phase of the subject which is most intimately
related to the student's life and environment. Every subject worth
teaching crosses the student's life at some point. The contacts
between pupil and subject afford the most natural and the most
effective starting points in the teaching of any subject.
The subject matter in a college course is too frequently so organized
that it presents points of discrepancy between itself and the student.
To the college student life is not classified and systematized to a
nicety. Experiences occur in more or less accidental but natural
sequence. Scientific classification is the product of a mature mind
possessing mastery of a given portion of the field of knowledge. To
thrust the student, who is just finding his way in a new course, into
a thoroughly scientific classification of a subject, is to present in
the introduction what should come in the conclusion.
Many a student taking his introductory course in psychology begins
with a definition of the subject, its relation to all social and
physical sciences, and its classification. All these are aspects of
the subject which the mind conversant with it sees clearly and
understands thoroughly, but which the inexperienced student accepts
merely because the facts are printed in his textbook. The youthful
mind is concerned with the present and with the immediate environment.
Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the
student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The
student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon
lost on the highways and byways of classification; to him the subject
becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the
introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers,
and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers
and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital
modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of
the semester?
=Illustrations of maxim. Begin at the point of contact=
The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point of contact can
best be understood and appreciated by illustrations of actual teaching
conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that
economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and
production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of
economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but
that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All
this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings
and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as
he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The
succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the
economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a
definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of
computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages.
Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact,
that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student
that were noted before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding
psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage
disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are analyzed; the
contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the
adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual
economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own
definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage.
Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks
are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions
of the class. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series
of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the
formulation of a definition of economics. Now the class sums up all
that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold
and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an
intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought
in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the
student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to
verification; it fosters a critical attitude toward printed text.
The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced
algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus, looks back
with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to
have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a
water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulæ,
equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the
author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding
theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which
seemed to be composed of a series of difficult, unrelated, and
unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the mass of data was
soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions.
What is the meaning of it all? What is its relation to life? There is
no doubt that much of this mathematics has its application to life's
needs, and that these successive subjects of mathematics are
thoroughly interdependent. But nothing in the mode of instruction
leads the student to see either the application or the interrelation
of all this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a
single course called mathematics rather than these successive
subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical
principle were taught through a situation in building, engineering, or
mechanics so that the student would at all times see the intimate
relation between mathematical law and physical forces? Would not the
disciplinary values of mathematics be intensified for the student by
teaching it in a way that presents a quantitative interpretation of
the daily phenomena in his experience?
Teachers of philosophy and psychology too often fall into a formalism
that robs their subject of all its vitalizing influences. Many a
student enters his course in logic with high hopes. At last he is to
learn the laws of thought which will render him keen in detection of
fallacies and potent in the presentation of argument. How bitter is
his disappointment when he finds his course dissipated in definitions
and classifications. His logic gives itself to the discussion of such
patent fallacies as, "A good teacher knows his subject; Williams knows
his subject, therefore he is a good teacher." Day after day he proves
the error in every form of stupidity or the truth of what is
axiomatic. He tires of "Gold is a metal" and "Socrates is mortal." Few
courses in logic have the courage to break away from the traditional
formalism and to begin each new principle or fundamental concept of
logic by analyzing editorials, arguments, contentions in newspapers,
magazines, campaign literature, or the actual textbooks. Few students
complete their course in logic with a keener insight into thought and
with a maturer or more aggressive mental attitude.
=Beginning at the point of contact relates the subject to the life of
the student=
It was pointed out in a previous illustration that the college student
"taking philosophy" is seldom made to feel that the subject he studies
is related to the problems that arise in his own life. Too frequently
introductory courses in philosophy are historical and extensive in
scope, striving to develop mastery of facts rather than to give new
viewpoints. The student learns names of philosophers, and attempts to
memorize the philosophic system developed by each thinker. Such a
course imposes a heavy burden on retentive power, for no little effort
is required to remember the distinctive philosophical systems
advocated by the respective writers. To the students these
philosophers represent a group of peculiar people differing one from
the other in their degrees of "queerness." One system is as far
removed as another from the life that the student experiences; no
system helps him to find himself. An introductory course in philosophy
should begin with the problems of philosophy; it should have its
origin in the reflective and speculative problems of the student
himself. As the course progresses, the student should feel a growing
sense of power, an increasing ability to formulate more clearly, to
himself at least, the questions of religion and ethics that arise in
the life of a normal thinking person. So, too, courses in ethics and
psychology lose the vital touch unless they begin in the life of the
student and apply their lessons to his social and intellectual
environment.
It must be pointed out, however, that the social sciences lend
themselves more readily to this intimate treatment than do languages,
or the physical sciences, but at all points possible in the study of a
subject, the experience of the student must be introduced as a means
of giving the subject real meaning. In teaching composition and
rhetoric illustrations of the canons of good form need not be
restricted to the past. Current magazines and newspapers are not
devoid of effective illustrations. When the older literary forms are
used exclusively as models of language, the student ends his course
with the erroneous notion that contemporary writing is cheap and
sensational and devoid of artistic craftsmanship.
Courses in physics and chemistry frequently devote themselves to a
development of principles rather than to the applications of the
studies to every sphere of life. Introductory college courses in
zoölogy spend the year in the minutiæ of the lowest animal forms and
rarely reach any animal higher in the scale than the crayfish. We
still find students in botany learning the various margins of leaves,
the system of venation, the scientific classifications, but at the end
of the course, unable to recognize ordinary leaves and just as blind
to nature as they were before. Zoölogy and botany do not always--as
they should--give a new view of life, a new attitude towards living
phenomena, a new contact with nature.
Careful inquiry among college students will reveal an amazing
ignorance of common chemical and physical phenomena after full-year
courses in chemistry and physics. We find a student giving two
semesters to work in each of these subjects. He spends most of his
time learning the chemical elements, their characteristics and the
modes of testing for them. The major portion of the time is spent in
the laboratory, where he must discover for himself the elementary
practices of the subject and test the validity of well-established
truths. At the end of his second semester he has not developed
sufficient laboratory technique for significant work in chemistry; he
is ignorant of the chemical explanation of the most common phenomena
in life.
=Pedagogical vs. logical organization=
There is much to be said for the position taken by the "older
teachers," who may not possess the scholarship of the "younger
investigators" but who argue for a general course in which laboratory
work shall be reduced, technique minimized, and attention focused on
giving an extensive view of chemical forces. The simple chemical facts
in digestion, metabolism, industry, war, medicine, etc., would be
presented in such a way as to make life a more intelligent process and
to give an insight into the method of science. In the courses that
follow the introductory one, there would be a marked change in aim;
the student would be taught the laboratory technique and would be
given a more intensive study of the important aspects of chemistry.
Similar changes in the introductory courses in physics are urged by
these same teachers.
Beginning at the point of contact may frequently interfere with the
logical arrangement of the course of study; it may wrench many a topic
out of its accustomed place in the textbook; it will demand that the
applications, which come last in most logically arranged courses, be
given first and that definitions and principles which come first be
given last. This logical arrangement, it was pointed out, is usually
the expression of the matured mind that is thoroughly conversant with
every aspect of a subject; it may mean little, however, to the
beginner--so little that he does not even slightly appreciate its
significance. The loss in logical sequence entailed by beginning at
the point of contact is often more than compensated for by the
advantages which are derived from a psychological presentation.
=Proper organization as a factor in effective teaching=
A well-organized lesson possesses teaching merits which may counteract
almost all the usual weaknesses found in poor teaching. Good
organization determines clearness of comprehension, ease of retention,
and ability of recall; it makes for economy of time and mental energy;
it simplifies the processes of mental assimilation; it teaches the
student, indirectly but effectively, to think sequentially. We have
all suffered too keenly, as auditors and readers, the inconveniences
of poor organization, not to realize the worth of proper organization
of knowledge in teaching.
Organization of knowledge has become a pedagogical slogan, but its
increase in popularity has not been accompanied by increased clearness
of comprehension of its meaning. What, then, is meant by proper
organization? It must ever be borne in mind that proper organization
is a relative condition, the limits of which are determined by the
capacities of the students and the nature of the subject matter. What
is effective organization of facts in elementary history may be very
ineffective organization for students of high school or college grade.
Making due allowance for relative conditions, good organization may be
said to consist of five essential characteristics.
_Logical sequence_ is the first of these. It is apparent that the more
rational the sequence of facts, the more effective is the organization
of knowledge. Data organized on a basis of cause and effect,
similarity, contrast or any other logical relationship will help to
secure the teaching advantages we have mentioned. A search for this
simple principle in most textbooks on American or English history or
literature reveals its complete absence. A detailed mass of historical
information grouped into administrations or reigns is merely a
mechanical organization in which time, the accidental element, and
not the development of social movements, the logic of human history,
is the determining factor. In too many courses in literature the
student learns names of writers, biographical data, and literary
characteristics of the masters, but fails to see the development of
the movement of which the writer was a part. Events of history placed
in their social movements, writers in literature placed in the school
in which they belong, give the student the logical ties which bind the
knowledge to him. So, too, one often analyzes the sequence of chapters
in an advanced algebra or a trigonometry and fails to discover the
governing rationale. It must be remembered, however, that the nature
of the subject will often reduce the logical element in its
organization. Instances in language teaching may be cited as
illustrations of teaching situations where a mechanical organization
is often the only one possible because of the arbitrary character of
the subject matter.
=Meaning of organization of subject matter=
_Relativity_ of importance is the second factor of good organization.
A cursory study of a well-organized chapter or merely passing
attention to a well-organized lecture reveals at once a distinct
difference in the emphasis on the various parts or elements of the
subject. The proportional allotment of time or space, the number of
illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the
force of language--these are all means of bringing out the relative
importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a
well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map;
each part stands out in distinctive color according to its
significance.
It is frequently argued by teachers that students of college age
should be required to distinguish the relativity of importance of the
parts of a lesson or the topics in a subject; that the instructor who
points out the changing importance of each succeeding part of a lesson
is enervating the student by doing for him what he ought to do for
himself. This is true in part, but it must be realized that the
instructor who through questions and directed discussions leads
students to formulate for themselves the relative importance of data
is not only carrying out the suggestion made in the preceding
paragraph but is also developing in his students a power they too
frequently lack. Those who have studied the notes that students take
in their classes have seen how frequently facts are torn from their
moorings; how wrong principles are derived from illustrations; how a
catch-phrase becomes a basic principle; how simple truths and axioms
are distorted in the frenzy of note taking. Through questions if
possible, through emphasis on illustrations and explanations, where no
other means is available, students must be made to see that all facts
of a subject are not of the same hue, that some are faint of tint,
others in shadow, and still others in high colors. Without this
relativity of importance, facts are grouped; with it, they are
intelligently organized.
_An underlying tendency_ can be discerned in well-organized knowledge.
Not only are facts arranged in logical sequence and emphasized
according to importance, but there is in addition a central principle
or an underlying purpose giving unifying force to them all. We can
illustrate the need of this third characteristic of good organization
by referring to a college course in American history which gives much
time to the period from 1815 to 1860. The events of these forty-five
years are not taught in administrations but are summed up in six
national tendencies; viz., the questions of state sovereignty,
slavery, territorial acquisition, tariff, industrial and
transportational progress, and foreign policy. Each of these movements
is treated as intensively as time permits. At the end of the study of
the entire period, the student is left with these six topics but
without a unifying principle; to him, these are six unrelated currents
of events. In each of these problems the North and the South displayed
distinctive attitudes, acted from distinctive motives, expressed
distinctive needs and preferences, but these were never brought out
either through well-formulated questions or through explanation. As a
result, the class never realize fully that those years, 1815-1860,
marked the period of growing sectional differences, misunderstandings,
and animosities. Had this underlying tendency been brought out clearly
at various points in the course, the students would have carried away
a permanent impression of what is most vital in this period of
American development.
_Gradation_ of subject matter is another characteristic of good
organization. Careful gradation is not so vital in subjects of social
content as it is in mathematics, foreign languages, and exact
sciences. The most important single factor in removing difficulties
that beset a student is gradation. Teaching problems often arise
because the instructor or the textbook presents more than one
difficulty at a time. Teachers who lack intellectual sympathy or who
are so lost in the advanced stages of their specialty that they can no
longer image the successive steps of difficulty, one by one, that
present themselves to a mind inexperienced in their respective fields,
are frequently guilty of this pedagogical error. Malgradation of
subject matter is the direct cause of serious loss of time and energy
and of needless discouragement not only to students but to instructors
as well.
_Ability of the student to summarize_ easily is a test of good
organization. At the end of a loosely organized chapter or lesson the
student experiences no little difficulty in setting forth the
underlying principles and their supporting data. It does not help much
to have the textbook or the instructor state the summary either at the
end of the lesson in question or at the beginning of the succeeding
one. The summary of a lesson, given by the class, is a test of the
effectiveness of instruction. Summaries given by teachers or textbooks
have little or no pedagogical justification. Only in cases where the
summary introduces a new point of view or unifying principles, or when
it sets forth basic principles in particularly forceful language--only
then is the statement by teacher or textbook justifiable.
=Thoroughness=
Teachers are advised to be thorough in their instruction. They in turn
urge their students to strive for thoroughness in study. We praise or
impugn the scholarship of our colleagues because it possesses or lacks
thoroughness. Here we have a quality of knowledge universally
extolled. But what is meant by thoroughness? How can teachers or
students know that they are attaining that degree of comprehension
known as thoroughness? We are told that thoroughness is a relative
condition, always changing with accompanying circumstances. Even an
unattainable ideal can be defined,--why not thoroughness? We must,
therefore, attempt to determine the meaning of thoroughness as used in
teaching and study.
=Negative interpretation of thoroughness=
It may be helpful to formulate the common or lay interpretation of
thoroughness. The term "thoroughness" is erroneously used in a
quantitative sense to describe scholastic attainment. We are told of a
colleague's thoroughness in history; he knows all names, dates,
places, facts in the development of mankind; his knowledge of his
specialty is encyclopedic; "there is no need of looking things up when
he is around." A professor of English literature boasted of the
thoroughness with which he teaches _Hamlet_: "Every word of value and
every change in the form of versification are marked; every allusion
is taken up, every peculiar grammatical construction is brought to the
attention of the class." Here we have illustrations of an erroneous
conception of thoroughness which gives it an extensive meaning and
regards it as the accumulation of a mass of data.
=Positive interpretation of thoroughness=
Yet the master of chronological detail in history may have no
historical imagination, no historical perspective, no historical
judgment. He may possess the facts, but a period in history still
remains for him a stretch of time limited by two dates, rather than a
succession of years in which all mankind seems to be moving in the
same direction, possessed of the same viewpoints, the same hopes and
aspirations. The professor of English literature does not see that in
teaching _Hamlet_ he forsook his specialty, literature, for philology
and mythology; that he turned his back on art and took up language
structure. Thoroughness is not completeness, because the possession of
the details of a subject does not necessarily bring with it a true
comprehension of it. Add all the details, and the sum total is nothing
more than the group of details. Thoroughness is a degree of
comprehension resulting from the acquisition of new points of view.
The teacher of history who sees underlying forces in the facts of the
past, who understands that true inwardness of any movement which shows
him its relation to all phases of life, but who nevertheless may not
have ready command of all the specific details, is more thorough in
his scholarship. He has the things that count; the facts that are
forgotten can easily be found. The class that studies the dramatic
structure of _Hamlet_, that sees Shakespeare's power of character
portrayal, that takes up only such grammatical and language points as
give clearer comprehension or lead to greater appreciation of diction,
is thorough although it does not possess all the facts. It is thorough
because what is significant and dynamic in _Hamlet_ is made focal. The
postgraduate student assiduously searching for data for his doctorate
thesis is often guided by the erroneous conception of thoroughness; he
wants facts that have never seen the light. The more he gets of these,
the nearer he approaches his goal. He avoids conclusions; he is
counseled by his professors against giving too much of his book to the
expression of his views. Analyze the chapters of a doctorate thesis
and note the number of pages given to facts and those to conclusions
and interpretations. The proportion is astonishing. The student's
power to find facts is clearly shown; his power to use facts is not
revealed by his thesis. The richer the thesis is in detail, in
references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more
thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. We have failed to
realize that this excessive zeal in gathering and collating a large
number of not commonly known facts may make the thesis more
cumbersome, more complete, but not necessarily more thorough. However,
the plea for a new standard in judging doctorate theses is meeting
with gratifying encouragement.
What, then, are the teaching practices that make for greater
thoroughness, that increase the qualitative and intensive character of
knowledge? We shall discuss some of these in the succeeding
paragraphs.
=How can thoroughness be produced?=
The _acquisition of new points of view_ makes for increased
thoroughness of comprehension. The class that understands the causes
of the American Revolution from the American point of view knows of
the navigation laws, the quartering of soldiers in American homes, the
Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre,--the usual provocations that strained
patience to the breaking point. The college teacher of American
history who spends time on the riots in New York in which a greater
number of colonists was killed than in Boston, who teaches in detail
the various acts forbidding the manufacture of hats and of iron ware,
or the protests against English practices in the colonies made by
British merchants, etc., is adding more facts, but he may only be
intensifying the erroneous conclusion that the students have formed in
earlier and less complete courses. The topic, "Causes of the American
Revolution," grows in thoroughness, not through the addition of these
facts but through the presentation of new interpretations of the
practices of the English. When we explain that the English believed in
virtual and not actual representation, the students see a new meaning
in "taxation without representation." When the students learn that the
English government decided on a new economic and industrial policy
which planned to have the mother country specialize in manufacture and
transportation and the colonies in production of raw materials, the
students see reason, though not necessarily justice, in the acts
prohibiting Americans from various forms of manufacture and
transportational activities. These new facts modify in the minds of
students the point of view so often given in elementary courses, that
the War for Independence was caused by sheer British meanness and
injustice, by her policy of reckless repression.
It is not always possible to give new points of view to all knowledge
in all subjects. There are cases in which there is only one point of
view or where students may not be ready for a new interpretation
because of their limited mastery of a new field of knowledge. Under
these conditions an added point of view is a source of confusion
rather than an aid to clearer comprehension. Some subjects, like the
social sciences, naturally allow for richer interpretations. Others,
like the languages and the physical sciences, present only very
limited opportunities; in the biological sciences the possibilities,
though not as rich as in the social sciences, are numerous and
productive of good results.
_Comparison_ is a second means of producing thoroughness of
comprehension. Good teaching abounds in comparisons which are
introduced at the end of every important topic rather than reserved
for examination questions. Comparisons used liberally at every logical
pause in the development of a subject always give an added viewpoint,
review early subject matter incidentally, stir thought, and make for
better organization. How much more clearly are the causes of the War
of 1812 understood after they are compared with those that brought on
the Revolutionary War! How much more definite are the causes of the
American Revolution when compared with those that brought on the
French Revolution! A writer, a school, or a movement in English
literature may be understood when studied by itself; but how is
comprehension deepened when each is compared with another writer or
school or movement! Comparison of perception and conception or
appreciation and association in psychology, makes each activity stand
out clearer in the mind of the student. Compare the laws of rent,
wage, profit, and interest in economics, and not only each is better
understood but the basic laws of distribution are readily derived by
the student. Similarly, comparisons in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, and the entire range of collegiate subjects give increased
comprehension, useful though incidental reviews, and greater
unification of knowledge, as well as added points of view.
_Correlation_ as a means of producing thoroughness is closely allied
to comparison. Correlation relates kindred topics of different
subjects, while comparison points out relations in the same subject.
The instructor who correlates the history of education with the
political and economic history that the student learned in another
course is unifying related experience, reducing the field of
knowledge, introducing logical organization, and adding new
interpretations to facts already acquired. Similarly, teaching must be
enriched by correlating physics and mathematics, chemistry and
physics, literature and music, history of literature and general
history, until instruction has taken advantage of every vital relation
among subjects. With the growth of specialized subjects there is an
unfortunate tendency toward isolation until the untrained mind looks
upon the curriculum as a series of unrelated experiences, each
rivaling the other in its claim to importance.
The advantage of correlation will remain lost in college teaching as
long as each instructor regards himself as a specialized investigator
concerned with teaching his subject rather than his students. How many
college teachers know what subjects their students have already taken,
or knowing the names of these subjects, have a general knowledge of
their content? The college professor of the preceding generation was a
cultured gentleman whose general scholarship transcended the limits of
his specialty. He understood and knew the curriculum as a whole.
Because of changes in every phase of our civilization, his successor
has a deeper but a narrower knowledge. He knows little of the work of
his students outside of his own subject. He does not relate and
correlate the ever growing field of knowledge; he merely adds--by the
introduction of his own mass of facts--to the isolation which
characterizes the parts of college curricula. This tendency must be
counteracted, not by interfering with the scholastic interests of any
instructor, but by occasional conferences of instructors of allied
subjects in order to agree on common meeting grounds, on points of
correlation, on useful repetitions, and on the elimination of needless
duplications. Such pedagogical conferences are rare because college
teachers are not alive to the need of reform in methods of college
teaching.
Thoroughness results from _increase in the number of applications_ of
knowledge. The introduction of the functional view into teaching
brings with it a realization of the vital needs of increased ways of
applying the experience we present to students. As the laws of
physics, mathematics, biology, composition, economics, etc., are
applied to a number of specific instances, the generalization grows in
meaning and in force. Specific cases vary, and, varying, give new
color and new meaning to the laws that are applied to explain them.
How much a law in chemistry means after it is applied to specific
instances in industry, human and animal physiology, plant life, or
engineering! The equation learned in descriptive geometry may be
understood, but it never means so much as when it is applied to
specific problems in engineering. Applications give added insight into
knowledge and therefore make for greater thoroughness of
comprehension.
=Teaching as a process of arousing self-activity=
Locke's Blank Paper Theory, enunciated centuries ago, has been
repeatedly and triumphantly refuted even by tyros in psychology, but
in educational practices it continues to hold sway. College teaching
too frequently proceeds on the assumption that the mind is an aching
void anxiously awaiting the generous contributions of knowledge to be
made by the teacher. College examinations usually test for
multiplicity of facts acquired, rather than for power developed.
College teaching usually does not perceive that the mind is a reacting
machine containing a vast amount of pent-up potential energy which is
ready to react upon any presentation; that development takes place
only as this self-activity expresses itself; that education is
evolutionary rather than involutionary. Teaching is, therefore, a
process of arousing, sustaining, and directing the self-activity of
pupils. The more persistently and successfully this activity is
aroused, the more systematically it is directed to intelligent ends,
the more skillful is the teaching. Teachers do not impart knowledge,
for that is impossible; they _occasion_ knowledge. Only as the teacher
succeeds through questions, directions, diagrams, and all known
devices, in arousing the self-activity of the student, is he producing
the conditions under which knowledge is acquired by the pupil.
=Evaluation of common methods of teaching=
The methods commonly used in college teaching are as follows:
1. Lecture method, with or without quiz sections.
2. Development method, with or without textbook.
3. Combination of lecture and development method.
4. Reference readings and the presentation of papers by students.
5. Laboratory work by students, together with lectures and quiz
sections.
Teachers have long debated the relative merits of these methods or
combinations of them. They fail to realize that each method is
correct, depending upon the aim to be accomplished and the governing
circumstances. No method has a monopoly of pedagogical wisdom; no
method, used exclusively, is free from inherent weakness. A teaching
method must be judged by its ability to arouse and sustain
self-activity and to attain the aim set for a specific lesson. With
this standard for judging a method of teaching, we must stop to sum up
the relative worth of common methods of college teaching.
=Lecture method evaluated=
The _lecture method_ has been the target for much criticism for many
centuries. Socrates inveighed against its use by the sophists, and
educators since have repeated the attack. The reasons are legion:
(_a_) The lecture method tends to discourage the pupil's activity. The
student feels no responsibility during the lecture; he listens
leisurely, and makes notes of the instructor's contribution. The
student's judgment is not called into play; he learns to take
knowledge on the authority of the instructor. The sense of comfort and
security experienced in a lecture hour is fatal even to aggressive and
assertive minds. Sooner or later the students succumb to the inertia
developed by the lecture system.
(_b_) A second limitation of an exclusive lecture method is its
inability to make permanent impressions. Many a student, entering the
lecture hall, has completely forgotten even the theme of the last
lecture. Knowledge is retained only when it is obtained by the
expression of self-activity. To offset this weakness notes must be
taken, but these prove to be the bane of the lecture method. Some
students, in their efforts to record a point just concluded, lose not
only the thought of what they are trying to write but also the new
thought which the instructor is now explaining; they drop both ideas
from their notes and wait for the next step in the development of the
lecture. This accounts for the many gaps in the notes kept by
students. Some instructors, dismayed by the amount of knowledge lost
by students, resort to dictation devices. Others, realizing the
pedagogical weakness of such teaching, distribute mimeographed
outlines of carefully prepared summaries of the lectures. Now the
student is relieved of the tedium of note taking, but the temptation
to let his mind wander afield is intensified. An outline, scanty of
detail, but so devised as to keep the organization and sequence of
subject matter clear in the minds of students, is, of course, helpful.
But detailed outlines distributed among the students discourage even
attentive listening.
(_c_) In teaching by lectures only there is no contact between student
and teacher. The student does not recite; he does not reveal his type
of mind, his mode of study, his grasp of subject matter. He is merely
a passive recipient. To this third weakness of the lecture method we
may add a fourth: (_d_) it tends to emphasize quantity rather than
method. The student is confronted with a great mass of facts, but he
does not acquire a mode of thought nor does he see the method by which
a given subject is developed. (_e_) The lecture method, therefore,
inculcates in students an attitude of mental subservience which is
fatal for the development of courageous and vigorous thought. And
finally (_f_) it must be urged that in lecture teaching the instructor
is not testing the accuracy of the students' conceptions nor is he
able to judge the efficacy of his own methods.
But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that with an effective
lecturer, possessed of commanding personality, the lecture gives a
point of view of a subject and an enthusiasm for it which other
devices fail to achieve. The lecture method makes for economy of time
and enables one to present his subject to his class with a
succinctness absent from many textbooks. Where much must be taught in
a limited time, where a comprehensive view of an extensive field must
be given, when certain types of responses or mental attitudes are
desired, the lecture serves well.
=Final worth of lecture method=
Experience teaches that an exclusive lecture system is not conducive
to efficient work; that lectures to regular classes ought to be
punctuated by questions whenever interest lags; that the occasional
and even the unannounced lecture is more effective; that supplementary
devices for checking up assignments and regular collateral study are
of vital importance. Where regular lectures are followed by detailed
analyses in quiz sections the best results are obtained when the
lecturer himself is the questioner. Where quiz sections are turned
over to assistants, wise procedure requires that quiz leaders attend
the lectures and decide, in conference with the lecturer, the specific
aims which must be achieved in the quiz work and the assigned readings
which must be given to students in preparation for each quiz hour.
Unless this is done, the student is frequently confused by the
divergent points of view presented by lecturer, quiz master, and
textbook.
_The development method_ has much to commend it. It stimulates
activity by its repeated questions. Few or no notes are taken. There
is constant contact with the student. At every point the mental
content of the pupils is revealed. The teacher sees the result of his
teaching by the intelligence of successive responses. The pupil is
being trained in systematic thought and in concentration. But it must
be remembered that the development method is often costly in time
because answers may be wrong or irrelevant. It may encourage
wandering; a student's reply reveals ignorance of a basic principle,
and the aim of the lesson is often forgotten in the eagerness to
patch up this misconception. Then, too, in subject matter that is
arbitrary, as in descriptive and narrative history, no development is
possible. In such cases the questions are designed to test the
student's knowledge of the text, and the lesson becomes a quiz rather
than a development.
It is plain, therefore, that a judicious combination of the lecture
and development methods will give better results than the exclusive
use of either one. The analysis of the pedagogical advantages of each
leads to the conclusion that the development method should predominate
and that the lecture method should be used sparingly and always with
some of the checking devices described.
=Place of reference reading in college teaching=
=Evaluation of development--Socratic or heuristic method=
A common method employed in advanced courses in college subjects
emphasizes _reference study and research_. The entire course is
reduced to a series of problems, each of which deals with a vital
aspect of the subject. Each student is made responsible for a topic.
The initial hours are devoted to an examination of the common sources
of information in this specific subject, the modes of using these, the
standards to be attained in writing a paper on one of the topics, and
similar matters. The remainder of the term is given over to seminar
work: each student reads his paper and holds himself in readiness to
answer all questions his classmates may ask on his topic. The aims of
such a course are obviously to develop a knowledge of sources and an
ability to use intelligently the unorganized data found by the
student. The results of these pseudo-seminar courses are far from what
was anticipated. A thorough investigation of such a course will soon
convince the teacher that the seminar method, whatever its merits in
university training, must be refined and diluted before it is applied
to college teaching. Let us see why.
Successful reference reading requires a knowledge of the field
studied, maturity of mind, discriminating judgment in the selection of
material, and ability in organization. The university student is not
only maturer and more serious but has a basis of broader knowledge
than most undergraduates. Without this equipment of mental powers and
knowledge, the student cannot judge the merits of contending views nor
harmonize seeming discrepancies. A student who has no ample foundation
of economics cannot study the subject by reference reading on the
problems of economics. To learn the meaning of value he would read the
psychological explanations of the Austrian schools and the
materialistic conceptions of the classical writers. He would then find
himself in a state of confusion, owing to what seemed to him to be a
superfluity of explanations of value. When one understands one point
of view, an added viewpoint is a source of greater clarity and a means
of deeper understanding. But when one is entirely ignorant of
fundamental concepts, two points of view presented simultaneously
become two sources of confusion. In the university only the student of
tried worth is permitted to take a seminar course. In the upper
classes in college, mediocre students are often welcomed into a
seminar course in order to help float an unpromising elective.
=Limitations of seminar method in undergraduate teaching=
The college seminar is usually unsuccessful because few students have
ability to hold the attention of their classmates for a period of
thirty minutes or more. Language limitations, lack of a knowledge of
subject matter, inability to illustrate effectively, and the skeptical
attitude of fellow students all militate against successful teaching
by a member of the class. Students presenting papers often select
unimportant details or give too many details. The rest of the class
listen languidly, take occasional notes, and ask a few perfunctory
questions to help bring the session to a close. A successful hour is
rare. The student who prepared the topic of the day undoubtedly is
benefited, but those who listen acquire little knowledge and less
power. The course ends without a comprehensive view of the entire
subject, without that knowledge which comes from the teacher's
leadership and instruction. This type of reference reading and
research has value when used as an occasional ten or fifteen minute
exercise to supplement certain aspects of class work. But as a steady
diet in a college course, the seminar usually leaves much to be
desired.
The _laboratory method_ is growing in favor today in college teaching.
It is employed in the social sciences, in sociology, in economics, in
psychology, in education, as well as in the physical and the
biological sciences. Where it is followed the aim is clearly twofold;
viz., to teach the method by which the specific subject is growing and
to develop in the students mental power and a scientific attitude
towards knowledge.
=Value of laboratory method=
Let us illustrate these two aims of the laboratory method. A
laboratory course in chemistry or biology or sociology may be designed
to teach the student the use of apparatus and equipment necessary for
work in a respective field; the method of attacking a problem; a
standard for distinguishing significant from immaterial data; methods
of gathering facts; the modes of keeping scientific records,--in a
word, the essence of the experience of successive generations of
investigators and contributors. But no successful laboratory results
can be obtained without a proper mental attitude. The student must
learn how to prevent his mental prepossessions or his desires from
coloring his observations; to allow for controls and variables; to
give most exacting care to every detail that may influence his result;
to regard every conclusion as a tentative hypothesis subject to
verification or modification in the light of further test. Unless the
student acquires a knowledge of the method of science and has achieved
these necessary modes of thought, his laboratory course has failed to
make its most significant contribution.
In courses where the aim is to teach socially necessary information or
to give a comprehensive view of the scope of a specific subject, it is
obvious that the laboratory method will lead far afield. It is for
this reason that introductory courses given in recitations, with
demonstrations by instructors, and occasional lecture and laboratory
hours, are more liberalizing in their influence upon the beginners
than courses that are primarily laboratory in character.
=Cautions in the use of the laboratory method=
Most laboratory courses would enhance their usefulness by observing a
few primary pedagogical maxims. The first of these counsels that we
establish most clearly the distinctive aim of the course. The
instructor must be sure that he has no quantitative aim to attain but
is occupied rather with the problems of teaching the method of his
specialty. Second, an earnest effort must be made to acquaint the
students with the general aim of the entire course as well as with the
specific aim of each laboratory exercise. The students must be made to
realize that they are not discovering new principles but that by
rediscovering old knowledge or testing the validity of well-established
truths they are developing not only the technique of investigational
work, but also a set of useful mental habits. Much in laboratory work
seems needless to the student who does not perceive the goal which
every task strives to attain.
A third requisite for successful laboratory work requires so careful a
gradation that every type of problem peculiar to a subject is made to
arise in the succession of exercises. It is wise at times to set a
trap for students so that they may learn through the consequences of
error. For this reason students may be permitted to leap to a
conclusion, to generalize from insufficient data, to neglect controls,
to overlook disturbing factors, etc. An improperly planned and poorly
graded laboratory course repeats exercises that involve the same
problems and omits situations that give training in attacking and
solving new problems.
Effective laboratory courses afford opportunity to students to repeat
those exercises in which they failed badly. If each exercise in the
course is designed to make a specific contribution to the development
of the student, it is obvious that merely marking the student zero for
a badly executed experiment is not meeting the situation. He must in
addition be given the opportunity to repeat the experiment in order
to derive the necessary variety of experiences from his laboratory
training. And, finally, the character of the test that concludes a
laboratory course must be considered. The test must be governed by the
same underlying aims that determine the entire course. It must seek to
reveal, not the mastery of facts, but growth in power. It must measure
what the student can do rather than what he knows. A properly
organized test serves to reinforce in the minds of students the aims
of the entire course.
=The college teacher not the university professor=
An analysis of effective teaching is necessarily incomplete that does
not give due consideration to the only human factor in the teaching
process--the teacher. We have too long repeated the old adages: "he
who knows can teach"; "a teacher is born, not made"; "experience is
the teacher of teachers." These dicta are all tried and true, but they
have the failings common to platitudes. It often happens that those
who know but lack in imagination and sympathy are by that very knowing
rendered unfit to teach. "Knowing" so well, they cannot see the
difficulties that beset the learner's path, and they have little
patience with the student's slow and measured steps in the very
beginnings of their specialty. It is true that some are born teachers,
but our educational institutions could not be maintained if classes
were turned over only to those to whom nature had given lavishly of
pedagogical power. Experience teaches
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