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

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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

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I

HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE

1. THE COLONIAL PERIOD

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 F 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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II

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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III

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING

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 and interesting teacher. talks enthusiastically, but talks all the time. Lessons assigned are not heard.Students seldom recite. Written quizzes on themes of assigned reading are rated by an assistant. The work comes back with an A, a C, or a D, but we do not know why the rating was given. Frequently two students who worked together are marked B and D respectively for the same work. Sometimes a student who "cribbed" his outline from another who actually "worked it up" receives a higher mark than was given for the original.	Teacher A: A good teacher of mathematics. He assigns a new lesson for home study. The next day he asks questions on the lesson. The answers are written out on the blackboards. After fifteen minutes all students take their seats and the work on the blackboard is taken up for explanation. He explains every difficulty very clearly. We rarely cover the lesson. Some topics go unexplained because during the next hour the blackboard problems are based on the lesson. If I understood the second half of each lesson as clearly as the first, I would feel hopeful of a good grade in the final examination.	Teacher A: A very popular teacher of English. If the final examination is given by another teacher, I may not have enough specific facts to pass. We began Chaucer last week. He spent a good part of each session reading to us. All of us were surprised to find how much more the text meant than after our own reading. In the last session we went to our book on literature and tried to justify the characterization which the author gives of Chaucer. The class agreed with all in the book except in one characterization. In the composition work we took up the structure 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 interesting teacher; assigns lessons from a book. At the beginning of the hour he asks questions on the text but is soon carried away and rambles along for the period, touching on every subject. We never complete a chapter or topic. The succeeding hour we take the next chapter, which meets the same fate. Written tests determine the students' rank. The grade for the written test is announced, but the papers are not returned and one never knows why the papers were rated C or D.	Teacher B: A dry course in Art History and Appreciation. We take up the history of architecture, painting,and sculpture. The names of the best artists are mentioned, and their many works confuse us. We memorize Praxiteles, Phidias, Myron, the ancient cairns, the parts of an Egyptian temple. Pictures are shown on the screen. I elected this course in the hope that it would teach me something about pictures, how to judge them and give me standards of beauty, etc., but it has been 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 B: A very conscientious teacher of chemistry. He gives us a ten-minute written quiz each hour on the work in the book or on the matter discussed in the last lecture. The rest of the hour is spent in explanation of difficult points and in the application of what we learned of industry and physiology. It is surprising to see the interest the class shows in the chemical explanations of things we never noticed before.
Teacher C: A conscientious teacher in physics. He assigns a definite lesson for each recitation of the term. At the beginning of the hour students go to the board to write out answers to questions on the lesson. The hour is spent listening to the recitation of each student and the explanation of difficult points. We never cover more than one half of the lesson: sometimes only one third. The next hour the questions are on the new lesson, not on the incompleted portion of the former lesson. My knowledge of physics is punctuated by areas of ignorance. These alternate with topics that I think I understand clearly.	Teacher C: A good, clear, effective lecturer in chemistry. Every lesson we learn a definite principle and its application. The laboratory work of each week is related to the lecture and throws interesting side lights on it. We have quiz sections once a week. Here the work is oral and written.	Teacher C: A scholarly instructor in history. He assigns thirty to forty pages in English History, and then he lectures to us about the topics discussed by the author. He points out errors in dates and places. Occasionally he calls on a student. At the end of each month he gives a written test. We remember little of what we learned and must "bone away" at about 200 to 300 pages. His English is delightful and we enjoy listening at times, but I seem to retain so little. "Yes, half the term is up. We are beginning the reign of Henry VII."
Teacher D: A quiet, modest man. Sits back comfortably in his seat and asks questions on assigned texts. The questions review the text, and he explains in further detail the facts in the book. The conscientious and capable student finds him superfluous; the indifferent student remains unmoved by his phlegmatic presentation; the poor student finds him a help; the shirk who listens and takes notes is saved studying at home.	Teacher D: A very strict teacher of English literature. He assigns text for study, and we must be prepared for detailed questions on each of the great writers. He is very strict and detailed. We had to know all the fifteen qualities of Macaulay's style. "No, we did not read Macaulay this term: we study from a history of English literature that tells us all about the master writers."	Teacher D: A very enthusiastic lecturer in economics. He explains the important principles in economics. We follow in a printed syllabus, so that it is unnecessary to take notes. He talks well and makes things clear. We are given assignments in S----'s "Elements of Economics," on which we are questioned by another teacher. "Is the work in the quiz section related directly to the lectures? Sometimes. No, we do not take current economic problems. These are given in a later elective course."
Teacher E: A good teacher of Latin. He explains the work, hears the lessons, gives drills, calls on almost everybody every hour. The written work is returned properly corrected and rated.	Teacher E: A quiet, dignified gentleman who teaches us psychology. A chapter is assigned in the book, and the hour is spent hearing students recite on the text. He sticks closely to the book. He explains clearly when the book is not clear or not specific enough. The hours drag, for the book is good and those who studied the lessons weary at what seems to us needless repetition.	Teacher E: An instructor in psychology. His hours are weary and dreary. A chapter is assigned in X's "Elements of Psychology." He asks a question or two and then repeats what the author tells us, even using the illustrations and diagrams found in the text. Sometimes a student reads a paper which he prepared. "No, we do not get very much 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 cannot pass judgment on this teacher of mechanical drawing. He gives out a a problem, works a type on the board, and then distributes the plates. We draw. He helps us when we ask for aid, otherwise he walks about the room. I suppose one cannot show teaching ability in such a subject.	Teacher F: A learned Latin scholar who is very is very enthusiastic about his specialty. The The students exhibit cheerful tolerance. He assigns a given number of lines per day. These we prepare at home. In class we give a translation in English that has distorted phrases and clauses lest we be accused of dishonesty in preparation. The rest of the time is spent on questions of syntax, references, footnotes, and the identification of the of the real and mythological characters in the text. The teacher is animated and effective.	Teacher F: A forbidding but very strict Latin teacher. His questions are fast and numerous and the hesitating student is lost. He assigns at least twenty-five per cent more per lesson than any other instructor. The hour is spent in translating, parsing, and quizzing on historical and mythological allusions. Every "pony" user is soon caught, because he is asked so many questions on each sentence. There is a distinct relief when the hour is over because he is constantly at you. "Will I take the next 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.

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

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The methods commonly used in college teaching are as follows:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 even teachers, but the price paid must be computed in terms of the welfare of the student. Teaching is one of the arts in which the artist works only with living material; yet college authorities still make no demand of professional training and apprenticeship as prerequisites for admission to the fraternity of teaching artists.

Ineffective college teaching will not improve until professional teaching standards are set up by respected institutions. The college teacher must be possessed of ample scholarship of a general nature. He must have expertness in his specialty, to give him a knowledge of his field, its problems and its methods. He must be a constant student, so that his scholarship in his specialty will win recognition and respect. But part of his preparation must be given over to professional training for teaching. Without this, the prospective teacher may not know until it is too late that his deficiencies of personality unfit him for teaching. With it, he shortens his term of novitiate and acquires his experience under expert guidance. The plan of college-teacher training, given by Dr. Mezes in Chapter II, so complete in scope, so thoroughly sound and progressive in character, is here suggested as a type of professional preparation now sorely needed.

The usual test of teacher and student is still the traditional examination, with its many questions and sub-questions. We still measure the results of instruction by fathoming the fund of information our students carry away. But these traditional examinations test for what is temporary and accidental. Facts known today are forgotten tomorrow. The professor himself often comes to class armed with notes, but he persists in setting up, as a test of the growth of his students, their retentivity of the facts he gave from these very notes. In the final analysis, these examinations are not tests. The writer does not urge the abolition of examinations, but argues rather for a reorganized examination that embodies new standards. A real examination must test for what is permanent and vital; it must measure the degree to which students approximate the aims that were set up to govern the entire course; it must gauge the mental habits, the growth in power, rather than facts. Part of an examination in mathematics should test students' ability to attack new problems, to plan a line of work, to think mathematically, to avoid typical fallacies of thought. For this part of the test, books may be opened and references consulted. In literature we may question on text not discussed in class to ascertain the students' power of appreciation or of literary criticism. So, too, in examinations in social sciences, physical sciences, foreign languages, and biological sciences, the examination must consist, in great measure, of questions which test the acquisition of the habits of thought, of work, of laboratory procedure—in a word, the permanent contribution of any study. This part of an examination should be differentiated from the more mechanical and memory questions which seek to reveal the student's mastery of those facts of a subject which may be regarded as socially necessary. Reduce the socially necessary data of any subject to an absolute minimum and frame questions on it demanding no such slovenly standard—sixty per cent—as now prevails in college examinations. If the facts called for on an examination are really the most vital in the subject, the passing grade should be very high. If the questions seek to elicit insignificant or minor information, any passing mark is too high. It is obvious, therefore, that a student should receive two marks in most subjects,—one that rates power and another that rates mere acquisition of facts. The passing grade in the one would necessarily be lower than in the other. An examination is justified only when it is so devised that it reveals not only the students' stock of socially useful knowledge but also their growth in mental power.

Paul Klapper
College of the City of New York

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