College Teaching Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College
Chapter 10
THE SCIENCES
CHAPTER
IV THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGY _T. W. Galloway_
V THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY _Louis Kahlenberg_
VI THE TEACHING OF PHYSICS _Harvey B. Lemon_
VII THE TEACHING OF GEOLOGY _T. C. Chamberlin_
VIII THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS _G. A. Miller_
IX PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE _Thomas A. Storey_
IV
THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGY
BIOLOGY AND EDUCATION
=Biology the science basal to all knowing=
The life sciences, broadly conceived, are basal to all departments of knowledge; and the study of biology illumines every field of human interest. To the believer in evolution the human body, brain, senses, intellect, sensations, impulses, habits, ideas, knowledges, ideals, standards, attractions, sympathies, combinations, organizations, institutions, and all other powers and possessions of every kind and degree are merely crowning phenomena of life itself. The languages, history, science, economic systems, philosophies, and literatures of mankind are only special manifestations and expressions of life and a part, therefore, of the studies by which we as living beings are trying to appraise and appreciate the meaning of life and of the universe of which life is the most significant product. Life is not merely the most notable product of our universe; it is the most persuasive key for solving the riddle of the universe, and is the only universe product which aspires to interpret the processes by which it has reached its own present level.
All knowledge, then, is _biological_ in the very vital sense that the living organism is the only _knowing_ thing. The knowing process is a life process. Even when knowledge pertains to non-living objects, therefore, it is one-half biological; our most worth-while knowledge--that of ourselves and other organisms--is wholly so. Because all our knowledge is colored by the life process, of which the knowing process is derivative, the study of life underlies every science and its applications, every art and its practice, every philosophy and its interpretations. Biology must be taught in sympathy with the whole joint enterprise of living and of learning.
=Adaptation without losing adaptability the goal of life and of education=
The most outstanding phenomenon of life is the _adaptation_ of living things to the real and significant conditions of their existence. Furthermore, as these conditions are not static, particularly in the case of humans, organisms must not merely be adapted, but must continue thereafter to be _adaptable_. Now learning is only a special case under living, and education a special case under life. Its purposes are the purposes of life. It is an artificial and rapid recapitulation for the individual, in method and results, of past life itself. The purpose of education is "adaptation,--with the retention of adaptability." It is to bring the individual into attunement, through his own responses and growth, with all the real factors, external and internal, in his life,--material, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual,--and at the same time leave him plastic.
Adaptation comes through the habit-forming experiences of stimulus and response. The very process of adaptation, therefore, tends toward fixity and to destroy adaptability. It is thus the task of education, as it is of life, to replace the native, inexperienced and physiological plasticity of youth with some product of experience which shall be able to revise habits in the interest of new situations. The adaptability of the experienced person must be psychical and acquired. It must be in the realm of appreciation, attitude, choice, self-direction--a realm superior to habit.
In this human task of securing adaptation and retaining adaptiveness the life sciences have high rank. In addition to furnishing the very conception itself that we have been trying to phrase, they give illustrations of all the historic occasions, kinds, and modes of adaptation; in lacking the exactness of the mathematical and physical sciences they furnish precisely the degree of uncertainty and openness of opportunity and of mental state which the act of living itself demands. In other words the science of life is, if properly presented, the most normal possible introduction to the very practical art of living. Because of the parallel meaning of education and life in securing progressive adaptation to the essential influential forces of the universe, an appreciative study of biology introduces directly to the purposes and methods of human education.
CHIEF AIMS OF BIOLOGY AS A COLLEGE SUBJECT
=Why study biology in college?=
While students differ in the details of their purposes in life, all must learn to make the broad adjustments to the physical conditions of life; to the problems of food and nutrition; to other organisms, helpful and hurtful; to the internal impulses, tendencies, and appetites; to the various necessary human contacts and relations; to the great body of knowledge important to life, which human beings have got together; to the prevailing philosophical interpretations of the universe and of life; and to the pragmatic organizations, conventions, and controls which human society has instituted. In addition to these, some students of biology are going into various careers, each demanding special adjustments which biology may aid notably. Such are medicine and its related specialties, professional agricultural courses, and biological research of all kinds.
An extended examination of college catalogs shows some consciousness of these facts on the part of teachers of biology. The following needs are formally recognized in the prospectuses: (1) The disciplinary and cultural needs of the general student; (2) the needs of those preparing for medicine or other professional courses; and (3) the needs of the people proposing to specialize in botany and zoölogy. These aims are usually mentioned in the order given here; but an examination of the character of the courses often reveals the fact that the actual organization of the department is determined by an exact reversal of this order,--that most of the attention is given, even in the beginning courses, to the task of preparing students to take advanced work in the subject. The theory of the departments is usually better than their practice.
In what follows these are the underlying assumptions,--which seem without need of argument: (1) The general human needs should have the first place in organizing the courses in biology; (2) the introductory courses should not be constructed primarily as the first round in the ladder of biological or professional specialization, but for the general purposes of human life; (3) the preparation needed by teachers of biology for secondary schools is more nearly like that needful for the general student than that suited to the specialist in the subject; and (4) the later courses may more and more be concerned with the special ends of professional and vocational preparation.
GENERAL AIMS OF BIOLOGY IN EDUCATION
What are the general adaptive contributions of biology to human nature? What are the results in the individual which biology should aim to bring to every student? There are four classes of personal possessions, important in human adaptation, to which biology ministers in a conspicuous way: information and knowledge; ability and skills; habits; and attitudes, appreciations, and ideals. These four universal aims of education are doubtless closely related and actually inseparable, but it is worth while to consider them apart for the sake of clearness.
A. TYPES OF BIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE USEFUL IN THE ADAPTATION OF HUMAN BEINGS TO THE MOST IMPORTANT CONDITIONS OF THEIR LIFE
=(1) Study of biology furnishes knowledge of adaptive value=
(1) Some knowledge of the processes by which individual plants and animals grow and differentiate, through nutrition and activity; of the process of development common to all organisms; and the bearing of these facts on human life, health, and conduct.
(2) An outline knowledge of reproduction in plants and animals; the origin, nature, meaning, and results of sex; the contribution of sex to human life, to social organization and ideals, and its importance in determining behavior and controls.
(3) A good knowledge of the external forces most important in influencing life; of the nature of the influence; of the various ways in which organisms respond and become adjusted individually and racially to these conditions. A sense of the necessity of adaptation; of the working of the laws of cause and effect among living things, as everywhere else; of the fact that nature's laws cannot be safely ignored by man any more than by the lower organisms; of the relation between animal behavior and human behavior.
(4) Equally a true conception of the known facts about the internal tendencies in organisms including man, which we call hereditary. The principles underlying plant, animal, and human breeding. Any progress in behavior, in legislation, or in public opinion in the field of eugenics, negative or positive, must come from the spread of such knowledge.
(5) A knowledge of the numerous ways in which plants and animals contribute to or interfere with human welfare. This includes use for food, clothing, and labor saving; their destruction of other plants or animals useful or hurtful to us; their work in producing, spreading, or aiding in the cure of disease; their æsthetic service and inspiration; the aid they give us in learning of our own nature through the experiments we conduct upon them; and many miscellaneous services.
(6) A conception of the evolutionary series of plants and animals, and of man's place in the series; a reassurance that man's high place as an intellectual and emotional being is in no way put in peril by his being a part of the series. Some clear knowledge of the general manner of the development of the plant and animal kingdoms to their present complexity should be gained. The student should have some acquaintance with the great generalizations that have meant so much to the science and to all human thinking, should understand how they were reached and the main classes of facts on which they are based.
(7) The general student should be required to have such knowledge of structure and classification as is needed to give foundation and body to the evolutionary conceptions of plants and animals, and to the various processes and powers mentioned above--and only so much.
(8) Some knowledge of the development of the science itself; of its relation to the other sciences; of the men who have most contributed to it, and their contributions; of the manner of making these discoveries, and of the bearing of the more important of these discoveries upon human learning, progress, and well-being.
(9) Something of the parallelism between animal psychology, behavior, habits, instincts, and learning, and those of man,--in both the individual and the social realm.
(10) An elementary understanding of plant and animal and human distribution over the earth, and of the factors that have brought it about.
B. FORMS OF SKILL WHICH WORK IN BIOLOGY SHOULD BRING TO EVERY STUDENT
=(2) Biological study gives desirable skills=
Skill or ability may be developed in respect to the following activities: seeking and securing information, recording it, interpreting its significance, reaching general conclusions about it, modifying one's conduct under the guidance of these conclusions, and, finally, of appraising the soundness of this conduct in the light of the results of it. All of these are of basic importance in the human task of making conscious adjustments in actual life; and the ability to get facts and to use them is more valuable than to possess the knowledge of facts. Other sciences develop some of these forms of skill better than biology does; nevertheless, we shall find that biology furnishes a remarkably balanced opportunity to develop skills of the various kinds. It presents a great range and variety of opportunity to develop accuracy and skill in raising questions; in observation and the use of precise descriptive terms in recording results of observation; in experimentation; in comparison and classification. It is peculiarly rich in opportunities to gain skill in discriminating between important and unimportant data,--one of the most vital of all the steps in the process of sound reasoning. In practice, a datum may at first sight seem trivial, when in reality it is very significant. _Skill_ in estimating values comes only with _experience_ in estimating values, and in applying these estimates in practice, and in observing and correcting the results of practice.
Finally, skill in adjusting behavior to knowledge is one of the most necessary abilities and most difficult to attain. The study of animal behavior experimentally is at the foundation of much that we know of human psychology and the grounds of human behavior. Even in an elementary class it is quite possible so to study animal responses and the results of response as to give guidance and facility to the individual in interpreting the efficiency of his own responses, and in adding to his own controls. As has been said, practice of some kind is necessary to determine whether our estimate of values is good. Even vicarious experience has educative value.
C. HABITS WHICH MAY BE STRENGTHENED BY THE WORK IN BIOLOGY
=(3) Biology may supply adaptive habits=
Habits are of course the normal outcome of repeated action. Indeed, skills are in a sense habits from another point of view. Skill, however, looks rather toward the output; habit, toward the mode of functioning by the person by whom the result is attained. We may then develop habits in respect to all the processes and activities mentioned above under the term "skills." The teacher of biology should have definitely in purpose the securing for the student of habits of inquiry, of diligence, of concentration, of accuracy of observation, of seeking and weighing evidence, of detecting the essentials in a mass of facts, of refusing to rest satisfied until a conclusion, the most tenable in the light of all known data, is reached, and of reëxamining conclusions whenever new evidence is offered.
Of course it is impossible to use biology to get habits of right reasoning in students unless we _really allow them to reason_. If we insist that their work is merely to observe, record, and hold in memory,--as so many of us do in laboratory work,--they may form habits of doing these things, but not necessarily any more than this. Indeed, they may definitely form the habit of doing _only_ these things, _failing to use the results in forming for themselves any of the larger conclusions about organisms_. _Seeing_ and _knowing_--without the ability and habit of _thinking_--is not an uncommon or surprising result of our conventional laboratory work. There is only one way to get the habit of right "following through" in reasoning; this is, _always to do the thing_. When data are observed or are furnished it is a pedagogical sin on the part of the teacher to allow the student to stop at that point; and equally so to deduce the conclusion for the student, or to allow the writer of the textbook to do so, or at any time to induce the student to accept from another a conclusion which he himself might reach from the data. We have depended too much on our science as a mere observational science,--when as a matter of fact its chief glory is really its opportunity and its incentives to coherent thinking and careful testing of conclusions.
It is inexact enough, if we are entirely honest, to force us to hold our conclusions with an open mind ready to admit new evidence. It is entirely the fault of the teacher if the pupil gets a dogmatic, too-sure habit of mind as the result of his biological studies. And yet, as has been said, it is exact enough to enable us to reach just the same sort of approximations to truth which are possible in our own lives. The study of biology presents a superb opportunity to prepare for living by forming the habits of mind and of life that facilitate right choices in the presence of highly debatable situations. In this it much surpasses the more "exact" sciences. We may conclude, then, by positing the belief that the most important mental habit which human beings can form is that of using and applying consciously the scientific method as outlined above, not merely to biology alone, but to all the issues of personal life as well.
D. APPRECIATIONS, ATTITUDES, AND IDEALS AS AIDED BY BIOLOGY
=(4) Attitudes of life perfected by study of the life sciences=
This group of objectives is a bit less tangible, as some think, than those that have been mentioned; but in my own opinion they are as important and as educable for the good of the youth by means of biology as are knowledge, skill, and habit. In a sense these states of mind arise as by-products of the getting of information, skills, and habits; in turn they heighten their value. We have spoken above of the need of skill and habit in making use of the various steps in the scientific method in reaching conclusions in life. These are essential, but skill and habit alone are not enough to meet the necessities in actual life.
In the first place the habit of using the scientific method in the scientific laboratory does not in itself give assurance that the person will apply this method in getting at the truth in problems in his own personal life; and yet this is the essential object of all this scientific training. In order to get the individual to carry over this method,--especially where feelings and prejudices are involved,--we must inculcate in him the scientific ideal and the scientific attitude until they become general in their influence. To do this he ought to be induced as a regular part of his early courses in biology to practice the scientific method upon certain practical daily decisions exactly with the same rigor that is used in the biological laboratory. The custom of using this method in animal study should be transformed into an _attitude of dependence upon it_ as the only sound method of solving one's life choices. Only by carrying the method consciously into our life's problems, _as a part of the exercise in the course in biology_, can we break up the disposition to regard the method as good merely in the biological laboratory. We must generate, by practice and precept, the _ideal_ of making universal our dependence upon our best instrument of determining truth. A personal habit in the laboratory must become a general ideal for life, if we hope to substitute the scientific method for prejudice in human living. There is no department of learning so well capable of doing this thing as biology.
In the second place, the scientific method standing alone, because of its very excellence as a method, is liable to produce a kind of over-sure dogmatism about conclusions, unless it be accompanied by the scientific attitude or spirit of open-mindedness. The scientific spirit does not necessarily flow from the scientific method at all, unless the teacher is careful in his use of it in teaching. We make a mistake if, in our just enthusiasm to impress the scientific method upon the student, we fail to teach that it can give, at best, only an approximation to truth. The scientific attitude which holds even our best-supported conclusions subject to revision by new evidence is the normal corrective of the possible dogmatism that comes from over-confidence in the scientific method as our best means of discovering truth.
The student at the end of the first year of biology ought to have more appreciation and enjoyment of plants and animals and their life than at the beginning,--and increased appreciation of his own relation to other animals; some attitude of dependence upon the scientific method of procedure not merely in biology but in his own life; a desire, however modest, for investigating things for himself; and an ideal of open-minded, enthusiastic willingness to subject his own conclusions to renewed testing at all times. All these gains should be reinforced by later courses.
SPECIAL AIMS OF BIOLOGY IN EDUCATION
=(5) Biology a valuable tool for certain technical pursuits=
So far as I can see, the preparation of students for medicine, for biological research, or for any advanced application of biology calls only for the following,--in addition to the further intensification of the emphasis suggested above:
(_a_) An increased recognition of the subject matter in organizing the course. In the early courses the subject ought to be subordinated to the personal elements. If one is to relate himself to the science in a professional way, the logic of the science comes to be the dominant objective.
(_b_) Growing out of the above there comes to be a change of emphasis on the scientific method. The method itself is identical, but the attitude toward it is different. In the early courses it was guided by the _teaching_ purpose. We insist upon the method in order that the student may appreciate how the subject has grown, may realize how all truth must be reached, and may come habitually to apply the method to his life problems. In the later courses it becomes the method of research into the unknown. The student comes more and more to use it as a tool, in whose use he himself is subordinated to his devotion to a field of investigation.
(_c_) A greater emphasis upon such special forms of biological knowledge as will be necessary as tools in the succeeding steps, and the selection of subject matter with this specifically in view. This is chiefly a matter of information, making the next steps intellectually possible.
(_d_) More specific forms of skill, adapted to the work contemplated. Technic becomes an object in such courses. Morphology, histology, technic, exact experimentation, repetition, drill, extended comparative studies, classifition, and the like become more essential than in the elementary courses. Thoroughness and mastery are desiderata for the sake both of subject matter and character; and in very much greater degree than in the general course.
ORGANIZATION OF THE COURSE IN BIOLOGY
=Biology courses not to be standardized rigidly=
The writer does not feel that standardized programs in biology in colleges are either possible or desirable. What is set down here under this heading is merely intended as carrying out the principles outlined above, and not as the only way to provide a suitable program. The writer assumes that the undergraduates are handled by men of catholic interests; and that the undergraduate courses are not distributed and manipulated primarily as feeders for specialized departments of research in a graduate school. This latter attitude is, in my opinion, fatal to creditable undergraduate instruction for the general student or for the future high school teachers of the subject.
=But they should follow a general principle:=
There are three groups or cycles of courses which may properly be developed by the college or by the undergraduate department of the university.
_First Group_
=(1) The _first_ group of courses should introduce to life rather than to later biological courses=
This group contains introductory courses for all students, but organized particularly with the idea of bringing the rich material of biology to the service of young people with the aim of making them effective in life, and not as a first course for making them botanists or zoölogists.
Course--_Biology 1._ General Biology
This course should introduce the student to the college method of work in the life sciences; should give him the general knowledge and points of view outlined above as the chief aims of Biology; should synthesize what the student already knows about plants and animals under the general conception of life. Ideally the botanical and zoölogical portions should be fused and be given by one teacher, rather than presented as one semester of botany and one of zoölogy. This, however, is frequently impracticable. In any event the total result should really be biology, and not a patchwork of botany and zoölogy. Hence there should be a free crossing of the barriers in use of materials at all times.
A year of biology is recommended because each pupil ought to have some work in both fields, and we cannot expect him to take a year in each.
Course--_Biology 2._ History of Biology
This course, dealing with the relation of the development of biology to human interests and problems, may be given separately, or as a part of Course 1,--which should otherwise be prerequisite to it. This may be one of the most humanizing of all the possible courses in biology.
_Second Group_
=(2) A _second_ group should be technical and introductory to professional uses=
This group furnishes a series of courses providing a thorough introduction to the principles and methods of botany and zoölogy. They provide discipline, drill, comparison, mastery of technic as well as increased appreciation of biology and of the scientific method. They should prepare for advanced work in biology, and for technical applications of it to medicine, agriculture, stock breeding, forestry, etc.
Course--Botany 1: General and Comparative Botany, and the Evolution of Plants.
Course--Botany 2: Physiology and Ecology of Plants.
Course--Botany 3: Plant Cytology, Histology, and Embryology.
Course--Zoölogy 1: General and Comparative Zoölogy.
Course--Zoölogy 2: Animal, including Human, Physiology.
Course--Zoölogy 3: Microtechnic, Histology, Histogenesis, Embryogeny.
Course--Zoölogy 4: Animal Ecology.
This outline for botany and zoölogy follows in the main the most common arrangement found in the schools of the country. In the personal judgment of the writer all undergraduate courses should combine aspects of morphology, physiology, ecology, etc., rather than be confined strictly to one particular phase; even histology and embryology can be better taught when their physiological aspects are emphasized. There is no fundamental reason, however, why there may not be great latitude of treatment in this group. An alluring feature of biological teaching is that a teacher who has a vital objective can begin anywhere in our wonderful subject and get logically to any point he wishes. These courses may be further subdivided, where facilities allow.
_Third Group_
=(3) A _third_ group of special, but cultural, courses=
This group contains certain of the more elementary applications of biology to human welfare. While having practical value in somewhat specialized vocations, the courses in this group are not proposed as professional or technical. They are definitely cultural. Every college might well give one or more of them, in accordance with local conditions. They ought to be eligible without the courses of the second group. The order is not significant.
Biology 3: Economic Entomology; Biology 4: Bird Course; Biology 5: Tree Course; Biology 6: Bacteriology and Fermentation; Biology 7: Biology of Sex; Heredity and Eugenics; Biology 8: Biology and Education; Biology 9: Evolution and Theoretical Problems.
PLACE OF BIOLOGY IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM
=The first course ought to be given in such a way that it might fittingly be required of all freshmen=
The introductory course (Biology 1) can be given in such a way that it ought to be required of all students during the freshman or sophomore year, preferably the freshman. In addition to the life value suggested above, and its introductory value in later biology courses, such a course would aid the student in psychology, sociology, geology, ethics, philosophy, education, domestic economy, and physical culture. Effort should be made to correlate the biological work with these departments of instruction. The course as now given in most of our colleges and universities does not possess enough merit to become a required study. Perhaps all we have a right at present to ask is that biology shall be one of a group of sciences from which all students must elect at least one. It is preposterous, in an age of science, that any college should not require at least a year of science.
Biology 1 should be prerequisite for botany 1 and zoölogy 1, and for the special biology courses in group three.
Botany 1 and zoölogy 1 should be made prerequisite for the higher courses in their respective fields; but aside from this almost any sequence would be allowable.
A major in biology should provide at least for biology 1 and 2, botany 1, zoölogy 1, botany 2 and 3, or zoölogy, 2 and 3. Chemistry is desirable as a preparation for the second group of courses.
METHODS OF TEACHING AS CONDITIONED BY THE AIMS OUTLINED ABOVE
=Acceptance of biology retarded by poor pedagogy=
Since the laboratory method came into use among biologists, there has been a disposition, growing out of its very excellences, to make a fetich of it, to refuse to recognize the necessity of other methods, to be intolerant of any science courses not employing the laboratory, and to affect a lofty disdain of any pedagogical discussion of the question whatsoever. The tone in which all this is done suggests a boast; but to the discriminating it amounts to a confession! The result of it has been to retard the development of biology to its rightful place as one of the most foundational and catholic of all educational fields. The great variety of aim and of matter not merely allow, but make imperative, the use of all possible methods; and there is no method found fruitful in education which does not lend itself to use in biology. The lecture method, the textbook, the recitation, the quiz and the inverted quiz, the method of assigned readings and reports, the method of conference and seminar, the laboratory method, and the field method are all applicable and needed in every course, even the most elementary.
=Prostitution of the laboratory=
Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover unknown facts. Is it, therefore, the best way to rediscover facts? This does not necessarily follow, though we have assumed it. Self-discovered facts are no better nor more true than communicated facts, and it takes more time to get them. The laboratory is the slowest possible way of getting facts. We have tried to correct this quantitative difficulty by extending the laboratory time, by speeding up, by confining ourselves to static types of facts like those of structure, and by using detailed laboratory guides for matter and method, all of which tends to make the laboratory exercise one of routine and the mere observation and recording of facts or a verification of the statements in manuals. The correction of these well-known limitations of the laboratory must come, in my opinion, by a frank recognition of, and breaking away from, certain of our misapprehensions about the function of the laboratory. Some of these are:
=Real purpose and possibility of laboratory work=
1. That the chief facts of a science should be rediscovered by the student in the laboratory. This is not true. Life is too short. The great mass of the student's facts must come from the instructor and from books. The laboratory has as its function in respect to facts, some very vital things: as, making clear certain classes of facts which the student cannot visualize without concrete demonstration; giving vividness to facts in general; gaining of enough facts at first hand to enable him to hold in solution the great mass of facts which he must take second hand; to give him skill and accuracy in observation and in recording discoveries; to give appreciation of the way in which all the second-hand facts have been reached; to give taste and enthusiasm for asking questions and confidence and persistence in finding answers for them. Anything more than this is waste of time. These results are not gained by mere quantity of work, but only through constant and intelligent guidance of the student's attitude in the process of dealing with facts.
2. A feeling that the laboratory or scientific method consists primarily of observation of facts and their record. In reality these are three great steps instead of one in this method, which the student of biology should master: (1) the getting of facts, one device for doing which is observation; (2) the appraisal and discrimination of these facts to find which are important; and (3) the drawing of the conclusions which these facts seem to warrant. There are two practical corollaries of this truth. One is that the laboratory should be so administered that the pupil shall appreciate the full scope of the scientific method, its tremendous historic value to the race, and the necessity of using _all_ the steps of it faithfully in all future progress as well as in the sound solution of our individual problems and the guidance of conduct. The second is that we may make errors in our scientific conclusions and in life conclusions, through failure to discriminate among our facts, quite as fatally as through lack of facts. Indeed, my personal conviction is that more failures are due to lack of discrimination than to lack of observation. The power to weigh evidence is at least as important as the power to collect it.
3. A disposition to deny the student the right to reach conclusions in the laboratory,--or, as we flamboyantly say, to "generalize." Now in reality the only earthly value of _facts_ is to get _truth_,--that is, conclusions or generalizations. To deny this privilege is taxation without representation in respect to personality. The purpose of the laboratory is to enable students to think, to think accurately and with purpose, to reach their own conclusions. The getting of facts by observation is only a minor detail. In reality, the data the student can get from books are much more reliable than his own observations are likely to be. Our laboratory training should add gradually to the accuracy of his observations, but particularly it should enable him to use his own and other persons' facts conjointly, and with proper discrimination, in reaching conclusions. To do other than this tends to abort the reasoning attitude and power, and teaches the pupil to stand passive in the presence of facts and to divorce facts and conclusions. The fear is, of course, that the students will get wrong conclusions and acquire the habit of jumping prematurely to generalizations. But this situation, while critical, is the very glory of the method. What we want to do is to ask them continually,--wherever possible,--_where_ _their facts seem to lead them_. Their conclusions are liable to be quite wrong, to be sure. But our province as teachers is to see that the facts ignorance of which made this conclusion wrong are brought to their attention,--and it is not absolutely material whether they discover these facts themselves or some one else does. What we want to compass is practice in reaching conclusions, and the recognition of the necessity of getting and discriminating facts in doing so, together with a realization that there are probably many other facts which we have not discovered that would modify our conclusions. This keeps the mind open. In other words, the student may thus be brought to realize the meaning of the "working hypothesis" and the method of approximation to truth. It makes no difference if one "jumps to a conclusion," if he jumps in the light of all his known facts and holds his conclusion _tentatively_. It is much better to reach wrong conclusions through inadequate facts than to have the mind come to a standstill in the presence of facts. Instead of being a threat, reaching a wrong conclusion gives us the opportunity to train students in holding their conclusions open-mindedly and subject to revision through new facts. Reaching wrong or partial conclusions and correcting them may be made even more educative than reaching right ones at the outset. This would not be true if the conclusion were being sought for the sake of the science. But it is being sought solely for the sake of the student. The distinction is important. The inability to make it is one of the reasons why research men so often fail as teachers.
All through life the student will be forced to draw conclusions from two types of facts,--both of which will be incomplete: those he himself has observed and those which came to him from other observers. While he must always feel free to try out any and all facts for himself, it is quite as important in practice that he be able to weigh other persons' facts discriminatingly. We teach in the laboratory that the pupil should not take his facts second hand, though we rather insist that he do so with his conclusions. In reality it is often much better to take our facts second hand; the stultifying thing is to take our conclusions so.
=A normal complete mental reaction for every laboratory exercise=
4. The dependence upon outlines and manuals. This is one of the most deadening devices that we have instituted to economize gray matter and increase the quantity of laboratory records at the expense of real initiative and thinking. It is easy for the reader to analyze for himself the mental reaction, or lack of it, of the student in following the usual detailed laboratory outline. _Every laboratory exercise should be an educative situation calling for a complete mental reaction from the pupil._ In the first place, no exercise should be used which is not really vital and educative. This assured, the full mental reaction of the student should be about as follows:
(1) The cursory survey of the situation.
(2) The raising by the student of such questions as seem to him interesting or worthy of solution. (Here, of course, the teacher can by skillful questioning lead the class to raise all necessary problems, and increase the student's willingness to attack them.)
(3) The determination through class conference of the order and method of attacking the problems, and the reasons therefor.
(4) The accumulation and record of discovered facts (sharply eliminating all inferences).
(5) The arrangement (classification) and appraisal (discrimination) of the discovered facts.
(6) Conclusions or inferences from the facts. (These should be very sharply and critically examined by teacher and class, to see to what extent they are really valid and supported by the facts.)
(7) Retesting of conclusions by new facts submitted by class, by teacher, or from books, with an effort to diminish prejudice as a factor in conclusions, and to increase the willingness to approach our own conclusions with an open mind.
When laboratory outlines are used at all they should consist merely of directions, and suggestions, and stimulating questions which will start the pupils on the main quest,--the raising and solving of their own problems.
SOME MOOT PROBLEMS[2]
=Ascending or descending order?=
1. Shall we begin with the simple, little-known, lower forms and follow the ascending order, which is analogous at least to the evolutionary order? Or shall we begin with the more complex but better-known forms and go downward? It seems to the writer that the former method has the advantage in actual interest; in its suggestiveness of evolution, which is the most important single impression the student will get from his course; and in the mental satisfactions that come to pupil and teacher alike from the sense of progress. However, our material is so rich, so interesting, and so plastic that it makes little difference where we begin if only we have a clear idea of what we want to accomplish.
=Morphology versus other interests=
2. What proportion of time should be given to morphology in relation to other interests? For several reasons morphology has been overemphasized. It lends itself to the older conception of the laboratory as a place to observe and record facts. It offers little temptation to reach conclusions. It calls for little use of gray matter. This makes it an easy laboratory enterprise. It is what the grade teachers call "busy" work, and can be multiplied indefinitely. It can be made to smack of exactness and thoroughness.
Furthermore, morphology _is_ in reality a basal consideration. It is a legitimate part of an introductory course,--but never for its own sake nor to prepare for higher courses. But morphology is, however, only the starting point for the higher mental processes by which different forms of organisms are compared, for the correlating of structure with activity, for appreciation of adaptations of structure both to function and to environmental influence. It thus serves as a foundation upon which to build conclusions about really vital matters. Experience teaches that sensitiveness, behavior, and other activities and powers and processes interest young people more than structure. The student's views are essentially sound at this point.
The introductory course should, therefore, be a cycle in which the student passes quite freely back and forth between form, powers, activities, conditions of life, and the conclusions as to the meanings of these. It is important only that he shall know with which consideration he is from time to time engaged.
=Few types or many?=
3. Shall a few forms be studied thoroughly, or many forms be studied more superficially? There is something of value in each of these practices. It is possible to over-emphasize the idea of thoroughness in the introductory courses. Thoroughness is purely a relative condition anyway, since we cannot really master any type. It seems poor pedagogy, in an elementary class particularly, to emphasize small and difficult forms or organs because they demand more painstaking and skill on the part of the student. My own practice in the elementary course is to have a very few specially favorable forms studied with a good deal of care, and a much larger number studied partially, emphasizing those points which they illustrate very effectively.
=Distribution of time=
4. What proportion of time should be given to the various methods of work? Manifestly the answer to this question depends upon the local equipment and upon the character of the course itself. The suggestion here relates primarily to the general or introductory courses. It seems to me that a sound division of time would be: two or three hours per week of class exercises (lectures, recitations, reports, quiz, etc.) demanding not less than four hours of preparation in text and library work; and four to six hours a week of "practical" work with organisms, about two hours of which should take the form of studies in the field wherever this is possible.
=Weakness of the research man as a teacher for the beginning course=
5. Is the "research" man the best teacher for the introductory courses? In spite of a good deal of prejudgment on the part of college and university administrators and of the research biologists themselves. I am convinced he is not. While there are notable exceptions, my own observation is that the investigator, whether the head professor or the "teaching fellow," usually does not have the mental attitude that makes a successful teacher, at least of elementary classes,--and for these reasons: he begrudges the time spent in teaching elementary classes, presents the subject as primarily preparatory to upper courses, subordinates the human elements to the scientific elements, and actually exploits the class in the interest of research. The real teacher's question about an entering class is this: "How can I best use the materials of our science to make real men and women out of these people?" The question of the professional investigator is likely to be: "How many of these people are fit to become investigators, and how can I most surely find them and interest them in the science?" This is a perfectly fine and legitimate question; but it is not an appropriate one until the first one has been answered. It has been assumed that the answers to the two questions are identical. This is one of the most vicious assumptions in higher education today, in my opinion. Furthermore, the investigator with his interests centering at the margins of the unknown cannot use the scientific method as a teacher, whose interest must center in the pupil. The points of view are not merely not identical; they are incompatible.
=Necessity of differentiation and recognition of the two functions=
Experience indicates the wisdom of having all beginning courses in biology in colleges and universities given by teachers and not by investigators, mature or immature. All people who propose to teach biology in the high schools should have their early courses given from this human point of view, that they may be the better able to come back to it after their graduate work, in their efforts to organize courses for pupils the greater part of whom will never have any but a life interest in the subject. The problem of presenting the advanced and special courses is relatively an easy one. The investigator is the best possible teacher for advanced students in his own special field if he is endowed with any common sense at all.
TESTS OF EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING
As yet we are notably lacking in regard to the measurement of progress as the result of our teaching. Our usual tests--examination, recitation, quiz, reports, laboratory notebooks--evaluate in a measure work done, knowledge or general grasp acquired, and accuracy developed. We need, however, measurements of skill, of habits, and of the still more intangible attitudes and appreciations. These may be gained in part by furnishing really educative situations and observing the time and character of the student's reaction. Every true teacher is in reality an experimental psychologist, and must apply directly the methods of the psychologist.
=More vital _tests_ of results of teaching must be found=
The laboratory and field furnish opportunity for this sort of testing. The student may be confronted with an unfamiliar organism or situation and be given a limited time in which to obtain and record his results. He may be asked to state and enumerate the problems that are suggested by the situation; outline a method of solving them; discover as large a body of facts as possible; arrange them in an order that seems to him logical, with his reasons; and to make whatever inferences seem to him sound in the light of facts,--supporting his conclusions at every point. The ability to make such a total mental reaction promptly and comprehendingly is the best test of any teaching whatsoever. The important thing is that we shall not ourselves lose sight of the essential parts of it in our enthusiasm for one portion of it.
In judging attitude and appreciation I think it is possible for discriminating teachers to obtain the testimony of the pupil himself in appraisal of his own progress and attitude. This needs to be done indirectly, to be sure. The student's self-judgment may not be accurate; but it is not at all impossible to secure a disposition in students to measure and estimate their own progress in these various things with some accuracy and fairness of mind. Besides its incidental value as a test, I know of no realm of biological observation, discrimination, and conclusion more likely to prove profitable to the student than this effort to estimate, without prejudice, his own growth.
THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT
=Scarcity of authoritative pedagogical literature in biology=
For various reasons very little attention has been given to the pedagogy of college biology by those in the best position to throw light upon this vital problem. More information as to the attitude of teachers of the subject is to be derived from college and university catalogs than elsewhere,--howbeit of a somewhat stereotyped and standardized kind. Much more has been written relative to the teaching of biology in the secondary schools. In my opinion the most effective teaching of biology in America today is being done in the best high schools by teachers who have been forced to acquire a pedagogical background that would enable them to reconstruct completely their presentation of the subject. Most of these people obtained very little help in this task from their college courses in biology. For these reasons every college teacher will greatly profit by studying what has been written for the secondary teachers. _School Science and Mathematics_ (Chicago) is the best source for current views in this field. Its files will show no little of the best thought and investigation that have been devoted to the principles underlying instruction in biology. Lloyd and Bigelow, in _The Teaching of Biology_ (Longmans, Green & Co.), have treated the problems of secondary biology at length. Ganong's _Teaching Botanist_ (The Macmillan Company) has high value.
The authors of textbooks of biology, botany, and zoölogy issued during the last ten years have ventured to develop, in their prefaces, appendices, and elsewhere, their pedagogical points of view. The writer has personal knowledge that teaching suggestions are still resented by some college teachers of zoölogy. Illustrations of the tendency to incorporate pedagogical material in textbooks on biological subjects can be found in
DODGE, C. W. _Practical Biology._ Harper and Brothers, 1894.
GAGER, C. S. _Fundamentals of Botany._ P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 1916.
GALLOWAY, T. W. _Textbook of Zoölogy._ P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 1915.
KINGSLEY, J. S. _Textbook of Vertebrate Zoölogy._ H. Holt & Co.
PETRUNKEVITCH, A. _Morphology of Invertebrate Types._ The Macmillan Company, 1916.
T. W. GALLOWAY _Beloit College_
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CRAMER, F. Logical Method in Biology. _Popular Science Monthly_, Vol. 44, page 372. 1894.
FARLOW, W. G. Biological Teaching in Colleges. _Popular Science Monthly_, Vol. 28, page 581. 1886.
HARVEY, N. A. Pedagogical Content of Zoölogy. _Proceedings National Education Association_, 1899; page 1106.
HODGE, C. F. Dynamic Biology. _Pedagogical Seminar_, Vols. 11-12.
HUXLEY, J. H. Educational Value of Natural History Science. Essay II, _Science and Education_. 1854.
RUSK, R. R. _Introduction to Experimental Education._ Longmans, Green & Co., 1912.
SAUNDERS, S. J. Value of Research in Education. _School Science and Mathematics_, Vol. II, March, 1902.
SMALLWOOD, W. M. Biology as a Culture Study. _Journal of Pedagogy_, Vol. 17, page 231.
WELTON, J. _Psychology of Education_ (chapter on "Character"). The Macmillan Company, 1911.
Footnotes:
[2] These problems relate particularly to the introductory courses.
V
THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY
=Preparation of entering students a determining factor=
Some of the students entering classes in chemistry in college have already had an elementary course in the subject in the high school or academy, while others have not. Again, some study chemistry in college merely for the sake of general information and culture, while many others pursue the subject because the vocation they are planning to make their life's work requires a more or less extensive knowledge of chemistry. Thus, all students in the natural sciences and their applications--as we have them in medicine, engineering, agriculture, and home economics--as well as those who are training to become professional chemists, either in the arts and industries or in teaching, must devote a considerable amount of time and energy to the study of chemistry. The teacher of college chemistry consequently must take into consideration the preparation with which the student enters his classes and also the end which is to be attained by the pursuit of the subject in the case of the various groups of students mentioned.
In the larger high schools courses in chemistry are now quite generally offered, but this is not yet true of the smaller schools. In some colleges those who have had high school chemistry are at once placed into advanced work without taking the usual basal course in general chemistry which is so arranged that students can enter it who have had no previous knowledge of the subject. In other words, in some cases the college builds directly upon the high school course in chemistry. As a rule, however, this does not prove very successful, for the high school course in chemistry is not primarily designed as a course upon which advanced college chemistry can be founded. This is as it should be, for after all, while the high school prepares students for college, its chief purpose is to act as a finishing school for those larger numbers of students who never go to college. The high school course in chemistry is consequently properly designed to give certain important chemical facts and point out their more immediate applications in the ordinary walks of life, as far as this can properly be done in the allotted time with a student of high school age and maturity. The result is consequently that while such work can very well be accepted toward satisfying college entrance requirements, it is only rarely sufficient as a basis for advanced college courses in the subject. As a rule it is best to ask all students to take the basal course in general chemistry offered in college, arranging somewhat more advanced experiments in the laboratory wherever necessary for those who have had chemistry in preparatory schools. This has become the writer's practice after careful trial of other expedients. The scheme has on the whole worked out fairly well, for it is sufficiently elastic to meet the needs of the individual students, who naturally come with preparation that is quite varied. Almost invariably students who, on account of their course in high school chemistry, are excused from the general basal course in college chemistry have been handicapped forever afterward in their advanced work in the subject.
=Organization of first-year course--General chemistry=
The first year's work in college chemistry consists of general chemistry. It is basal for all work that is to follow, and yet at the same time it is a finished course, giving a well-rounded survey of the subject to all who do not care to pursue it further. This basal course is commonly given in the freshman year, though sometimes it is deferred to the sophomore year. Its content is now fairly uniform in different colleges, the first semester being commonly devoted to general fundamental considerations and the chemistry of the non-metals, while the metals receive attention in the second semester, the elements of qualitative analysis being in some cases taught in connection with the chemistry of the metals.
The work is almost universally conducted by means of lectures, laboratory work, and recitations. The lectures have the purpose to unfold the subject, give general orientation as to the most important fundamental topics and points of view, and furnish impetus, guidance, and inspiration for laboratory study and reading. To this end the lectures should be illustrated by means of carefully chosen and well-prepared experiments. These serve not only to illustrate typical chemical processes, and fundamental laws, but they also stimulate interest and teach the student many valuable points of manipulation, for it is well-nigh impossible to watch an expert manipulator without absorbing valuable hints on the building up, arranging, and handling of apparatus. In the lectures the material should be presented slowly, carefully, and clearly, so that it may readily be followed by the student. Facts should always be placed in the foreground, and they should be made the basis of the generalization we call laws, and then the latter naturally lead to theoretical conceptions. It is a great mistake to begin with the atomic theory practically the first day and try to bolster up that theory with facts later on as concrete cases of chemical action are studied. On the other hand, it is also quite unwise to defer the introduction of theoretical conceptions too long, for the atomic theory is a great aid in making rapid progress in the study of chemistry. At least two or three weeks are well spent in studying fundamental chemical reactions as facts quite independent of any theories whatsoever, in order that the student may thoroughly appreciate the nature of chemical change and become familiar with enough characteristic and typical cases of chemical action so that the general laws of chemical combination by weight and by volume may be logically deduced and the atomic and molecular theories presented as based upon those laws.
Up to this stage the reactions should be written out in words and all formulation should be avoided, so that the student will not get the idea that "chemistry is the science of signs and symbols," or that "chemistry is a hypothetical science," but that he will feel that chemistry deals with certain very definite, characteristic, and fundamental changes of matter in which new substances are formed, and that these processes always go on in accordance with fixed and invariable laws, though they are influenced by conditions of temperature, pressure, light, electricity, and the presence of other substances in larger or smaller amounts. The theory and formulation when properly introduced should be an aid to the student, leading him to see that the expression of chemical facts is simplified thereby. Thus he will never make the error of regarding the symbol as the fundamental thing, but he will from the very outset look upon it simply as a useful form of shorthand expression, as it were, which is also a great aid in chemical thinking. Facts and theories should ever be kept distinct and separate in the student's mind, if he is to make real progress in the science.
A thoroughgoing, logical presentation of the subject, leading the student slowly and with a sense of perfect comprehension into the deeper and more difficult phases, should constitute one of the prime features of the work of the first year. Interest should constantly be stimulated by references to the historical development of the subject, to the practical applications in the arts and industries, to sanitation and the treatment of disease, to the providing of proper food, clothing, fuel, and shelter, to the problems of transportation and communication, to the chemical changes that are constantly going on in the atmosphere, the waters, and the crust of the earth as well as in all living beings. Nevertheless, all the time the _science_ should be taught as the backbone of the entire course. The allusions to history and the manifold applications to daily life are indeed very important, but they must never obscure the science itself, for only thus can a thorough comprehension of chemistry be imparted and the benefits of the mental drill and culture be vouchsafed to the student.
=Methods of teaching--The Lecture method=
For the freshman and sophomore, two lectures per week are sufficient for this type of instruction. In these exercises the student should give his undivided attention to what is presented by the lecturer. The taking of notes is to be discouraged rather than encouraged, for it results in dividing the attention between what is presented and the mechanical work of writing. To take the place of the usual lecture notes, students of this grade had better be provided with a suitable text, definite chapters in which are assigned for reading in connection with each lecture. The text thus serves for purposes of review, and also as a means for inculcating additional details which cannot to advantage be presented in a lecture, but are best studied at home by perusing a book, the contents of which have been illuminated by the experimental demonstrations, the explanations on the blackboard, the charts, lantern slides, and above all the living development and presentation of the subject by the lecturer. The lectures should in no case be conducted primarily as an exercise in dictation and note taking. If the lectures do not give general orientation, illumination, and inspiration for further study in laboratory and library, they are an absolute failure and had better be omitted entirely. On the other hand, when properly conducted the lectures are the very life of the course.
=The laboratory work=
The laboratory work should be well correlated with the lectures, especially during the first year. The experiments to be performed by the student should be carefully chosen and should not be a mere repetition of the lecture demonstrations. The laboratory experiments should be both qualitative and quantitative in character. They should on the one hand illustrate the peculiar properties of the substances studied and the typical concomitant changes of chemical action, but on the other hand a sufficient number of quantitative exercises in the laboratory should be introduced to bring home to the student the laws of combining weights and volumes, thus giving him the idea that chemistry is exact and that quantitative relations always obtain when chemical action takes place. At the same time the quantitative exercises lay the basis for the proper comprehension of the laws of combining weights and volumes and the atomic and molecular theories. At least three periods of two consecutive hours each should be spent in the laboratory per week, and the laboratory exercises should be made so interesting and instructive that the student will feel inclined to work in the laboratory at odd times in addition if his program of other studies permits. The laboratory should at all times be, as its name implies, a place where work is done. Order and neatness should always prevail. Apparatus should be kept neat and clean, and in no case should slovenly habits of setting up apparatus be tolerated. The early introduction of a certain amount of quantitative experimentation in the course makes for habits of order and neatness in experimentation and guards against bringing up "sloppy" chemists.
=The student's laboratory record=
The laboratory notebook should be a neat and accurate record of the work in the laboratory. To this end the entries in the notebook should be made in the laboratory at the time when the experiment is actually being performed. The writing of data on loose scratch paper and then finally writing up the notebook later at home from such sheets is not to be recommended, for while thus the final appearance of the notebook may be improved, it is no longer a first-hand record such as every scientist makes, but rather a transcribed one. The student, in making up such a transcription, is only too apt to draw upon his inner consciousness to make the book appear better; indeed, when he has neglected to transcribe his notes for several days, he is bound to produce anything but a true and accurate record, to say nothing about being put to the temptation to "fake" results which he has either not at all obtained in the laboratory, or has recorded so imperfectly on the scratch paper that he can no longer interpret his record properly. The only true way is to have the notes made directly in the permanently bound notebook at the time when the experiment is actually in progress. The student ought not to take the laboratory notebook home at all without the instructor's knowledge and permission. Each experiment should be entered in the notebook in a brief, businesslike manner. Long-winded, superfluous discussions should be avoided. As a rule, drawings of apparatus in the notes are unnecessary, it being sufficient to indicate that the apparatus was set up according to Figure so-and-so in the laboratory manual or according to the directions given on page so-and-so. The student should be made to feel that the laboratory is the place where careful, purposeful experimentation is to be done, that this is the main object of the laboratory work, and that the notebook is merely a reliable record of what has been accomplished. To this end the data in the notebook should be complete, yet brief and to the point, so that what has been done can be looked up again and that the instructor may know that the experiment has been performed properly, that its purpose was understood by the student, and that he has made correct observations and drawn logical conclusions therefrom. While in each case the notes should indicate the purpose of the experiment, what has actually been done and observed, and the final conclusions, it is on the whole best not to have a general cut-and-dried formula according to which each and every experiment is to be recorded. It is better to encourage a certain degree of individuality in this matter on the part of each student. Notebooks should be corrected by the teacher every week, and the student should be asked to correct all errors which the teacher has indicated. A businesslike atmosphere should prevail in the laboratory at all times, and this should be reflected in the notebooks. Anything that savors of the pedantic is to be strictly avoided. Small blackboards should be conveniently placed in the laboratory so that the instructor may use them in explaining any points that may arise. Usually the same question arises with several members of the class, and a few moments of explanation before the blackboard enable the instructor to clear up the points raised. This not only saves the instructor's time, but it also stimulates interest in the laboratory when explanations are thus given to small groups just when the question is hot.
It is, of course, assumed that the necessary amount of apparatus, chemicals, and other supplies is available, and that the laboratory desks, proper ventilation of the rooms, and safeguards in the case of all experiments fraught with danger have received the necessary painstaking attention on the part of the instructor, who must never for a moment relax in looking after these matters, which it is not the purpose to discuss here. At all times the student should work intelligently and be fully aware of any dangers that are inherent in what he is doing. It need hardly be said that a beginner should not be set at experiments that are specially dangerous. Having been given proper directions, the student should be taught to go ahead with confidence, for working in constant trepidation that an accident may occur often creates a nervous state that brings about the accident. Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon proper, definite laboratory instructions, especially as to kinds and amounts of materials to be used. Such directions as "take a _little_ phosphorus," for example, should be strictly avoided, for the direction as to amount is absolutely indefinite and may in the case where phosphorus or any other dangerous substance is used lead to dire accidents. The student should be given proper and very definite directions, and then he should be taught to follow these absolutely and not use more of the materials than is specified, as the beginner is so apt to do, thus often wasting his time and the reagents as well. Economy and the correct use of all laboratory supplies should be inculcated indirectly all the time. A fixed set of printed rules for the laboratory is generally neither necessary nor desirable when students are properly directed to work intelligently as they go, and good directions are given in the laboratory manual. Thus a spirit of doing intelligently what is right and proper, guarding against accidents, economizing in time and materials of all kinds will soon become dominant in the laboratory and will greatly add to the efficiency of the workers. Minor accidents are almost bound to occur at times in spite of all precautions, and the instructor should be ready to cope with these promptly by means of a properly supplied first-aid kit.
=Recitations and quizzes=
For students of the first year quizzes or recitations should be held at least twice a week. In these exercises the ground covered in the lectures and laboratory work should be carefully and systematically reviewed. The quiz classes should not be too large. Twenty-five students is the upper limit for a quiz section. The laboratory sections too should not be larger than this, and it is highly desirable that the same instructor conduct both the recitation and the immediate laboratory supervision of the student. Lecture classes can, of course, be very much larger in number. In most colleges the attendance upon classes in chemistry is so large that it is not possible for the professor to deliver the lectures and also personally conduct all of the laboratory work and recitations. It is consequently necessary to divide the class up into small sections for laboratory and quiz purposes. It is highly desirable that the student become well acquainted with his individual instructor in laboratory and quiz work, and therefore it would be unfortunate to have one instructor in the laboratory and still another instructor in the quiz. It might be argued that it is a good thing to have the student become acquainted with a number of instructors, but in the writer's experience such practice results to the disadvantage of the student, and is consequently not to be recommended.
In the recitations the student is to be encouraged to do the talking. He is to be given an opportunity to ask questions as well as to answer the queries put by the teacher. Short written exercises of about ten minutes' duration can be given to advantage in each of these recitations. In this way the entire class writes upon a well-chosen question or solves a numerical chemical problem and thus a great deal of time is saved. The quiz room should be well provided with blackboards which may be used to great advantage in the writing of equations and the solution of chemical problems just as in a class in mathematics. The textbook, from which readings are assigned to the student in connection with the lectures, should contain questions which recapitulate the contents of each chapter. When such questions are not contained in the book, they ought to be provided by the teacher on printed or mimeographed sheets. When properly conducted, the recitation aids greatly in clarifying, arranging and fixing the important points of the course in the mind of the student. Young instructors are apt to make the mistake of doing too much talking in the quiz, instead of encouraging the student to express his views. In these days, when foreign languages and mathematics are more or less on the wane in colleges, the proper study of chemistry, particularly in the well-conducted quiz, will go far toward supplying the mental drill which the older subjects have always afforded.
=Summary of first-year course=
If the work of the first year has been properly conducted, it will have given the student a general view of the whole field of chemistry, together with a sufficient amount of detail so securely anchored in careful laboratory work and practical experience as to form a basis for either more advanced work in chemical lines or in the pursuance of the vocations already mentioned in which a knowledge of chemistry is basal. It is hardly necessary to add that if well taught, the student will at the end of such a course have a desire for more chemistry.
=Organization of second-year course=
The work of the second year of chemistry in college generally consists of quantitative analysis, though the more intensive study of the compounds of carbon, known as organic chemistry, is also frequently taken up at this time, and there is much to be said in favor of such practice.
=Content of the course in quantitative analysis=
In the quantitative analysis, habits of neatness and accuracy must be insisted upon. It is well to give the general orientation and directions by means of lectures. One or two such exercises per week will suffice. There should also be recitations. When two lectures per week are given, it will suffice to review the work with the student in connection with such lectures, provided the class is not too large for quiz purposes. Intelligent work should characterize a course in quantitative analysis. To this end the student should be taught how to take proper representative samples of the material to be analyzed. He should then be taught how to weigh or measure out that sample with proper care. The manipulations of the analytical process should be carried out so that each step is properly understood and its relations to the general laws of chemistry are constantly before the mind. In carrying out the process, the various sources of error must be thoroughly appreciated and guarded against. The final weighing or measuring of the form in which the ingredient sought is estimated should again be carried out with care, and in the calculation of the percentage content due regard should be had for the limits of error of experimentation throughout the entire analytical process. The student feels that a large number of the exercises in quantitative analysis are virtually cases of making chemical preparations of the highest possible purity, thus connecting his previous chemical experience with his quantitative work. The course in quantitative analysis should cover the determination of the more important basic and acid radicals, and should consist of both gravimetric and volumetric exercises.
The choice of the exercises is of great importance. It may vary, and should vary considerably in different cases. Thus a student in agriculture is naturally interested in the methods of estimating lime, phosphorus, nitrogen, potash, silica, sulphur, etc., whereas a student in engineering would be more interested in work with the heavy metals and the ingredients which the commercial samples of such metals are apt to contain. Thus, analytical work on solder, bearing metal, iron and steel, cement, etc., should be introduced as soon as the student in engineering is ready for it. It is quite possible to inculcate the principles of quantitative analysis by selecting exercises in which the individual student is interested, though, to be sure, certain fundamental things would naturally have to be taken by all students, whatever be the line for which they are training. A few exercises in gas analysis and also water analysis should be given in every good course in quantitative analysis that occupies an entire year. Careful attention should be given to the notebook in the quantitative work, and the student should also be made to feel that in modern quantitative analysis not only balances and burettes are to serve as the measuring instruments, but that the polariscope and the refractometer also are very important, and that at times still other physical instruments like the spectroscope, the electrometer, and the viscometer may prove very useful indeed.
The quantitative analysis offers a splendid opportunity for bringing home to the student what he has learned in the work of the first year, showing him one phase of the application of that knowledge and making him feel, as it were, the quantitative side of science. This latter view can be imparted only to a limited degree in the first year's work, but the quantitative course offers an unusual opportunity for giving the student an application of the fundamental quantitative laws which govern all chemical processes. It is not possible to analyze very many substances during any college course in quantitative analysis. The wise teacher will choose the substances to be analyzed so as to keep up the interest of the student and yet at the same time give him examples of all the fundamental cases that are commonly met in the practice of analytical work. A careful, painstaking, intelligent worker should be the result of the course in quantitative analysis. Toward the end of the course, too, a certain amount of speed should be insisted upon. The student should be taught to carry on several processes at the same time, but care should be taken not to overdo this.
=The course in organic chemistry=
In the course in organic chemistry, lectures, laboratory work, and recitations, arranged very much as to time as in the first year, will be found advantageous. If the intensive work in organic chemistry is postponed to the third year in college, there are certain advantages. For example, the student is more mature and has had drill and experience in the somewhat simpler processes commonly taught in general and analytical chemistry. On the other hand, the postponing of organic chemistry to the third year has the disadvantage that the student goes through his basal training in quantitative analysis without the help of that larger horizon which can come to him only through the study of the methods of organic chemistry. The general work of the first year, to be sure, if well done compensates in part for what is lost by postponing organic chemistry till the third year, but it can never entirely remove the loss to the student. Teachers will differ as to whether the time-honored division of organic chemistry into the aliphatic and aromatic series should be maintained pedagogically, but they will doubtless all agree that the methods of working out the structure of the chemical compound are peculiarly characteristic of the study of the compounds of carbon, and these methods must consequently constitute an important point to be inculcated in organic chemistry. The derivation of the various types of organic compounds from the fundamental hydrocarbons as well as from one another, and the characteristic reactions of each of these fundamental forms which lead to their identification and also often serve as a means of their purification, should naturally be taught in a thoroughgoing manner. The numerous practical applications which the teacher of organic chemistry has at his command will always serve to make this subject one of the deepest interest, if not the most fascinating portion of the entire subject of chemistry. No student should leave the course in organic chemistry without feeling the beautiful unity and logical relationship which obtains in the case of the compounds of carbon, the experimental study of which has cast so much light upon the chemical processes in living plants and animals, processes upon which life itself depends. The analysis of organic compounds is probably best taught in connection with the course in organic chemistry. It is here that the student is introduced to the use of the combustion furnace and the method of working out the empirical formulæ of the compounds which he has carefully prepared and purified. The laboratory practice in organic chemistry generally requires the use of larger pieces of apparatus. Some of the experiments also are connected with peculiar dangers of their own. These facts require that the student should not approach the course without sufficient preliminary training. Furthermore, the teacher needs to exercise special care in supervising the laboratory work so as to guard the student against serious accidents.
The historical development of organic chemistry is especially interesting, and allusions to the history of the important discoveries and developments of ideas in organic chemistry should be used to stimulate interest and so enhance the value of the work of the student. The practical side of organic chemistry should never be lost sight of for a moment, and under no condition should the course be allowed to deteriorate into one of mere picturing of structural formulæ on the blackboard. All chemical formulas are merely compact forms of expression of what we know about chemical compounds. There are, no doubt, many facts about chemical compounds which their accepted formulas do not express at all, and the wise teacher should lead the student to see this. There is peculiar danger in the course in organic chemistry that the pupil become a mere formula worshiper, and this must carefully be guarded against.
The applications of organic chemistry to the arts and industries, but especially to biochemistry, will no doubt interest many members of the class of a course in organic chemistry if the subject is properly taught. This will be particularly the case if the teacher always holds before the mind of the pupil the actual realities in the laboratory and in nature, using formulation merely as the expression of our knowledge and not as an end in itself.
=Place of physical chemistry in the college curriculum=
Physical chemistry, commonly regarded as the youngest and by its adherents the most important and all-pervading branch of chemistry, is presented very early in the college course by some teachers, and postponed to the junior and even the senior year by others. Just as a certain amount of organic chemistry should be taught in the first year, so a few of the most fundamental principles of physical chemistry must also find a place in the basal work of the beginner. However, in the first year's work in chemistry so many phases of the subject must needs be presented in order to give a good general view, that many details in either organic, analytical, or physical chemistry must necessarily be omitted. What is to be taught in that important basal year must, therefore, be selected with extreme care. Moreover, so far as physical chemistry is concerned, it is in a way chemical philosophy or general chemistry in the broadest sense of the word, and consequently requires for its successful pursuit not only a basal course, but also proper knowledge of analytical and organic chemistry, as well as a grounding in physics, crystallography, and mathematics. At the same time a certain amount of biological study is highly desirable. A good course in physical chemistry postulates lectures, laboratory work, and recitations. In general, these should be arranged much like those in the basal course and the course in organic chemistry. If anything, more time should be put upon the lectures and recitations; certainly more time should be devoted to exercises of this kind than in the course in quantitative analysis, which is best taught in the laboratory. At the same time it would be a mistake to teach physical chemistry without laboratory practice. Indeed, laboratory practice is the very life of physical chemistry, and the more of such work we can have, the better. However, since physical chemistry, as already stated, delves into the philosophical field, discussions in the lecture hall and classroom become of peculiar importance.
=Courses in applied chemistry=
Many colleges now give additional courses in chemical technology. These would naturally come after the student has had a sufficient foundation in general chemistry, chemical analysis, and organic and physical chemistry. As a rule such applied courses ought not to be given until the junior or senior year. It is a great mistake to introduce such courses earlier, for the student cannot do the work in an intelligent manner.
=Enthusiastic teaching a vital factor=
In all the courses in chemistry, interest and enthusiasm are of vital importance. These can be instilled only by the teacher himself, and no amount of laying out courses on paper and giving directions, however valuable they may be, can possibly take the place of an able, devoted, enthusiastic teacher. Chemistry deals with things, and hence is always best taught in the laboratory. The classroom and the library should create interest and enthusiasm for further laboratory work, and in turn the laboratory work should yield results that will finally manifest themselves in the form of good written reports.
=The teacher must continue his researches=
Original work should always be carried on by the college teacher. If he fails in this, his teaching will soon be dead. There will always be some bright students who can help him in his research work. These should be led on and developed along lines of original thought. From this source there will always spring live workers in the arts and industries as well as in academic lines. Lack of facilities and time is often pleaded by the college teacher as an excuse for not doing original work. There is no doubt that such facilities are often very meager. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic teacher is bound to find the time and also the means for doing some original work. A great deal cannot be expected of him as a rule because of his pedagogical duties, but a certain amount of productive work is absolutely essential to any live college teacher.
=Future of chemistry in the college curriculum=
The importance of chemistry in daily life and in the industries has been increasing and is bound to continue to increase. For this reason the subject is destined to take a more important place in the college curriculum. If well taught, college chemistry will not only widen the horizon of the student, but it will also afford him both manual training and mental drill and culture of the highest order.
LOUIS KAHLENBERG _University of Wisconsin_
VI
THE TEACHING OF PHYSICS
The need of giving to physics a prominent place in the college curriculum of the twentieth century is quite universally admitted. If, as an eminent medical authority maintains, no man can be said to be educated who has not the knowledge of trigonometry, how much more true is this statement with reference to physics? The five human senses are not more varied in scope than are the five great domains of this science. In the study of heat, sound, and light we may strive merely to understand the nature of the external stimuli that come to us through touch, hearing and sight; but in mechanics, where we examine critically the simplest ideas of motion and inertia, we acquire the method of analysis which when applied to the mysteries of molecular physics and electricity carries us along avenues that lead to the most profound secrets of nature. Utilitarian aspects dwindle in our perspective as we face the problem of the structure, origin, and evolution of matter--as we question the independence of space and time. Modern physics possesses philosophic stature of heroic size.
=Utilitarian value of the study Of physics=
But with regard to everyday occurrences a study of physics is necessary. It is trite to mention the development in recent years of those mechanical and electrical arts that have made modern civilization. The submarine, vitalized by storage battery and Diesel engine, the torpedo with its gyroscopic pilot and pneumatic motors, the wireless transmission of speech over seas and continents--these things no longer excite wonder nor claim attention as we scan the morning paper; yet how many understand their mechanism or appreciate the spirit which has given them to the world?
=Disciplinary value of the study=
If culture means the subjective transformation of information into a philosophy of life, can culture be complete unless it has included in its reflections the marvelously simple yet intricate interrelations of natural phenomena? The value of this intricate simplicity as a mental discipline is equaled perhaps only in the finely drawn distinctions of philosophy and in the painstaking statements of limitations and the rapid generalizations of pure mathematics; and let us not forget the value of discipline, outgrown and unheeded though it be in the acquisitive life of the present age.
=Relation of physics to philosophy and the exact sciences=
The professional student, continually increasing in numbers in our colleges, either of science or in certain branches of law, finds a broad familiarity with the latest points of view of the physicist not only helpful but often indispensable. Chemistry can find with difficulty any artificial basis for a boundary of its domain from that of physics. Certainly no real one exists. The biologist is heard asking about the latest idea in atomic evolution and the electrical theories of matter, hoping to find in these illuminating points of view, he tells us, some analogy to his almost hopelessly complex problems of life and heredity. Even those medical men whose interest is entirely commercial appreciate the convenience of the X-ray and the importance of correctly interpreting the pathological effects of the rays of radio-activity and ultra-violet light. One finds a great geologist in collaboration with his distinguished colleague in physics, and from the latter comes a contribution on the rigidity of the earth. Astronomy answers nowadays to the name of astrophysics, and progressive observatories recognize in the laboratory a tool as essential as the telescope. In a word, the professional student of science not only finds that the subject matter of physics has many fundamental points of contact with his own chosen field, but also recognizes that the less complex nature of its material allows the method of study to stand out in bolder relief. Training in the method and a passion for the method are vital to a successful and an ardent career.
=Should the teaching of college physics change its aim for different classes of students?=
In the teaching of physics, then, the aim might at first sight appear to be quite varied, differing with different classes of students. A careful analysis of the situation, however, will show, we think, that this conclusion can with difficulty be justified: that it is necessary to conduct college instruction in a fashion dictated almost not at all by the subsequent aims of the students concerned. In the more elementary work, certainly, adherence to this idea is of great importance. The character, design, and purpose of an edifice do not appear in the foundations except that they are massive if the structure is to be great.
Not infrequently this seems an unnecessary hardship to a professional student anxious to get into the work of his chosen field. If such is the case, let him question perhaps whether any study of physics should be attempted, as this query may have different answers for different individuals. But if he is to study it at all, there is but one place where the analysis of physical phenomena can begin, and that is with fundamentals--space, time, motion, and inertia. How can one who is ignorant of the existence and characteristics of rotational inertia understand a galvanometer? How can waves be discussed unless in terms of period, amplitude, frequency, and the like, that find definition in simple harmonic motion? How does one visualize the mechanism of a gas, unless by means of such ideas as momentum interchange, energy conservation, and forces of attraction?
Let us emphasize here, lest we be misunderstood, that we are considering collegiate courses. We do not doubt that descriptive physics may be given after one fashion to farmers, quite differently to engineers, and from still a third point of view to medical students. Unfortunately some collegiate courses never get beyond the high school method. Our aim is not to discuss descriptive courses, but those that approach the subject with the spirit of critical analysis, for these alone do we deem worthy of a place in the college curriculum.
=The course in college physics differentiated from the high school course=
The problem of the descriptive course is the problem of the high school. Because of failure there, too often we see at many a university courses in subfreshman physics. These are made necessary where entrance requirements do not demand this subject and where subsequent interest along related lines develops among the students a tardy necessity of getting it. From the point of view of the collegiate course it often appears as if the subfreshman course could be raised to academic rank. This is because familiarity with the material must precede an analysis of it. Credit for high school physics on the records of the entrance examiner, unless this credit is based on entrance examination, is often found to stand for very little. Consequently the almost continual demand for the high school work under the direct supervision of a collegiate faculty. The number of students who should go into this course instead of the college course is increasing at the present time in the immediate locality of the writer.
As contributory testimony here, witness the number of colleges that do not take cognizance at all of high school preparation and admit to the same college classes those who have never had preparatory physics with those who have had it. We are told the difference between the two groups is insignificant. Perhaps it is. If so, this fact reflects as much on the college as on the high school. If we are looking for a solution of our problem in this direction, let us be undeceived; we are looking backwards, not forward.
=Need of adequate high school preparation in physics=
No one will affirm that to a class of whose numbers some have never had high school physics a course that is really analytical can be given. Wherever a rigorous analytic course is given those who have been well trained in descriptive physics do well in it in general. Let us not beg the question by giving such physics in a college that does not require high school preparation. The college curriculum is full enough as it is without duplication of high school work, and any college physics course that is a first course is essentially a high school course.
Let us rather put the responsibility squarely where it lies. The high school will respond if the urgency is made clear. Witness some of them in our cities already attempting the junior college idea, an idea that has not been unsuccessful in some of our private schools. If it is made clear that a thoroughgoing course in descriptive physics is a paramount necessity in college work and that no effort will be spared on the part of the university to insure this quality, the men will be found and the proper courses given.
=Preparatory work in mathematics essential for success in college physics=
We favor a comprehensive examination plan in all cases where the quality of the high school work is either unknown or open to question.
Familiarity, likewise, with the most elementary uses of mathematics should be insured. It would be highly desirable that a course of collegiate grade in trigonometry should immediately precede the physics. This is not because the details of trigonometry are all needed in physics. In fact, a few who have never had trigonometry make a conspicuous success in physics. These, however, are ones who have a natural facility in analysis. To keep them out because of failure to have had a prerequisite course in trigonometry often works an unnecessary hardship. We would argue, therefore, for a formal prerequisite on this subject, reserving for certain students exemption, which should be determined in all cases, if not by the instructor himself, at least by his coöperation with some advisory administrative officer.
=Need of testing each student's preparation=
Nor is it sufficient with regard to the mathematical preparation or the knowledge of high school physics in either case to go exclusively by the official credit record of the student. It is our firm conviction from several years' experience where widely different aims in the student body are represented that above and beyond all formal records attention to the individual case is of prime importance. The opening week of the course should be so conducted that those who are obviously unequipped can be located and directed elsewhere into the proper work. How this may best be accomplished can be determined only by the circumstances in the individual school, we imagine. Daily tests covering the simplest descriptive information that should be retained from high school physics and requiring the intelligent use of arithmetic, elementary algebra, and geometry will reveal amazing incapacity in these things. Tuttle, in his little book entitled _An Introduction to Laboratory Physics_ (Jefferson Laboratory of Physics, Philadelphia, 1915), gives on pages 15-16 an excellent list of questions of this sort. Any one with teaching experience in the subject whatever can make up an equally good one suited for his special needs and temperament. It should not be assumed that all who fail in such tests should be dropped. Some undoubtedly should be sent back to high school work or its equivalent; others may need double the required work in mathematics to overcome their unreadiness in its use. Personal contacts will show that some are drifting into a scientific course who have no aptitude for it and who will be doomed to disappointment should they continue. In a word, then, we are convinced that the more carefully one plans the work of the first week or so the more smoothly does the work of the rest of the year follow. The number of failures may be reduced to a few per cent without in any way relaxing the standard of the course.
=Methods of teaching college physics=
With regard to the organization of the college courses in physics there seems to us to be at least one method that leads to a considerable degree of success. This is not the lecture method of instruction; neither is it a wholly unmitigated laboratory method.
=Lecture method vs. laboratory method=
To kindle inspiration and enthusiasm nothing can equal the contact in lectures with others, preferably leaders in their profession, but at least men who possess one of these qualities. Such contacts need not be frequent; indeed, they should not be. The speaker is apt to make more effort, the student to be more responsive, if such occasions are relatively rare. Even thus, although real information is imparted at such a time, it is seldom acquired. However, perspective is furnished, interest stimulated, and the occasion enjoyed.
=Limitations of exclusive use of each method=
For the real acquisition of scientific information, the great method is the working out of a laboratory exercise and pertinent problems, with informal guidance in the atmosphere of active study and discussion engendered among a small group,--the laboratory method. Taken alone, it is apt to become mechanical and uninteresting and the outlook to be obscured by details. Lectures, especially demonstration lectures, are needed to vitalize and inspire. Moreover, many of the most vivid illustrations of physical principles that occur on every hand to focus the popular attention are never met with in the college course because they are unsuited for inexperienced hands or not readily amenable to quantitative experimentation. The more informally such demonstrations can be conducted, the more enthusiastically they are received.
=Aims of the laboratory method=
With regard to laboratory work, accuracy in moderate degree is important, but too great insistence upon it is apt to overshadow the higher aim; namely, that of the analysis of the phenomena themselves. A determination of the pressure coefficient of a gas to half a per cent, accompanied by a clear visualization of the mechanism by which a gas exerts a pressure and a usable identification of temperature with kinetic agitation, would seem preferable to an experimental error of a tenth per cent which may be exacted which is unaccompanied by these inspiring and rather modern points of view. Especially in electricity is a familiarity with the essentials of the modern theories important. Here supplementary lectures are of great necessity, for no textbook keeps pace with progress in this tremendously important field. Problem solving with class discussion is absolutely essential, and should occupy at least one third of the entire time. In no other way can one be convinced that the student is doing anything more than committing to memory, or blindly following directions with no reaction of his own.
=Value of the supplementary lecture=
The incorporation recently of this idea into the courses at the University of Chicago has been very successful. Five sections which are under different instructors are combined one day a week at an hour when there are no other university engagements, for a lecture demonstration. This is given by a senior member of the staff whenever possible. The other meetings during the week are conducted by the individual instructors and consist of two two-hour laboratory periods and two class periods that usually run into somewhat over one hour each. These sections are limited to twenty-five, and a smaller number than this would be desirable. The responsibility for the course rests naturally upon the individual instructors of these small sections. These men also share in the demonstration work, since each is usually an enthusiast in some particular field and will make a great effort in his own specialty to give a successful popular presentation of the important ideas involved. The enthusiasm which this plan has engendered is very great. Attendance is crowded and there is always a row of visitors, teachers of the vicinity, advanced students in other fields of work, or undergraduates brought in by members of the class. These latter especially are encouraged, as this does much to offset current ideas that physics is a subject of unmitigated severity. The particular topics put into these demonstrations will be discussed in paragraphs below, which take up in more detail the organization of the special subdivisions of the material in a general physics course.
=Mechanics a stumbling block--How to meet the difficulty=
Mechanics is a stumbling block at the outset. As we have indicated above, it must form the beginning of any course that is analytic in aim. There is no question of sidestepping the difficulty: it must be surmounted. A judicious weeding during the first week is the initial part of the plan. Interest may be aroused at once in the demonstration lectures by mechanical tricks that show apparent violations of Newton's Laws. These group around the type of experiment which shows a modification of the natural uniform rectilinear motion of any object by some hidden force, most often a concealed magnetic field. The instinctive adherence of every one to Newton's dynamic definition, that acceleration defies the ratio of force to inertia, is made obvious by the amusement with which a trick in apparent defiance of this principle is greeted. Informality of discussion in such experiments, questions on the part of the instructor that are more than rhetorical, and volunteer answers and comment from the class increase the vividness of the impressions. A mechanical adaptation of the "monkey on the string" problem, using little electric hoists or clockworks, introduces interesting discussion of the third law in conjunction with the second. A toy cannon and target mounted on easily rolling carriages bring in the similar ideas where impulses rather than forces alone can be measured.
There follow, then, the laboratory experiments of the Atwood machine and the force table, where quantitative results are demanded. It is desirable to have these experiments at least worked by the class in unison. Whatever may be the exigencies of numbers and apparatus equipment that prevent it later, these introductions should be given to and discussed by all together. In the nature of things, fortunately, this is possible. A single Atwood machine will give traces for all in a short time under the guidance of the instructor. The force table experiment is nine-tenths calculation, and verifications may be made for a large number in a short time. Searching problems and discussion are instigated at once, and the notion of rotational equilibrium and force moments brought in. Because of the very great difficulty seeming to attach to force resolutions, demonstration experiments and problems using a bridge structure, such as the Harvard experimental truss, will amply repay the time invested. Another experiment here, which makes analysis of the practice of weighing, is possible, although there will be divergence almost at once due to the personality of the instructor and the equipment by which he finds himself limited. The early introduction of moments is important, however, because it seems as if a great amount of unnecessary confusion on this topic is continually cropping out later. At this point, if limitations of apparatus present a difficulty, a group of more or less independent experiments may be started. Ideas of energy may be illustrated in the determination of the efficiency and the horse power of simple machines, such as water motors, pulleys, and even small gas or steam engines.
In discussion of power one should not forget that in practical problems one meets power as force times velocity rather more frequently than as rate of doing work, and this aspect should be emphasized in the experiments. Conservation of energy is brought out in these same experiments with reference to the efficiencies involved. In sharp contrast here the principle of conservation of momentum may be brought in by ballistic pendulum experiments involving elastic and inelastic impacts. Most students are unfamiliar with the application of these ideas to the determination of projectile velocities, and this forms an interesting lecture demonstration. Elasticity likewise is a topic that may be introduced with more or less emphasis according to the predilection of the instructor. The moduli of Young and of simple rigidity lend themselves readily to quantitative laboratory experiments. Any amount of interesting material may be culled here from recent investigations of Michelson, Bridgman, and others with regard to elastic limits, departures from the simple relations, variations with pressure, etc., for a lantern or demonstration talk in these connections.
By this time the student should have found himself sufficiently prepared to take up problems of rotational motion. The application of Newton's Laws to pure rotations and combinations of rotation and translation, such as rolling motions, are very many. We would emphasize here the dynamic definition of moment of inertia, I = Fh/_a_ rather than the one so frequently given importance for computational purposes, S_mr_^{2}. Quantitative experiments are furnished by the rotational counterpart of the Atwood machine. Lecture demonstrations for several talks abound: stability of spin about the axis of greatest inertia, Kelvin's famous experiments with eggs and tops containing liquids, which suggest the gyroscopic ideas, and finally a discussion of gyroscopes and their multitudinous applications. The book of Crabtree, _Spinning Tops and the Gyroscope_, and the several papers by Gray in the _Proceedings of the Physical Society of London_, summarize a wealth of material. If one wishes to interject a parenthetical discussion of the Bernouilli principle, and the simplest laws of pressure distributions on plane surfaces moving through a resisting medium, a group of striking demonstrations is possible involving this notion, and by simple combination of it with the precession of a rotating body the boomerang may be brought in and its action for the major part given explanation.
Rotational motion leads naturally to a discussion of centripetal force, and this in turn is simple harmonic motion. This latter finds most important applications in the pendulum experiments, and no end of material is here to be found in any of the textbooks. The greatest refinement of experimentation for elementary purposes will be the determination of "g" by the method of coincidences between a simple pendulum and the standard clock. Elementary analysis without use of calculus reaches its culmination in a discussion of forced vibrations similar to that used by Magie in his general text. Many will not care to go as far as this. Others will go farther and discuss Kater's pendulum and the small corrections needed for precision, for here does precision find bold expression.
It is not our purpose to give a synopsis of the entire general physics course. We have made an especially detailed study of mechanics, because this topic is the one of greatest difficulty by far in the pedagogy. It is too formally given in the average text, and seems to have suffered most of all from lack of imagination on the part of instructors.
=Suggested content for the study of phenomena of heat and molecular physics=
In the field of heat and molecular physics in general there is much better textbook material. Experiments here may legitimately be called precise, for the gas laws, temperature coefficients, and densities of gases and saturated vapor pressures will readily yield in comparatively inexperienced hands an accuracy of about one in a thousand. In the demonstrations emphasis should be given to the visualization of the kinetic theory points of view. Such models as the Northrup visible molecule apparatus are very helpful. However, in absence of funds for such elaboration, slides from imaginative drawings showing to scale conditions in solids, liquids, and vapors with average free paths indicated and the history of single molecules depicted will be found ideal in getting the visualization home to the student. Where we have a theory so completely established as the mechanical theory of heat it seems quite fair to have recourse to the eye of the senses to aid the eye of the mind. Brownian movements have already yielded up their dances to the motion picture camera. Need the "movies" be the only ones to profit by the animated cartoon?
Nor should the classical material be forgotten. Boys' experiments in soap bubbles have been the inspiration of generations of students of capillarity. And if the physicist will consult with the physiological chemist he will find a mass of material of which he never dreamed where these phenomena of surface tension enter in a most direct fashion to leading questions in the life sciences.
=The teacher of scholarship and understanding is the teacher who uses sound methods=
Enough has been said to indicate what we consider the methods of successful teaching of college physics. It is quite obvious, we think, that physics constitutes no exception to the rule that the teacher must first of all know and understand his subject. Right here lies probably nine tenths of the fault with our pedagogy. No amount of study of method will yield such returns as the study of the subject itself. The honest student, and every teacher should belong to this class or he has no claim to the name, is well aware that most of his deficiency in explaining a topic is in direct ratio to his own lack of comprehension of it. In physics, as in every other walk of life, we suffer from lack of thoroughness, from a kind of superficiality that is characteristically human but especially American. We have yet to know of any one who really ranks as a scholar in his subject from whom students do not derive inspiration and enthusiasm. Such a one usually pays little attention to the methods of others, for the divine fire of knowledge itself does not need much of tinder to kindle the torches of others. Our greatest plea is for our teachers to be men of understanding, for then they will be found to be men of method.
=The method of analysis dominant in physics=
The sequence in which heat, electricity, sound, and light follow mechanics seems quite immaterial. Several equally logical plans may be organized. Preference is usually accorded one or the other on the basis of local conditions of equipment, and needs little reference to pedagogy. If one gives to mechanics its proper importance, the difficulty in giving instruction in the other topics seems very much less. The momentum acquired seems to serve for the balance of the year. Always must analysis be insisted upon, if our college course is going to differ from that of the high school. If we are to let students be content to read current from an ammeter with a calibrated scale and not have the interest to inquire and the ambition to insist upon the knowledge of how that calibration was originally made, we have no right to claim any collegiate rank for our courses. But if we define electrical current in terms of mechanical force which exhibits a balanced couple on a system in rotational equilibrium, there can be no dodging of the issue, for in no other way than by the study of the mechanics of the situation can the content and the limitations of our definition be understood. Any college work, so called, that does less than analyze thus is nothing more than a review and amplification of the material that should be within the range of the high school student and in that place presented to him. The first college course reveals a different method, the method of analysis. Science at the present time is so far developed that in no branch is progress made by mere description and classification. The method of analysis is dominant in the biological and the earth sciences as well as in the physics and chemistry of today.
=Teaching of advanced courses in physics=
On the more advanced college courses which follow the general physics course little comment is needed. Problems and questions here also exist, but they have a strongly local color and are out of place in a general discussion. The student body is no longer composed of the rank and file, half of whom are driven, by some requirement or other, into work in which they have but a passing interest at best. It is no longer a problem of seeing how much can be made to adhere in spite of indifference, of how firm a foundation can be prepared for needs as yet unrecognized in the subject of the effort. A very limited number, comparatively, enter further work of senior college courses, and these have either enthusiasm or ability and often both. Of course, a cold neglect or bored indifference in the attitude of the teacher will be resented. It will kill enthusiasm and send ability seeking inspiration elsewhere. But any one who is fond of his subject, and of moderate ability and industry, should have no difficulty in developing senior college work. If our instructor in the general course must be a scholar to be successful, the man in more advanced work must be one _a fortiori_. If he is not, few who come in contact with him have so little discernment as to fail to recognize the fact.
=Organization of advanced courses=
Organization of senior college work may be in many ways. One method where an institution follows the quarter system is the plan of having eight or ten different and rather unrelated twelve-week major courses which may be taken in almost any order. Half of these are lecture courses, the other half exclusively laboratory courses. There should be a correspondence of material to some extent between the two. Lectures on the kinetic theory of gases should have a parallel course in which the classical experiments of the senior heat laboratory are performed,--such experiments, for example, as vapor density, resistance and thermocouple pyrometry, bomb calorimetry viscosity, molecular conductivity, freezing and boiling points, recalescence, etc. A course of advanced electrical measurements should have a parallel lecture course in which the theoretical aspects of electromagnetism, the classical theories, and the equations that represent transitory and equilibrium conditions in complex circuits are discussed. In optics, likewise, there is ample material of great importance: physical, geometrical optics, spectroscopy, photography, X-ray crystallography, etc. The advanced student in these fields finds more elasticity and opportunity for cultivating a special interest in having a large number of limited interest courses from which to choose than in having such material presented in a completely organized course covering one or two years of complete work. Instructors who are specialists have opportunity of working up courses in their own fields which they do more efficiently under this plan. Research begins at innumerable places along the way, and the senior college courses so organized are the feeders of all graduate work.
=Dangers of formalizing methods of instruction=
In all of the above discussion it should be clearly remembered that no single plan or no one particular method has the final word or ever will have. As long as a science is growing and unfinished, points of view will continually be shifting. We are largely orthodox in our teaching. If brought up on the laboratory method of instruction it may seem the best one for us, but others may prefer another way which they have inherited. Let us appeal, then, for a constructive orthodoxy. Let us be as teachers of a subject to which we are devoted, truly and sincerely open-minded, quick to recognize and sincere in our efforts to adopt what is better wherever we meet it: waiting not to meet it, either, but going out to seek it. From the humblest college to the greatest university we shall find it here and there. Not alone in schools but in the legion of human activities about us on every hand are people who are doing things more efficiently, more thoroughly, and more skillfully than we do things. If we would be of the number that lead, we must be among the first to recognize these facts and profit by them.
First, let our work be organized with respect to that of others--the high schools; not discounting their labor but having them truly build for us.
Second, let us be open-minded enough to see that all methods of instruction have their advantages and make such combinations of the best elements in each as best suit our purpose.
Above all things, let us know our subject. Here is a task before which we quail in this generation of vast vistas. But there is no alternative for us. No amount of method will remove the curse of the superficially informed. Let us devote ourselves to smaller fields if we must, but let us not tolerate ignorance among those who bear the burden of passing on, with its flame ever more consuming, the torch of knowledge.
HARVEY B. LEMON _University of Chicago_
VII
THE TEACHING OF GEOLOGY
=Values of the study of geology diverse=
So wide is the scope of the science of the earth, so varied is its subject matter, and so diverse are the mental activities called forth in its pursuit, that its function in collegiate training cannot be summed up in an introductory phrase or two. Geology is so composite that it is better fitted to serve a related group of educational purposes than a single one alone. Besides this, these possible services have not yet become so familiar that they can be brought vividly to mind by an apt word or phrase; they need elaboration and exposition to be valued at what they are really worth. Geology is yet a young science and still growing, and as in the case of a growing boy, to know what it was a few years ago is not to know what it is today. Its disciplines take on a realistic phase in the main, but yet in some aspects appeal powerfully to the imagination. Its subject matter forms a constitutional history of our planet and its inhabitants, but yet largely wears a descriptive or a dynamic garb.
=Geology a study of the process of evolution=
Though basally historical, a large part of the literature of geology is concerned with the description of rocks, structural features, geologic terrains, surface configurations and their modes of formation and means of identification. A notable part of the text prepared for college students relates primarily to phenomena and processes, leaving the history of the earth to follow later in a seemingly secondary way. This has its defense in a desire first to make clear the modes of the geologic processes, to the end that the parts played by these processes in the complexities of actions that make up the historical stages may be better realized. This has the effect, however, of giving the impression that geology is primarily a study of rocks and rock-forming processes, and this impression is confirmed by the great mass of descriptive literature that has sprung almost necessarily from the task of delineating such a multitude of formations before trying to interpret their modes of origin or to assign them their places in the history of the earth. The descriptive details are the indispensable data of a sound history, and they have in addition specific values independent of their service as historical data. But into the multiplicity and complexity of the details of structure and of process, the average college student can wisely enter to a limited extent only, except as they form types, or appear in the local fields which he studies, where they serve as concrete examples of world-forming processes.
=Disciplinary worth of study of geology=
The study of these structures, formations, configurations, and processes yields each its own special phase of discipline and its own measure of information. The work takes on various chemical, mechanical, and biological aspects. As a means of discipline it calls for keenness and diligence in observation, circumspection in inference, a judicial balancing of factors in interpretation. An active use of the scientific imagination is called forth in following formations to inaccessible depths or beneath areas where they are concealed from view.
While thus the study of structures, formations and configurations constitutes the most obtrusive phase of geologic study and has given trend to pedagogical opinion respecting its place in a college course, such study is not, in the opinion of the writer, the foremost function of the subject in a college curriculum that is designed to be really broad, basal, and free, in contradistinction to one that is tied to a specific vocational purpose.
=This study concerned primarily with the typical college course, not with vocational courses=
While we recognize, with full sympathy, that the subject matter of geology enters vitally into certain vocational and prevocational courses, and, in such relations, calls for special selections of material and an appropriate handling, if it is to fulfill these purposes effectively, this seems to us aside from the purpose of this discussion, which centers on typical college training--training which is liberal in the cosmic sense, not merely from the homocentric point of view.
=Knowledge of geology contributes to a truly liberal education=
To subserve these broader purposes, geology is to be studied comprehensively as the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. The earth in itself is to be regarded as an organism and as the foster-parent of a great series of organisms that sprang into being and pursued their careers in the contact zones between its rigid body and its fluidal envelopes. These contact zones are, in a special sense, the province of geography in both its physical and its biotic aspects. The evolution of the biotic and the psychic worlds in these horizons is an essential part of the history of the whole, for each factor has reacted powerfully on the others. An appreciative grasp of these great evolutions, and of their relations to one another, is essential to a really broad view of the world of which we are a part; it is scarcely less than an essential factor in a modern liberal education.
=Geology embraces all the great evolutions=
Let us agree, then, at the outset, that a true study of the career of the earth is not adequately compassed by a mere tracing of its inorganic history or an elucidation of its physical structure and mineral content, but that it embraces as well all the great evolutions fostered within the earth's mantles in the course of its career.
Greatest among these fostered evolutions, from the homocentric point of view, are the living, the sentient, and the thinking kingdoms that have grown up with the later phases of the physical evolution. It does not militate against this view that each of these kingdoms is, in itself, the subject of special sciences, and that these, in turn, envelop a multitude of sub-sciences, for that is true of every comprehensive unit. Nor is it inconsistent with this larger view of the scope of geology that it is, itself, often given a much narrower definition, as already implied. In its broader sense, geology is an enveloping science, surveying, in a broad historical way, many subjects that call for intensive study under more special sciences, just as human history sweeps comprehensively over a broad field cultivated more intensively by special humanistic sciences. In a comprehensive study of the earth as an organism, it is essential that there be embraced a sufficient consideration of all the vital factors that entered into its history to give these their due place and their true value among the agencies that contributed to its evolution. A true biography of the earth can no more be regarded as complete without the biotic and psychic elements that sprang forth from it, or were fostered within its mantles, than can the biography of a human being be complete with a mere sketch of his physical frame and bodily growth. The physical and biological evolutions are well recognized as essential parts of earth history. Although the mental evolutions have emerged gradually with the biological evolutions, and have run more or less nearly parallel with them--have, indeed, been a working part of them--they have been less fully and frankly recognized as elements of geological history. They have been rather scantily treated in the literature of the subject; but they are, none the less, a vital part of the great history. They have found some recognition, though much too meager, in the more comprehensive and philosophical treatises on earth-science. It may be safely prophesied that the later and higher evolutions that grace our planet will be more adequately emphasized as the science grows into its full maturity and comes into its true place among the sciences. It is important to emphasize this here, since it is preëminently the function of a liberal college course to give precedence to the comprehensive and the essential, both in its selection of its subject matter and in its treatment of what it selects. It is the function of a liberal course of study to bring that which is broad and basal and vital into relief, and to set it over against that which is limited, special, and technical, however valuable the latter may be in vocational training and in economic application.
=Physical and dynamic boundaries of geology--Implications for teaching=
In view of these considerations--and frankly recognizing the inadequacies of current treatment--let us note, before we go further, what are the physical and dynamic boundaries of the geologic field, that we may the better see how that field merges into the domains of other sciences. This will the better prepare us to realize the nature of the disciplines for which earth-science forms a suitable basis, as well as the types of intellectual furniture it yields to the mind. Obviously these disciplines and this substance of thought should determine the place of the science in the curriculum of any course that assumes the task of giving a broad and liberal education.
Earth-science is the domestic chapter of celestial science. Our planet is but a modest unit among the great celestial assemblage of worlds; but, modest as it is, it is that unit about which we have by far the fullest and most reliable knowledge. The earth not only furnishes the physical baseline of celestial observation, but supplies all the appliances by which inquiry penetrates the depths of the heavens. Not alone earth-science, as such, but several of the intensive sciences brought into being through the intellectual evolutions that have attended the later history of the earth, have been prerequisites to the development of the broad science of the outer heavens. The science of the lower heavens is a factor of earth-science in the definition we are just about to give. At the same time, the whole earth, including the lower heavens, is enveloped by the more comprehensive domain of celestial science.
If we seek the most logical limit that may be assigned the realm of earth-science, as distinguished from that of celestial science, of which it is the home unit, it may be found at that borderline _within which_ any passive body obeys the call of the earth, as against the call of the outer worlds, and _without which_ such a passive body obeys the call of the outer worlds, the call of the sun in particular. This limit is the _dynamic dividing line_ between the kingdom of the earth and the kingdom of the outer heavens. This boundary, according to Moulton, incloses a spheroid whose minimum radius is about 620,000 miles, and whose maximum radius is about 930,000 miles. We may, then, conveniently say that the earth's sphere of control stretches out a million kilometers from its center and that this defines its true realm. At the same time, this defines the logical limit of the earth's ultra-atmosphere and appears to mark a zone of exchange between the ultra-atmosphere of the earth and the ultra-atmosphere of the sun. It thus appears to imply the place and the mode of an exchange of vital elements upon which probably hangs the wonderful maintenance of the earth's atmosphere for many millions of years and the equally wonderful regulation of the essential qualities of the atmosphere so that these have always remained within the narrow range subservient to terrestrial life. It is needless to add that this regulation also conditions the present intellectual status of the thinking factor among the inhabitants of the earth out of which--may I be pardoned for saying?--has grown the present educational discussion.
If this last shall seem to squint toward special pleading, let it be considered that, as we see things, it is precisely those views that take hold of the issues upon which our very being and all its activities depend, that serve best to train youth to broad views and penetrating thought. Such thinking seems to me to form the very essence of a really liberal education.
Not only is this definition of the sphere of geology comprehensive, but it has the special merit of being _dynamic_, rather than material. Such a dynamic definition comports with the view that earth-study should center on the forces and energies that actuated its evolution, since these are the most vital feature of the evolution itself. It is important to form adequate concepts of the energies that have maintained the past ongoings of the earth not only, but that still maintain its present activities and predetermine its future. It is the study of the forces and the processes of past and of present evolutions that constitute the soul of the science, rather than the apparently fixed and passive aspects of the earth's formations and configurations which are but the products of the processes that have gone before. Even the apparent passiveness of the geologic products is illusive, for they are in reality expressions of continued internal activities of an intense, though occult, order. These escape notice largely because they are balanced against one another in a system of equilibrium which pervades them and gives them the appearance of fixity. To serve their proper functions as sources of higher education, the concepts of the constitution of the earth should penetrate even to these refined aspects of physical organization and should bring the whole into harmony with the most advanced views of the real nature of physical organisms. This removes from the whole terrestrial organism every similitude of inertness and gives it a fundamental refinement, activity, and potency of the highest order. To form a true and consistent concept, the enveloping earth-science must be assumed to embrace, potentially at least, the essentials of all that was evolved within it and from it, with, of course, due recognition of what was added from without.
_The history of the earth should therefore be taught in college courses as a succession of complex dynamic events, great in the past and great in future potentialities._
The formations and configurations left by the successive phases of action are to be studied primarily as the vestiges of the processes that gave them birth, and hence as their historic credentials. They are to be looked upon less as the vital things in themselves, than as the _record_ of the events of the time and as the forerunners of the subsequent events that may be potential in them. And so, primarily, the geologic records are to be scrutinized to find _the deeper meanings which they embody_, whether such meanings lie in the physical, the biological, or the psychological world.
=Geology the means of developing scientific imagination of time and space=
Turning to specific phases of the subject, it may first be noted that geology is singularly suited to develop clear visions of vast stretches of time; it opens broad visions of the panorama of world events, a panorama still passing before us. While the celestial order of things no doubt involves greater lapses of time, these are not so easily realized, for they are not so well filled in with a succession of records of the passing stages that make up the whole. But even the lapses of geologic time are greater than immature minds can readily grasp; however, their _powers of realization_ are greatly strengthened by studying so protracted a record, built up stage upon stage. The very slowness with which the geologic record was made, as well as the evidences of slowness in each part of the record, help to draw out an appreciation of the immensity of the whole. The round period covered by the more legible range of the geologic record rises to the order of a hundred million years, perhaps to several hundred million years. The large view of history which this implies has already come to form the ample background on which are projected the concepts of the broader class of thinkers; such largeness of view will quite surely be held to be an indispensable prerequisite to the still broader thinking of the future for which the better order of students are now preparing.
While this is preëminently true of the concept of time, the concept of space is fairly well cultivated by geologic study, though far less effectively than is done by astronomical study. Astronomy and geology work happily together in contributing to largeness of thought.
The study of the origin and early history of the earth brings the student into touch with the most far-reaching problems that have thus far called forth the intellectual efforts of man. If rightly handled, these great themes may be made to teach the true method of inquiry into past natural events whose vastness puts them quite beyond the resources of the laboratory. This method finds its key in a search for the history of such vast and remote events by a scrutiny of the vestiges these events have left as their own automatic record. This method stands in sharp contradistinction to simple speculation without such search for talismanic vestiges, a discredited method which is too often supposed to be the only way of dealing with such themes. To be really competent in the field of larger and deeper thinking, every courageous mind should be able to cross the threshold of any of the profound problems of the universe with safe and circumspect steps, however certain it may be that only a slight measure of penetration of the problem may be attainable. A well-ordered mind will remain at once complacent and wholesome when brought to the limit of its effort by the limit of evidence. The problem of the origin of celestial worlds, of which the genesis of the earth is the theme of largest human interest, is admirably suited to give college students at once a modest sense of their limitations and a wholesome attitude toward problems of the vaster type. Without having acquired the power to make prudent and duly controlled excursions into the vaster fields of thought, the mind can scarcely be said to have been liberalized.
=Geology a means of training in thinking in scientific experiences=
From the very outset, the tracing of the earth history forces a comprehensive study of the co-workings of the three dominant states of matter massively embodied in the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere, the great terrestrial triumvirate. The strata of the earth are the joint products of these three elements and constitute their lithographic record. These three coöperating and contending elements not only bring into view the three typical phases of physical action, but they present this action in such titanic aspects as to force the young mind to think along large lines, with the great advantage that these actions are controlled by determinate laws, while the causes and the results are both tangible and impressive.
While there is a large class of tangible and determinate problems of this kind, embracing shiftings of matter on the earth's surface, distortions of strata, and changes of bodily form, there are also problems of a more hidden nature such as internal mutations. These give rise to mathematical, physical, and chemical inquiries while at the same time they call into play the use of the scientific imagination and are thus rich in the possibilities of training. Thus in varied ways geological work joins hands with chemical, physical, mechanical, and mathematical work.
When life first appears in the record, there is occasion to raise the profound question of its origin, and with this arises a closely related question as to the nature of the conditions that invited life, which leads on to the further question, what fostered the development of life throughout its long history? While the obscurity of the earliest record leaves the question of origin indeterminate for the present, duly guarded thought upon the subject should foster a wholesome spirit toward inquiry in this vital line as well as a hospitable attitude toward whatever solution may finally await us. In all such studies the student should be invited to look to _the vestiges left automatically by the process itself_ for the answer, and he should learn to accept the teachings of evidence precisely as it presents itself. So also when a problem is, for the present, indeterminate, it is peculiarly wholesome for the inquirer to learn to rest the case where the light of evidence fails, and to be complacent in such suspension of judgment and to wait further light patiently in serene confidence that the vestiges left by the actuating agencies in their constructive processes are the surest index of the ultimate truth and are likely to be sooner or later detected and read truly.
=Relation of geology to botany, zoölogy, psychology, and sociology=
In the successive records of past life impressed on strata piled one upon another until they form the great paleontologic register, there is an ample and a solid basis for the study of the historic evolution of life. With this also go evidences of the conditions that attended this life progress and that gave trend to it. This record of the relations of life to the environing physical conditions forms one of the most stimulating fields of study that can engage the student who seeks light on the great problems of biological progress. Here geology joins hands with botany and zoölogy in a mutual helpfulness that is scarcely less than indispensable to each.
Following, or perhaps immediately attending, the introduction of physiological life, there appeared signs of sentient life. The preservation of certain of the sense organs, taken together with the collateral evidences of sense action, as early as Cambrian times, furnish the groundwork for a historical study of the progress of sentient life, eventuating in the higher forms of mental life. Here the problems of geology run hand in hand with the problems of psychology. The limitations of the evidence bearing on psychological phenomena, while regrettable, are not without some compensation in that they center the attention on the simpler aspects of the protracted deployment of the psychological functions.
In addition to the clear evidences of psychic action, in at least its elementary forms, there appeared early in the stratigraphic records intimations of some of the relationships that sentient beings then bore to one another; and this relationship gives occasion to study the primitive aspects of sociological phenomena. If nothing more is learned than the important lesson that sociology is not a thing of today, not an untried realm inviting all kinds of ill-digested projects, but on the contrary is a field of vast and instructive history, the gain will not be inconsiderable. There are intimations of the early existence and effective activity of those affections that precede and that cluster about the parental relationship, the nucleus of the most vital of all the sociological relationships. In contrast to the affections, there are distinct evidences of antagonistic relations, of pursuit and capture, of attack and defense; there were tools of warfare and devices for protection. In time, a wide-ranging series of experiments, so to speak, were tried to secure advantage, to avoid suffering, to escape death, and to preserve the species. There were even suggestions of the cruder forms of government. The many stages in the evolution of the various devices, as well as the stages of their abandonment, that followed one another in the course of the ages recorded the results of a multitude of efforts at sociological adjustment. They raise the question whether a common set of guiding principles does not underlie all such relationships, earlier and later, whatever their rank in our scale of valuation. And so this great field of inquiry--too narrowly regarded as merely humanistic--comes into view early in the history of the earth. The geological and the sociological sciences find in it common working ground. If the geologic and the humanistic sciences are given each their widest interpretation and their freest application, the advantage cannot be other than mutual.
It is perhaps not too much to say that studies in the physiological, the psychological, the sociological, and the allied fields necessarily lack completeness if they do not bring into their purview the data of their common historical record traced as far back as it is found to contain intimations of their actual extension.
It is customary to speak of the geologic ages as though they were wholly past; they are, indeed, chiefly past as the record now stands, but time runs on and earth history continues; the processes of the past are still active, and they are likely to work on far into the future. And so geologic study links itself fundamentally into all such present terrestrial interests as take hold of the distant future. The forecast of the earth's endurance, attended by conditions congenial to life and to the mental and moral activities, hinges on a sound insight into the great actuating forces inherent in the earth, together with those likely to come into play from the celestial environment. All human interests, in so far as they are dependent on a protracted future, center in the prognosis of the earth based on its present and its past. The latest phases of geologic doctrine prophesy a long future habitability of the earth. They thus give meaning and emphasis to the deeper purposes sought in all the higher endeavors, not the least of which is education, particularly those phases of education that lead to effects which may be handed down from age to age.
=Standard for selecting subject matter for the general college course: select fundamentals or that which bears on fundamentals=
Out of all this vast physical, biological, and psychological history, the things to be selected for substance of thought and for service in mental training in a college course are, first of all, those that are either fundamental in themselves, or that have vital bearings on what is fundamental. These are chiefly the great dynamic factors, the agencies that gave trend to the master events, the forces that actuated the basal processes by which the vast results were attained. The material formations and the surficial configurations that resulted are to be duly considered, to be sure, for they form the basis of interpretation and they are, besides, the repositories of economic values of indispensable worth; but, as already urged, in a course of intellectual training, these are to be regarded rather as the relics of the great agencies and the proofs of their actions, than as the most vital subjects of study, which are the agencies themselves. As already remarked, the geologic formations are to be treated rather as the credentials of the potencies that reside in the earth organism, than as the vital things themselves. The vestiges of creation and the footprints of historical progress embody the soul of the subject; they constitute the chief source of inspiration to those who aspire to think in large, deep ways of really great things. It is of little value, from the viewpoint of liberal culture, to know that there is a certain succession of sandstones, shales, and limestones; that professional convention has given them certain names, more or less infelicitous in derivation and in phonic quality; but it is of vital consequence to learn how and why these relics of former processes came to be left as they were left, and thus came to be witnesses to the history of the far past. It was a wise thing, no doubt, that the fathers of geology strongly insisted that there should be a rigorous and rather literal adhesion to the terrestrial record in all earth studies, because in those times of transition from the loose, more or less fantastic thought that marked the adolescent stage of the human race, it was imperative that students should stick close to the immediate evidence of what had transpired, and should withhold themselves from much enlargement of view based on the less tangible evidences; but at the present stage, when the general nature of the earth's history has been firmly established, it would be an error on the part of those who seek for the most liberalizing and broadening values of the science, to treat the record merely as a material register of immediate import only, to the neglect of the less tangible but more vital teachings immanent in its great forces and processes. The seeker of liberal culture should direct his attention to the great events, and, above all, to the larger and deeper meanings implied by these events.
And so--may I be pardoned for reëmphasizing?--the teacher of geology whose essential purpose is liberal training, leading to broad and firm knowledge and to sound processes of thought, will critically observe the distinction between geology taught appropriately from the collegiate point of view, and geology taught specifically from the professional and technical points of view. In these latter, specific details in specific lines are important, and may even be essential, but it is the function of the college teacher of geology _to select_ from the great mass of material of the science such factors as are basal, vital, and talismanic. He will give these emphasis, while he neglects the multitude of details that lack significance as working elements or as landmarks of progress, whatever their value in other relations. This selection is equally important, whether applied to the great physical processes that have shaped the earth into its present configuration, or to the great chemical and mineralogical processes that have determined its texture and its structure, or to the great biological and psychological processes that have given trend to the development of its inhabitants.
Even if the undergraduate course in geology is pursued less for the purpose of liberal culture than as a means of preparing for a professional career as an economic geologist, no essential departure from an effort to master first the basal features and the broader aspects of the science, especially the dynamic aspects, is to be advised. The shortest road to _declared success_ in professional and economic geology lies through the early mastery of its fundamentals. No doubt immediate and apparent success may often be sooner reached by a narrower and shallower study of such special phases of the subject as happen just now to be most obviously related to the existing state of the industries; but industrial demands are constantly changing--indeed, at present, rather rapidly--and new aspects follow one another in close succession. These new aspects almost inevitably spring from the more basal factors as these rise into function with the progress of experience or the stress of new demands. Those who have sought only the immediate and the superficial, at the expense of the basal, and especially those who have neglected to acquire _the power and the disposition to search out the fundamentals_, are quite sure to be left among the unfortunates who trail behind; they are little likely to be found among those who lead at the times when leadership counts. In the judgment of those master minds that lead in affairs and that take large and penetrating views, the lines along which the most vital contributions to economic interests are being made connect closely with basal studies of the actuating agencies that condition great enterprises. In the judgment of the writer, it is a false view to suppose that any short, superficial study of so vast a subject as the constitution and history of the earth can result in economic competency. In so far as time for study is limited, it should be concentrated on the great underlying factors that constitute the essentials of the science. It is here assumed that men who care to take a college course at all are seeking for a large success and are ambitious for a high personal career. If they look ultimately to professional work in economic lines, they may safely be advised that the straight road to declared success lies in a search for the vital forces, the critical agencies, and the profound principles that make for great results, not along the by-paths whose winding, superficial courses are turned hither and thither by adventitious conditions whose very nature invites distrust rather than confidence.
=Evaluations of methods of teaching=
Turning to some of the more formal phases of treatment, three types of work are presented: (1) the use of nature's laboratory, the world itself, (2) the use of the college collections and laboratories, and (3) the use of the literature of the subject.
(1) Fortunately, there is no place on the face of the earth where there is not some natural material for geologic study, for even in the most artificialized locations geological processes are active. In crowded cities these processes may be easily overlooked, but yet they are susceptible of effective use. Within easy access from almost every college site there are serviceable fields of study, and these, in any live course, will be assiduously cultivated. They may be relatively modest in their phenomena; they may seem to lack that impressiveness which has played so large a part in the popular notion of the content of geology, but they may nevertheless serve as most excellent training grounds for young geologists. If students are so situated as to be brought at the beginning of study under the influence of very impressive displays of geologic phenomena--precipitous mountains, rugged cliffs, deep cañons, and the like--there is danger that their mental habits may become diffusive rather than close and keen; the emotions may be called forth in wonder rather than turned into zest in the search for evidence. If students are to be trained to diligence in inquiry and to the highest virility in inference and interpretation, it is perhaps fortunate for them if they are located where only modest records of geological processes are presented for study. In such regions they are more likely to be led to scrutinize the field keenly, sharply, and diligently for data on which to build their interpretations. The scientific use of their imaginations is all the better trained if, in their endeavor to build up a consistent concept of the whole structure that underlies their field, they are forced to project their inferences from a few out-crops far beneath the cover of the adjacent mantle that shuts off direct vision. Few teachers have, therefore, any real occasion to long for richer fields than those accessible to them, if they have the tact to render these fertile in stimulus and suggestion.
(2) Laboratory work upon the material collected in the field work, as well as laboratory work upon the college collections, are essential adjuncts. Ample provisions for this supplementary work, however modest the appointments, are important and can usually be secured by ingenuity and diligence in spite of financial limitations.
Both field and laboratory work should be well correlated with one another and with the systematic work on the text that guides the study, so that each shall whet the edge of the other and all together accomplish what neither could alone.
(3) The text selected should be such as lends itself, in some notable degree at least, to the general purposes set forth above. It should be supplemented, so far as may be, by judicious assignments for reading and for special study. Lectures may be made a valuable aid to the discussions of the classroom, but with college classes they can rarely be made an advantageous substitute for the discussions. Lecturing, so far as used, is best woven informally into the classroom discussions. Supplementary lecturettes may be advised if they are of such an informal sort that they may almost unconsciously take their start from any vital point encountered in the course of discussion, may run on as far as the occasion invites, and may then give way again to the discussion with the utmost informality. Such little participations in the work of the classroom, on the part of the teacher, are likely to be cordially welcomed. At the same time, if well done, they will set an excellent example in the presentative art as also in an apt organization of thought.
=Organization of courses=
If the stated course in earth-science is limited to the junior and senior year by the existing requirements of the curriculum of the institution or by the rulings of its officers--as is not uncommonly the case at present--it is relatively immaterial whether the sections of the course are marshaled under the single name "geology" or whether they are given separate titles as sub-sciences, provided the special subjects are arranged in logical sequence and in consecutive order. If, on the other hand, the teacher's choice of time and relations is freer, the more accessible phases of earth study, now well organized under the name of "physiography," form an excellent course for either freshmen or sophomores. It opens their minds to a world of interesting activities about them which have probably been largely overlooked in previous years. It gives them substance of thought that will be of much service in the pursuit of other sciences. It has been found that it is not without rather notable service to young students as the basis of efforts in the art of literary presentation, a felicity to which teachers of this important art frequently give emphatic testimony. The secret seems to lie in the fact that physiography gives varied and vivid material susceptible of literary presentation, while the fixed qualities of the subject matter control the choice of terms and the mode of expression.
If geography and physiography are given in the earlier years, the course in historical geology, as well as the study of the more difficult phases of geological processes, of the principles of dynamic geology, together with mineralogy, petrology, and paleontology, may best fall into the later years, even if some interval separates them from the geography and physiography.
One hundred and twenty classroom hours, or their equivalent in laboratory and field work, are perhaps to be regarded as the irreducible minimum in a well-balanced undergraduate course, while twice that time or more is required to give a notably strong college course in earth-science.
A consideration of the sequences among the geological sub-subjects, as also among the subjects that are held to be preliminary to the earth-sciences, is important, but it would lead us too far into details which depend more or less on local conditions. In the experience of American teachers it appears to have been found advisable to put geological processes and typical phenomena to the front and to take up geological history afterwards. The earlier method of taking up the history first, beginning with recent stages and working backward down the ages,--once in vogue abroad,--has been abandoned in this country. It was the order in which the science was developed and it had the advantage of starting with the living present and with the most accessible formations, but this latter advantage is secured by studying the living processes, as such, first, and turning to the history later. This permits the study of the history in its natural order, which seems better to call forth the relations of cause and effect and to give emphasis to the influence of inherited conditions.
Respecting antecedents to the study, the more knowledge of physics, chemistry, zoölogy, and botany, the better, but it is easy to over-stress the necessity for such preparation, however logical it may seem, for in reality all the natural sciences are so interwoven that, in strict logic, a complete knowledge of all the others should be had before any one is begun, a _reductio ad absurdum_. The sciences have been developed more or less contemporaneously and progressively, each helping on the others. They may be pursued much in the same way, or by alternations in which each prior study favors the sequent one. They may even be taken in a seemingly illogical order without serious disadvantage, for the alternative advantages and other considerations may outweigh the force of the logical order, which is at best only partially logical. It is of prime importance to stimulate in students a habit of observing natural phenomena at an early age. It may be wise for a student to take up physiography, or its equivalent, early in the college course, irrespective of an ideal preparation in the related sciences. It is unfortunate to defer such study to a stage when the student's natural aptitude for observation and inference has become dulled by neglect or by confinement to subjects devoid of naturalistic stimulus. To permit students to take up earth-science in the freshman and sophomore years, even without the ideal preparation, is therefore probably wiser than to defer the study beyond the age of responsiveness to the touch of the natural environment. The geographic and geologic environment conditioned the mental evolution of the race. It left an inherited impress on the perceptive and emotional nature, only to be awakened most felicitously, it would seem, at about the age at which the naturalistic phases of the youth's mentality were originally called into their most intense exercise.
T. C. CHAMBERLIN _The University of Chicago_
VIII
THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS
=Recent changes and some of their sources=
In recent years the teaching of mathematics has undergone remarkable changes in many countries, both as regards method and as regards content. With respect to college mathematics these changes have been evidenced by a growing emphasis on applications and on the historic setting of the various questions. To understand one direct source of these changes it is only necessary to recall the fact that in about 1880 there began a steady stream of American mathematical students to Europe, especially to Germany. Most of these students entered the faculties of our colleges and universities on their return to America It is therefore of great importance to inquire what mathematical situation served to inspire these students.
The German mathematical developments of the greater part of the nineteenth century exhibited a growing tendency to disregard applications. It was not until about 1890 that a strong movement was inaugurated to lay more stress on applied mathematics in Germany.[3] Our early American students therefore brought with them from Germany a decided tendency toward investigations in mathematical fields remote from direct contact with applications to other scientific subjects, such as physics and astronomy, which had so largely dominated mathematical investigations in earlier years.
This picture would, however, be very incomplete without exhibiting another factor of a similar type working in our own midst. J. J. Sylvester was selected as the first professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, which opened its doors in 1876 and began at once to wield a powerful influence in starting young men in higher research. Sylvester's own investigations related mainly to the formal and abstract side of mathematics. Moreover, "he was a poor teacher with an imperfect knowledge of mathematical literature. He possessed, however, an extraordinary personality; and had in remarkable degree the gift of imparting enthusiasm, a quality of no small value in pioneer days such as these were with us."[4]
=Influence of researches in mathematics on methods of teaching=
Mathematical research was practically introduced into the American colleges during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the wave of enthusiasm which attended this introduction was unfortunately not sufficiently tempered by emphasis on good teaching and breadth of knowledge, especially as regards applications. In fact, the leading mathematician in America during the early part of this period was glaringly weak along these lines. By means of his bountiful enthusiasm he was able to do a large amount of good for the selected band of gifted students who attended his lectures, but some of these were not so fortunate in securing the type of students who are helped more by the direct enthusiasm of their teacher than by the indirect enthusiasm resulting from good teaching.
The need of good mathematical teaching in our colleges and universities began to become more pronounced at about the time that the wave of research enthusiasm set in, as a result of the growing emphasis on technical education which exhibited itself most emphatically in the development of the schools of engineering. While the student who is specially interested in mathematics may be willing to get along with a teacher whose enthusiasm for the new and general leads him to neglect to emphasize essential details in the presentation, the average engineering student insists on clearness in presentation and usability of the results. As the latter student does not expect to become a mathematical specialist, he is naturally much more interested in good teaching than in the mathematical reputation of his teacher, even if his reputation is not an entirely insignificant factor for him.
During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the present century the mathematical departments of our colleges and universities faced an unusually serious situation as a result of the conditions just noted. The new wave of research enthusiasm was still in its youthful vigor and in its youthful mood of inconsiderateness as regards some of the most important factors. On the other hand, many of the departments of engineering had become strong and were therefore able to secure the type of teaching suited to their needs. In a number of institutions this led to the breaking up of the mathematical department into two or more separate departments aiming to meet special needs.
In view of the fact that the mathematical needs of these various classes of students have so much in common, leading mathematicians viewed with much concern this tendency to disrupt many of the stronger departments. Hence the question of good teaching forced itself rapidly to the front. It was commonly recognized that the students of pure mathematics profit by a study of various applications of the theories under consideration, and that the students who expect to work along special technical lines gain by getting broad and comprehensive views of the fundamental mathematical questions involved. Moreover, it was also recognized that the investigational work of the instructors would gain by the broader scholarship secured through greater emphasis on applications and the historic setting of the various problems under consideration.
To these fundamental elements relating to the improvement of college teaching there should perhaps be added one arising from the recognition of the fact that the number of men possessing excellent mathematical research ability was much smaller than the number of positions in the mathematical departments of our colleges and universities. The publication of inferior research results is of questionable value. On the other hand, many who could have done excellent work as teachers by devoting most of their energies to this work became partial failures both as teachers and as investigators through their ambition to excel in the latter direction.
=Range of subjects and preparation of students=
It should be emphasized that the college and university teachers of mathematics have to deal with a wide range of subjects and conditions, especially where graduate work is carried on. Advanced graduate students have needs which differ widely from those of the freshmen who aim to become engineers. This wide range of conditions calls for unusual adaptability on the part of the college and university teacher. This range is much wider than that which confronts the teachers in the high school, and the lack of sufficient adaptability on the part of some of the college teachers is probably responsible for the common impression that some of the poorest mathematical teaching is done in the colleges. It is doubtless equally true that some of the very best mathematical teaching is to be found in these institutions.
In some of the colleges there has been a tendency to diminish the individual range of mathematical teaching by explicitly separating the undergraduate work and the more advanced work. For instance, in Johns Hopkins University, L. S. Hulburt was appointed "Professor of Collegiate Mathematics" in 1897, with the understanding that he should devote himself to the interests of the undergraduates. In many of the larger universities the younger members of the department usually teach only undergraduate courses, while some of the older members devote either all or most of their time to the advanced work; but there is no uniformity in this direction, and the present conditions are often unsatisfactory.
The undergraduate courses in mathematics in the American colleges and universities differ considerably. The normal beginning courses now presuppose a year of geometry and a year and a half of algebra in addition to the elementary courses in arithmetic, but much higher requirements are sometimes imposed, especially for engineering courses. In recent years several of the largest universities have reduced the minimum admission requirement in algebra to one year's work, but students entering with this minimum preparation are sometimes not allowed to proceed with the regular mathematical classes in the university.
=Variety of college courses in mathematics=
Freshmen courses in mathematics differ widely, but the most common subjects are advanced algebra, plane trigonometry, and solid geometry. The most common subjects of a somewhat more advanced type are plane analytic geometry, differential and integral calculus, and spherical trigonometry. Beyond these courses there is much less uniformity, especially in those institutions which aim to complete a well-rounded undergraduate mathematical course rather than to prepare for graduate work. Among the most common subjects beyond those already named are differential equations, theory of equations, solid analytic geometry, and mechanics.
A very important element affecting the mathematical courses in recent years is the rapid improvement in the training of our teachers in the secondary schools. This has led to the rapid introduction of courses which aim to lead up to broad views in regard to the fundamental subjects. In particular, courses relating to the historical development of concepts involved therein are receiving more and more attention. Indirect historical sources have become much more plentiful in recent years through the publication of various translations of ancient works and through the publication of extensive historical notes in the _Encyclopédie des Sciences Mathématiques_ and in other less extensive works of reference.
The problem presented by those who are preparing to teach mathematics may at first appear to differ widely from that presented by those who expect to become engineers. The latter are mostly interested in obtaining from their mathematical courses a powerful equipment for doing things, while the former take more interest in those developments which illumine and clarify the elements of their subject. Hence the prospective teacher and the prospective engineer might appear to have conflicting mathematical interests. As a matter of fact, these interests are not conflicting. The prospective teacher is greatly benefited by the emphasis on the serviceableness of mathematics, and the prospective engineer finds that the generality and clarity of view sought by the prospective teacher is equally helpful to him in dealing with new applications. Hence these two classes of students can well afford to pursue many of the early mathematical courses together, while the finishing courses should usually be different.
The rapidly growing interest in statistical methods and in insurance, pensions, and investments has naturally directed special attention to the underlying mathematical theories, especially to the theory of probability. Some institutions have organized special mathematical courses relating to these subjects and have thus extended still further the range of undergraduate subjects covered by the mathematical departments. The rapidly growing emphasis on college education specially adapted to the needs of the prospective business man has recently led to a greater emphasis on some of these subjects in several institutions.
The range of mathematical subjects suited for graduate students is unlimited, but it is commonly assumed to be desirable that the graduate student should pursue at least one general course in each one of broader subjects such as the theory of numbers, higher algebra, theory of functions, and projective geometry, before he begins to specialize along a particular line. It is usually taken for granted that the undergraduate courses in mathematics should not presuppose a knowledge of any language besides English, but graduate work in this subject cannot be successfully pursued in many cases without a reading knowledge of the three other great mathematical languages; viz., French, German, and Italian. Hence the study of graduate mathematics necessarily presupposes some linguistic training in addition to an acquaintance with the elements of fundamental mathematical subjects.
Historical studies make especially large linguistic demands in case these studies are not largely restricted to predigested material. This is particularly true as regards the older historical material. In the study of contemporary mathematical history the linguistic prerequisites are about the same as those relating to the study of other modern mathematical subjects. With the rapid spread of mathematical research activity during recent years there has come a growing need of more extensive linguistic attainments on the part of those mathematicians who strive to keep in touch with progress along various lines. For instance, a thriving Spanish national mathematical society was organized in 1911 at Madrid, Spain, and in March, 1916, a new mathematical journal entitled _Revista de Matematicas_ was started at Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic. Hence a knowledge of Spanish is becoming more useful to the mathematical student. Similar activities have recently been inaugurated in other countries.
=History of college mathematics=
Until about the beginning of the nineteenth century the courses in college mathematics did not usually presuppose a mathematical foundation carefully prepared for a superstructure. According to M. Gebhardt, the function of teaching elementary mathematics in Germany was assumed by the gymnasiums during the years from 1810 to 1830.[5] Before this time the German universities usually gave instruction in the most elementary mathematical subjects. In our own country, Yale University instituted a mathematical entrance requirement under the title of arithmetic as early as 1745, but at Harvard University no mathematics was required for admission before 1803.
On the other hand, _L'Ecole Polytechnique_ of Paris, which occupies a prominent place in the history of college mathematics, had very high admission requirements in mathematics from the start. According to a law enacted in 1795, the candidates for admission were required to pass an examination in arithmetic; in algebra, including the solution of equations of the first four degrees and the theory of series; and in geometry, including trigonometry, the applications of algebra to geometry, and conic sections.[6] It should be noted that these requirements are more extensive than the usual present mathematical requirements of our leading universities and technical schools, but _L'Ecole Polytechnique_ laid special emphasis on mathematics and physics and became the world's prototype of strong technical institutions.
The influence of _L'Ecole Polytechnique_ was greatly augmented by the publication of a regular periodical entitled _Journal de l'Ecole Polytechnique_, which was started in 1795 and is still being published. A number of the courses of lectures delivered at _L'Ecole Polytechnique_ and at _L'Ecole Normale_ appeared in the early volumes of this journal. The fact that some of these courses were given by such eminent mathematicians as J. L. Lagrange, G. Monge, and P. S. Laplace is sufficient guarantee of their great value and of their good influence on the later textbooks along similar lines. In particular, it may be noted that G. Monge gave the first course in descriptive geometry at _L'Ecole Normale_ in 1795, and he was also for a number of years one of the most influential teachers at _L'Ecole Polytechnique_.
A most fundamental element in the history of college mathematics is the broadening of the scope of the college work. As long as college students were composed almost entirely of prospective preachers, lawyers, and physicians, there was comparatively little interest taken in mathematics. It is true that the mental disciplinary value of mathematics was emphasized by many, but this supposed value did not put any real life into mathematical work. The dead abstract reasonings of Euclid's _Elements_, or even the number speculations of the ancient Pythagoreans, were enough to satisfy most of those who were looking to mathematics as a subject suitable for mental gymnastics.
On the other hand, when the colleges began to train men for other lines of work, when the applications of steam led to big enterprises, like the building of railroads and large ocean steamers, mathematics became a living subject whose great direct usefulness in practical affairs began to be commonly recognized. Moreover, it became apparent that there was great need of mathematical growth, since mathematics was no longer to be used merely as mental Indian clubs or dumb-bells, where a limited assortment would answer all practical needs, but as an implement of mental penetration into the infinitude of barriers which have checked progress along various lines and seem to require an infinite variety of methods of penetration.
The American colleges were naturally somewhat slower than some of those of Europe in adapting themselves to the changed conditions, but the rapidity of the changes in our country may be inferred from the fact that in the first half of the nineteenth century Harvard placed in comparatively short succession three mathematical subjects on its list of entrance requirements; viz., arithmetic in 1802, algebra in 1820, and geometry in 1844. Although Harvard had not established any mathematical admission requirements for more than a century and a half after its opening, she initiated three such requirements within half a century. It is interesting to note that for at least ninety years from the opening of Harvard, arithmetic was taught during the senior year as one of the finishing subjects of a college education.[7]
The passage of some of the subjects of elementary mathematics from the colleges to the secondary schools raised two very fundamental questions. The first of these concerned mostly the secondary schools, since it involved an adaptation to the needs of younger students of the more or less crystallized textbook material which came to them from the colleges. The second of these questions affected the colleges only, since it involved the selection of proper material to base upon the foundations laid by the secondary schools. It is natural that the influence of the colleges should have been somewhat harmful with respect to the secondary schools, since the interests of the former seemed to be best met by restricting most of the energies of the secondary teachers of mathematics to the thorough drilling of their students in dexterous formal manipulations of algebraic symbols and the demonstration of fundamental abstract theorems of geometry.
=Relation of mathematics in secondary schools and college=
Students who come to college with a solid and broad foundation but without any knowledge of the superstructure can readily be inspired and enthused by the erection of a beautiful superstructure on a foundation laid mostly underground, with little direct evidence of its value or importance. The injustice and shortsightedness of the tendency to restrict the secondary schools to such foundation work would not have been so apparent if the majority of the secondary school students would have entered college. As a matter of fact it tended to bring secondary mathematics into disrepute and thus to threaten college mathematics at its very foundation. It is only in recent years that strong efforts have been made to correct this very serious mathematical situation.
Much progress has been made toward the saner view of letting secondary mathematics build its little structure into the air with some view to harmony and proportion, and of requiring college mathematics to build _on_ as well as _upon_ the work done by the secondary schools. The fruitful and vivifying notions of function, derivative, and group are slowly making their way into secondary mathematics, and the graphic methods have introduced some of the charms of analytic geometry into the same field.
This transformation is naturally affecting college mathematics most profoundly. The tedious work of building foundations in college mathematics is becoming more imperative. The use of the rock drill is forcing itself more and more on the college teacher accustomed to use only hammer and saw. As we are just entering upon this situation, it is too early to prophesy anything in regard to its permanency, but it seems likely that the secondary teachers will no more assume a yoke which some of the college teachers would so gladly have them bear and which they bore a long time with a view to serving the interests of the latter teachers.
As many of the textbooks used by secondary teachers are written by college men, and as the success of these teachers is often gauged by the success of their students who happen to go to college, it is easily seen that there is a serious temptation on the part of the secondary teacher to look at his work through the eyes of the college teacher. The recent organizations which bring together the college and the secondary teachers have already exerted a very wholesome influence and have tended to exhibit the fact that the success of the college teacher of mathematics is very intimately connected with that of the teachers of secondary mathematics.
While it is difficult to determine the most important single event in the history of college teaching in America, there are few events in this history which seem to deserve such a distinction more than the organization of the Mathematical Association of America which was effected in December, 1915. This association aims especially to promote the interests of mathematics in the collegiate field and it publishes a journal entitled _The American Mathematical Monthly_, containing many expository articles of special interest to teachers. It also holds regular meetings and has organized various sections so as to enable its members to attend meetings without incurring the expense of long trips. Its first four presidents were E. R. Hedrick, Florian Cajori, E. V. Huntington, and H. E. Slaught.
An event which has perhaps affected the very vitals of mathematical teaching in America still more is the founding of the American Mathematical Society in 1888, called the New York Mathematical Society until 1894. Through its _Bulletin_ and _Transactions_, as well as through its meetings and colloquia lectures, this society has stood for inspiration and deep mathematical interest without which college teaching will degenerate into an art. During the first thirty years of its history it has had as presidents the following: J. H. Van Amringe, Emory McClintock, G. W. Hill, Simon Newcomb, R. S. Woodward, E. H. Moore, T. S. Fiske, W. F. Osgood, H. S. White, Maxime Böcher, H. B. Fine, E. B. Van Vleck, E. W. Brown, L. E. Dickson, and Frank Morley.
=Aims of college mathematics: methods of teaching=
The aims of college mathematics can perhaps be most clearly understood by recalling the fact that mathematics constitutes a kind of intellectual shorthand and that many of the newer developments in a large number of the sciences tend toward pure mathematics. In particular, "there is a constant tendency for mathematical physics to be absorbed in pure mathematics."[8] As sciences grow, they tend to require more and more the strong methods of intellectual penetration provided by pure mathematics.
The principal modern aim of college mathematics is not the training of the mind, but the providing of information which is absolutely necessary to those who seek to work most efficiently along various scientific lines. Mathematical knowledge rather than mathematical discipline is the main modern objective in the college courses in mathematics. As this knowledge must be in a usable form, its acquisition is naturally attended by mental discipline, but the knowledge is absolutely needed and would have to be acquired even if the process of acquisition were not attended by a development of intellectual power.
The fact that practically all of the college mathematics of the eighteenth century has been gradually taken over by the secondary schools of today might lead some to question the wisdom of replacing this earlier mathematics by more advanced subjects. In particular, the question might arise whether the college mathematics of today is not superfluous. This question has been partially answered by the preceding general observations. The rapid scientific advances of the past century have increased the mathematical needs very rapidly. The advances in college mathematics which have been made possible by the improvements of the secondary schools have scarcely kept up with the growth of these needs, so that the current mathematical needs cannot be as fully provided for by the modern college as the recognized mathematical needs of the eighteenth century were provided for by the colleges of those days.
There appears to be no upper limit to the amount of useful mathematics, and hence the aim of the college must be to supply the mathematical needs of the students to the greatest possible extent under the circumstances. In order to supply these needs in the most economical manner, it seems necessary that some of them should be supplied before they are fully appreciated on the part of the student. The first steps in many scientific subjects do not call for mathematical considerations and the student frequently does not go beyond these first steps in his college days, but he needs to go much further later in life. College mathematics should prepare for life rather than for college days only, and hence arises the desirability of deeper mathematical penetration than appears directly necessary for college work.
=Advanced work in college mathematics=
Another reason for more advanced mathematics than seems to be directly needed by the student is that the more advanced subjects in mathematics are a kind of applied mathematics relative to the more elementary ones, and the former subjects serve to throw much light on the latter. In other words, the student who desires to understand an elementary subject completely should study more advanced subjects which are connected therewith, since such a study is usually more effective than the repeated review of the elementary subject. In particular, many students secure a better understanding of algebra during their course in calculus than during the course in algebra itself, and a course in differential equations will throw new light on the course in calculus. Hence college mathematics usually aims to cover a rather wide range of subjects in a comparatively short time.
Since mathematics is largely the language of advanced science, especially of astronomy, physics, and engineering, one of the prominent aims of college mathematics should be to keep in close touch with the other sciences. That is, the idea of rendering direct and efficient services to other departments should animate the mathematical department more deeply than any other department of the university. The tendency toward disintegration to which we referred above has forcefully directed attention to the great need of emphasizing this aspect of our subject, since such disintegration is naturally accompanied by a weakening of mathematical vigor. It may be noted that such a disintegration would mean a reverting to primitive conditions, since some of the older works treated mathematics merely as a chapter of astronomy. This was done, for instance, in some of the ancient treatises of the Hindus.
=Mathematics and technical education=
The great increase in college students during recent years and the growing emphasis on college activities outside of the work connected with the classroom, especially on those relating to college athletics, would doubtless have left college mathematics in a woefully neglected state if there had not been a rapidly growing interest in technical education, especially in engineering subjects, at the same time. Naval engineering was one of the first scientific subjects to exert a strong influence on popularizing mathematics. In particular, the teaching of mathematics in the Russian schools supported by the government began with the founding of the government school for mathematics and navigation at Moscow in 1701. It is interesting to note that the earlier Russian schools established by the clergy after the adoption of Christianity in that country did not provide for the teaching of any arithmetic whatever, notwithstanding the usefulness of arithmetic for the computing of various dates in the church calendar, for land surveying, and for the ordinary business transactions.[9]
The direct aims in the teaching of college mathematics have naturally been somewhat affected by the needs of the engineering students, who constitute in many of our leading institutions a large majority in the mathematical classes. These students are usually expected to receive more drill in actual numerical work than is demanded by those who seek mainly a deeper penetration into the various mathematical theories. The most successful methods of teaching the former students have much in common with those usually employed in the high schools and are known as the recitation and problem-solving methods. They involve the correction and direct supervision of a large number of graded exercises worked out by the students on the blackboard or on paper, and aim to overcome the peculiar difficulties of the individual students.
The lecture method, on the other hand, aims to exhibit the main facts in a clear light and to leave to the student the task of supplying further illustrative examples and of reconsidering the various steps. The purely lecture method does not seem to be well adapted to American conditions, and it is frequently combined with what is commonly known as the "quiz." The quiz seems to be an American institution, although it has much in common with a species of the French "conference." It is intended to review the content of a set of lectures by means of discussions in which the students and the teacher participate, and it is most commonly employed in connection with the courses of an advanced undergraduate or of a beginning graduate grade.
A prominent aim in graduate courses is to lead the student as rapidly as possible to the boundary of knowledge along the particular line considered therein. While some of the developments in such courses are apt to be somewhat special or to be too general to have much meaning, their novelty frequently adds a sufficiently strong element of interest to more than compensate losses in other directions. Moreover, the student who aims to do research work will thus be enabled to consider various fields as regards their attractiveness for prolonged investigations of his own.
=Preparation of the college teacher of mathematics.=
The fact that the college teacher has need of much more mathematical knowledge than he can possibly secure during the period of his preparation, especially if he expects to take an active part in research and in directing graduate work, has usually led to the assumption that the future teacher of college mathematics should devote all his energies to securing a deep mathematical insight and a wide range of mathematical knowledge.[10] On the other hand, students prepared in accord with this assumption have frequently found it very difficult to adapt themselves to the needs of large freshman classes of engineering students entering upon the duties for which they were supposed to have been prepared.
The breadth of view and the sweep of abstraction needed for effective graduate work have little in common with accuracy in numerical work and emphasis on details which are so essential to the young engineering students. The difficulty of the situation is increased by the fact that the young instructor is often led to believe that his advancement and the appreciation of his services are directly proportional to his achievements in investigations of a high order. This belief naturally leads many to begrudge the time and thought which their teaching duties should normally receive.
The young college teacher of mathematics is thus confronted with a much more complex situation than that which confronts the mathematics teachers in secondary school work. Here the success in the classroom is the one great goal, and the mathematical knowledge required is comparatively very modest. Possibly the situation of the college teacher could be materially improved if it were understood that his first promotion would be mainly dependent upon his success as a teacher, but that later promotions involved the element of productive scholarship in an increasing ratio.
The schools of education which have in recent years been established in most of our leading universities have thus far had only a slight influence on the preparation of the college teachers, but it seems likely that this influence will increase as the needs of professional training become better known. It is probably true that the ratio of courses on methods to courses on knowledge of the subject will always be largest for the elementary teacher, in view of the great difference between the mental maturity of the student and the teacher, somewhat less for the secondary teacher and least for the college teacher; but this least should not be zero, as is so frequently the case at present, since there usually is even here a considerable difference between the mathematical maturity of the student and that of the teacher.
It may be argued that the future college teacher will probably profit more by noting the methods employed by his instructors than he would by the theoretic discussions relating to methods. This is doubtless true, but it does not prove that the latter discussions are without value. On the other hand, these discussions will often serve to fix more attention on the former methods and will lead the student to note more accurately their import and probable adaptability to the needs of the younger students.
Among the useful features for the training of the future mathematics teachers are the mathematical clubs which are connected with most of the active mathematical departments. In many cases, at least, two such clubs are maintained, the one being devoted largely to the presentation of research work while the other aims to provide opportunities for the presentation of papers of special interest to the students. The latter papers are often presented by graduate students or by advanced undergraduates, and they offer a splendid opportunity for such students to acquire effective and clear methods of presentation. The same desirable end is often promoted by reports given by students in seminars or in advanced courses.
Prominent factors in the training of the future college teachers are the teaching scholarships or fellowships and the assistantships. Many of the larger universities provide a number of positions of this type. It sometimes happens that the teaching duties connected with these positions are so heavy as to leave too little energy for vigorous graduate work. On the other hand, these positions have made it possible for many to continue their graduate studies longer than they could otherwise have done and at the same time to acquire sound habits of teaching while in close contact with men of proved ability along this line.
It should be emphasized that the ideal college teacher of mathematics is not the one who acquires a respectable fund of mathematical knowledge which he passes along to his students, but the one imbued with an abiding interest in learning more and more about his subject as long as life lasts. This interest naturally soon forces him to conduct researches where progress usually is slow and uncertain. Research work should be animated by the desire for more knowledge and not by the desire for publication. In fact, only those new results should be published which are likely to be helpful to others in starting at a more favorable point in their efforts to secure intellectual mastery over certain important problems.
Half a century ago it was commonly assumed that graduation from a good college implied enough training to enter upon the duties of a college teacher, but this view has been practically abandoned, at least as regards the college teacher of mathematics. The normal preparation is now commonly placed three years later, and the Ph.D. degree is usually regarded to be evidence of this normal preparation. This degree is supposed by many to imply that its possessor has reached a stage where he can do independent research work and direct students who seek similar degrees. In view of the fact that in America as well as in Germany the student often receives much direct assistance while working on his Ph.D. thesis, this supposition is frequently not in accord with the facts.[11]
The emphasis on the Ph.D. degree for college teachers has in many cases led to an improvement in ideals, but in some other cases it has had the opposite effect. Too many possessors of this degree have been able to count on it as accepted evidence of scientific attainments, while they allowed themselves to become absorbed in non-scientific matters, especially in administrative details. Professors of mathematics in our colleges have been called on to shoulder an unusual amount of the administrative work, and many men of fine ability and scholarship have thus been hindered from entering actively into research work. Conditions have, however, improved rapidly in recent years, and it is becoming better known that the productive college teacher needs all his energies for scientific work; and in no field is this more emphatically true than in mathematics. Some departmental administrative duties will doubtless always devolve upon the mathematics teachers. By a careful division of these duties they need not interfere seriously with the main work of the various teachers.
=The mathematical textbook=
The American teachers of mathematics follow the textbook more closely than is customary in Germany, for instance. Among college teachers there is a wide difference of view in regard to the suitable use of the textbook. While some use it simply for the purpose of providing illustrative examples and do not expect the student to begin any subject by a study of the presentation found in the textbook, there are others who expect the normal student to secure all the needed assistance from the textbook and who employ the class periods mainly for the purpose of teaching the students how to use the textbook most effectively. The practice of most teachers falls between these two extremes, and, as a rule, the textbook is followed less and less closely as the student advances in his work. In fact, in many advanced courses no particular textbook is followed. In such courses the principal results and the exercises are often dictated by the teacher or furnished by means of mimeographed notes.
The close adherence to the textbook is apt to cultivate the habit on the part of the student of trying to understand what the author meant instead of confining his attention to trying to understand the subject. In view of the fact that the American secondary mathematics teachers usually follow textbooks so slavishly, the college teacher of mathematics who believes in emphasizing the subject rather than the textbook often meets with considerable difficulty with the beginning classes. On the other hand, it is clear that as the student advances he should be encouraged to seek information from all available sources instead of from one particular book only. The rapid improvement in our library facilities makes this attitude especially desirable.
An advantage of the textbook is that it is limited in all directions, while the subject itself is of indefinite extent. In the textbook the subject has been pressed into a linear sequence, while its natural form usually exhibits various dimensions. The textbook presents those phases about which there is usually no doubt, while the subject itself exhibits limitations of knowledge in many directions. From these few characteristics it is evident that the study of textbooks is apt to cultivate a different attitude and a different point of view from those cultivated by the unhampered study of subjects. The latter are, however, the ones which correspond to the actual world and which therefore should receive more and more emphasis as the mental vision of the student can be enlarged.
The number of different available college mathematical textbooks on the subjects usually studied by the large classes of engineering students has increased rapidly in recent years. On the other hand, the number of suitable textbooks for the more advanced classes is often very limited. In fact, it is often found desirable to use textbooks written in some foreign language, especially in French, German, or Italian, for such courses. This procedure has the advantage that it helps to cultivate a better reading knowledge of these languages, which is in itself a very worthy end for the advanced student of mathematics. This procedure has, however, become less necessary in recent years in view of the publication of various excellent advanced works in the English language.
The greatest mathematical treasure is constituted by the periodic literatures, and the larger colleges and universities aim to have complete sets of the leading mathematical periodicals available for their students. This literature has been made more accessible by the publication of various catalogues, such as the _Subject Index_, Volume I, published by the Royal Society of London in 1908, and the volumes "A" of the annual publications entitled _International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_. All students who have access to large libraries should learn how to utilize this great store of mathematical lore whenever mathematical questions present themselves to them in their scientific work. This is especially true as regards those who specialize along mathematical lines.
In some of the colleges and universities general informational courses along mathematical lines have been organized under different names, such as history of mathematics, synoptic course, fundamental concepts, cultural course, etc. Several books have recently been prepared with a view to meeting the needs of textbooks for such courses. College teachers of mathematics usually find it difficult to interest their students sufficiently in the current periodic literature, and one of the greatest problems of the college teacher is to instill such a broad interest in mathematics that the student will seek mathematical knowledge in all available sources instead of confining himself to the study of a few textbooks or the work of a particular school.
G. A. MILLER _University of Illinois_
REFERENCES
For articles on the teaching of mathematics which appeared during the nineteenth century, consult 0050 _Pedagogy_ in the _Royal Society Index_, Vol. I, Pure Mathematics, 1908. For literature appearing during the first twelve years of the present century the reader may consult the _Bibliography of the Teaching of Mathematics_, 1900-1912, by D. E. Smith and Charles Goldziher, published by the United States Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1912, No. 29. More recent literature may be found by consulting annual indexes, such as the _International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_, A, Mathematics, under 0050, and _Revue Semestrielle des Publications Mathématiques_, under V 1. The volumes of the international review entitled _L'Enseignement Mathématique_, founded in 1899, contain a large number of articles relating to college teaching. This subject will be treated in the closing volumes of the large French and German mathematical encyclopedias in course of publication.
Footnotes:
[3] P. Zühlke. _Zeitschrift für Mathematischen und Naturwissenschuftlichen Unterricht_, Vol. 45 (1915), page 483.
[4] Committee No. XII, American Report of the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics, 1912, page 9.
[5] _Internationale Mathematische Unterrichtskomission_, Vol. 3, No. 6 (1912), page 2.
[6] _Journal de l'Ecole Polytechnique_, Vol. 1 (1896), part 4, page lx.
[7] F. Cajori, _Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States_, 1890, page 22.
[8] A. E. H. Love, _Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society_, Vol. 14 (1915), page 183.
[9] V. V. Bobynin, _L'Enseignement Mathématique_, Vol. 1 (1899), page 78.
[10] The Training of Teachers of Mathematics, 1917, by R. C. Archibald. Bulletin No. 27, 1917, United States Bureau of Education.
[11] Cf. M. Bôcher, _Science_, Vol. 38 (1913), page 546.
IX
PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE
=Lessons for physical education from the world war=
The events of the four years between the summer of 1914 and the winter of 1918 have brought us to a full realization of the real significance of physical education in the training of youth. America and her allies have had very dramatic reasons for regretting their careless indifference to the welfare of childhood and youth in former years. Only yesterday, we were told that the great war would be won by the country that could furnish the last man or fight for the last quarter of an hour. America and her allies looked with a new and fearful concern upon the army of young men who were found physically unfit for military service.
With the danger of war past, there is no lack of evidence that we and our allies will make practical application of this particular lesson. It will be fortunate indeed if the enlightened people of the earth are really permanently awake to the importance of the physical education of their citizens-in-the-making.
Governmental agencies have already started the movement to guarantee to the coming generation more extensive and more scientific physical education. Public and private institutions are joining forces so that the advantages of this extended program of physical education will be enjoyed by the young men and young women in industry and commerce as well as by those in schools and colleges.
It is to be hoped that the American college will do its full share and neglect no reasonable measure whereby the college graduate may be developed into the vigorous and healthy human being that the mentally trained ought to be. It must be admitted that our findings by the military draft boards, as well as other evidences secured through physical examinations, are not such as to make the American college proud of the quality or the extent of physical education which it has given in the past. We must express our keen disappointment at the prevalence of under-development, remediable defects, and unachieved physical and functional possibilities in our college graduates.
=Aims of physical education=
Physical training is concerned with the achievement and the conservation of human health. It has to do with conditioning the human being for the exigencies of life in peace or in war. Its standards are not set by a degree of health which merely enables the individual to keep out of bed, eat three meals a day, and run no abnormal temperature. Physical training is concerned with developing vigorous, enduring health that is based upon the perfect function, coördination, and integration of every organ of the human body; health that is not found wanting at the military draft; health that meets all its community obligations; health that is not affected by diseases of decay; and health that resists infection and postpones preventable death.
=Formulations of aims and scope of physical education in official documents--By Regents of the State of New York=
Official statements and information from reliable sources indicate that physical education and hygiene and physical training are regarded by authorities as covering about the same general field. The general plan and syllabus for physical training adopted by the Regents of the University of the State of New York in 1916 interprets physical training as covering "(1) Individual health examinations and personal health instruction (medical inspection); (2) instruction concerning the care of the body and the important facts of hygiene (recitations in hygiene); (3) physical examinations as a health habit, including gymnastics, elementary marching, and organized, supervised play, recreation, and athletics."
=By national committee on physical education=
In March of 1918 a National Committee on Physical Education, formed of representatives from twenty or more national organizations, adopted the following resolutions:
I. That a comprehensive, thoroughgoing program of health education and physical education is absolutely needed for all boys and girls of elementary and secondary school age, both rural and urban, in every state in the Union.
II. That legislation, similar in purpose and scope to the provisions and requirements in the laws recently enacted in California, New York State, and New Jersey, is desirable in every state, to provide authorization and support for state-wide programs in the health and physical education field.
III. That the United States Bureau of Education should be empowered by law, and provided with sufficient appropriations, to exert adequate influence and supervision in relation to a nationwide program of instruction in health and physical education.
IV. That it seems most desirable that Congress should give recognition to this vital and neglected phase of education, with a bill and appropriation similar in purpose and scope to the Smith-Hughes Law, to give sanction, leadership, and support to a national program of health and physical education; and to encourage, standardize, and, in part, finance the practical program of constructive work that should be undertaken in every state.
V. That federal recognition, supervision, and support are urgently needed, as the effective means, under the Constitution, to secure that universal training of boys and girls in health and physical fitness which are equally essential to efficiency of all citizens both in peace and in war.
=By five national organizations=
In December, 1918, five national organizations, assembled in regular annual meeting, adopted resolutions which read in part as follows:
First: That this Society shall make every reasonable effort to influence the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of our various states to enact laws providing for the effective physical education of all children of all ages in our elementary and secondary schools, public, institutional and private, a physical education that will bring these children instruction in hygiene, regular periodic health examinations and a training in the practice of health habits with a full educational emphasis upon play, games, recreation, athletics and physical exercise, and shall further make every possible reasonable effort to influence communities and municipalities to enact laws and pass ordinances providing for community and industrial physical training and recreative activities for all classes and ages of society.
Second: That this Association shall make persistent effort to influence state boards of education, or their equivalent bodies, in all the states of the United States, to make it their effective rule that on or after June, 1922, or some other reasonable date, no applicant may receive a license to teach any subject in any school who does not first present convincing evidence of having covered in creditable manner a satisfactory course in physical education in a reputable training school for teachers.
Third: And that this Association hereby directs and authorizes its president to appoint a committee of three to take such steps as may be necessary to put the above resolutions into active and effective operation, and to coöperate in every practical and substantial way with the National Committee on Physical Education, the division of physical education of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, and any other useful agency that may be in the field for the purpose of securing the proper and sufficient physical education of the boys and girls of to-day, so that they may to-morrow constitute a nation of men and women of normal physical growth, normal physical development and normal functional resource, practicing wise habits of health conservation and possessed of greater consequent vitality, larger endurance, longer lives and more complete happiness--the most precious assets of a nation.
=By the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board=
In January, 1919, the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board suggested the following organization of a department of hygiene for the purpose of establishing such a department in at least one normal school, college, or university training school for teachers in each state of the Union.
SUGGESTED ORGANIZATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE
I. _Division of Informational Hygiene._ (Stressing in each of its several divisions with due proportion and with appropriate emphasis, the venereal diseases, their causes, carriers, injuries, and prevention):
(_a_) The principles of hygiene. Required of all students at least twice a week for at least four terms.
(1) General hygiene. (The agents that injure health, the carriers of disease, the contributory causes of poor health, the defenses of health, and the sources of health.)
(2) Individual hygiene. (Informational hygiene, the care of the body and its organs, correction, and repair, preventive hygiene, constructive hygiene.)
(3) Group hygiene. (Hygiene of the home and the family, school hygiene, occupational hygiene, community hygiene.)
(4) Intergroup hygiene. (Interfamily, intercommunity, interstate, and international hygiene.)
(_b_) Principles of physical training. (Gymnastics, exercise, athletics, recreation, and play.) Required of all students. To be given at least twice a week for two terms in the Junior or Senior Years.
(_c_) Health examinations--
(1) Medical examination required each half year of every student. (Making reasonable provisions for a private, personal, confidential relationship between the examiner and the student.)
(2) Sanitary surveys and hygienic inspections applied regularly to all divisions of the institution, their curriculums, buildings, dormitories, equipment, personal service, and surroundings.
II. _Division of Applied Hygiene._
(_a_) Health conference and consultations.
(1) Every student advised under "c" above (health examinations) must report to his health examiner within a reasonable time, as directed, with evidence that he has followed the advice given, or with a satisfactory explanation for not having done so.
(2) Must provide student with opportunities for safe, confidential consultations with competent medical advisors concerning the intimate problems of sex life as well as those of hygiene in general.
(_b_) Physical training.
(1) Gymnastic exercises, recreation, games, athletics, and competitive sports. Required of all students six hours a week every term.
(2) Reconstructional and special training and exercise for students not qualified organically for the regular activities covered in "1" above. It is assumed that every teacher-in-training physically able to go to school is entitled to and should take some form of physical exercise.
III. _Division of Research._
(_a_) Investigations, tests, evaluating measurements, records, and reports required each term covering progress made under each division and subdivision of the department, for the purpose of discovering and developing more effective educational methods in hygiene.
(_b_) Provide facilities for the sifting, selection, and investigation of problems in hygiene that may be submitted to or proposed by the department of hygiene.
(_c_) Arrange for frequent lectures on public hygiene and public health from competent members of municipal, state, and national departments of health, and from other appropriate sources.
IV. _Personnel requisite for such a department._--Men and women should be chosen for service in the several divisions of the Department, who have a sane, well-balanced, and experienced appreciation of the importance of the whole field of hygiene as well as of the place and relations of the venereal diseases.
(1) One director or head of department. Must have satisfactory scientific training and special experience, fitting him for supervision, leadership, teaching, research, and administrative responsibility.
(2) One medical examiner for men and one medical examiner for women. There should be one examiner for each 500 students. Must be selected with special care because of the presence of extraordinary opportunities to exercise a powerful intimate influence upon the mental, moral, and physical health of the students with whom such examiners come in contact.
(3) One special teacher of physical training (a "Physical Director") for each group of 500 students. There must be a man for the men and a woman for the women students. The physical training instructors employed in this department should be in charge of and should cover satisfactorily all the directing, training, and coaching carried on in the department and in the institution in its relation to athletics and competitive sports. The men and women who are placed in charge of individual students and groups of students engaged in the various activities of physical training (gymnastics, athletics, recreation and play) should be selected with special reference to their wholesome influence on young men and young women.
(4) One coördinator (this function may be covered by one of the personnel covered by "1," "2" or "3" above). Will serve to influence every teacher in every department on the entire staff of the institution to meet his obligations, in relation to the individual hygiene of the students in his classes and to the sanitation of the class rooms in which he meets his students. The coördinator should bring information to all teachers and assist them to meet more satisfactorily their opportunities to help students in their individual problems in social hygiene.
(5) Special lectures on the principles and progress of public hygiene and public health. A close coördination should be secured between this department and community agencies like the Department of Health that are concerned with public hygiene.
(6) Sufficient clerical, stenographic and filing service to meet the needs of the department.
In February, 1919, the field service of the National Committee on Physical Education issued a tentative outline for a state law for physical education, suggested for use in planning future legislation. The purposes of physical education as stated in the preamble of this law read as follows:
1. In order that the children of the State of .... shall receive a quality and an amount of physical education that will bring to them the health, growth and a normal organic development that is essential to their fullest present and future education, happiness and usefulness; and in order that the future citizenship of the State of .... may receive regularly from the growing and developing youth of the Commonwealth a rapidly increasing number of more vigorous, better educated, healthier, happier, more prosperous and longer lived men and women, we, the people of the State of .... represented in the Senate and Assembly do enact as follows:
=By Legislative Committee of National Committee on Physical Education=
In February, 1919, the legislative committee of the National Committee on Physical Education prepared a bill for federal legislation for the purpose of assisting the states in establishing physical education in their schools. This proposed federal law stated the purpose and aim of physical education as follows:
The purpose and aim of physical education in the meaning of this act shall be: more fully and thoroughly to prepare the boys and girls of the nation for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship through the development of bodily vigor and endurance, muscular strength and skill, bodily and mental poise, and such desirable moral and social qualities as courage, self-control, self-subordination and obedience to authority, coöperation under leadership, and disciplined initiative. The processes and agencies for securing these ends shall be understood to include: comprehensive courses of physical training activities, periodical physical examination; correction of postural and other remediable defects; health supervision of schools and school children; practical instruction in the care of the body and in the principles of health; hygienic school life, sanitary school buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields and the equipment thereof; and such other means as may be conducive to these purposes.
An analysis of these several authoritative and more or less official documents indicates very clearly a unanimity as to scope and aims of physical education, for they all seek to promote and conserve, in the broadest sense of the term, the health of the nation.
=Poor type of physical education in secondary schools intensifies problem in the college=
The problem of physical education in the college is intensified by the fact that freshmen come to their chosen institutions with a variety of experience in physical training, but unfortunately this experience is, too often, either inadequate or ineffective. The natural physical training of the earlier age periods produces whatever neuro-muscular development, whatever neuro-muscular coördination, whatever neuro-muscular control, and whatever other organic growth, development, or functional perfection is achieved by the young human concerned. A program of physical training wisely planned with reference to infancy, childhood, and early youth would include types of exercises, play, games, and sports, that would perfect the neuro-muscular and other functions far more completely than is commonly accomplished through the natural unsupervised and undirected physical training of those early age periods either in city or in rural communities. The force of modern habits of life has led to the destruction of those natural habits of work, play, and recreation that gave a proportion of our forebears a fairly complete natural program of physical exercise during the plastic or formative periods of life. As a result, many students reach college nowadays with stunted growths and with poorly developed, poorly trained, or poorly controlled neuro-muscular equipment. Some of these matriculates are physically weak. They lack alertness; their response is slow. Others are awkward and muscularly inefficient, though their physical growth is objectively--height and weight--normal or even above normal.
The College Department faces these problems through special provisions made for the purpose of supplying a belated neuro-muscular training to such cases. It often happens that successful training along these lines is possible only through individual instruction of a most elementary sort, taking the student through simple exercises that ought to have been a part of his experience in early childhood.
=Individual needs of students augment problem of department of physical education=
For the same reasons that are stated above, the College Department of Physical Training finds it necessary to concern itself with individual students who need special attention directed to specified organs or groups of organs whose training or care could have been accomplished ordinarily far better at an earlier period. These students present problems of posture, lung capacity, and regional weakness.
=Supervision of athletics and recreation adds further to its problem=
The College Department of Physical Training finds also a significant opportunity and an urgent duty in the fact that various types of physical exercise are intimately associated with social, ethical, and moral consequences. No other human activity gives the same opportunity for the development of a social spirit and personal ethical standards as do play, games, and sports of children and adolescents. Unsupervised, these activities degenerate and bring unmoral practices and an anti-social spirit in their wake.
Because of these opportunities and obligations, College Departments of Physical Training are including within their programs and jurisdictions more and more supervision of college athletics, and assume an ever increasing rôle in the direction of recreational activities of college students. It remains true, however, that these influences of supervised play and athletics should operate long before the individual reaches college age.
The intense interest of college students in athletic competitions, united with the opportunity which athletics offer for social and character training, has decided a number of colleges to turn athletic training over to the Department of Physical Training. This preparation for the supreme physical and physiological test must be built upon a foundation of safe and sound health. There is no more fitting place in the collegiate organization for these athletic and recreational activities.
=Organization of Department of Physical Education=
The college departments that cover this field in whole or in part are known by various names. We have departments of Physical Training; of Physical Education; of Physical Culture; of Hygiene; of Physiology and Physical Education; of Hygiene and Physical Education; of Physical Training and Athletics, and so on.
An analysis of these college departments shows that they all concern themselves with much the same important objects, although they differ in their lines of greater emphasis. We find, too, that in some colleges the department includes activities that form separate, though related departments in other institutions.
The activities of such departments fall into three large divisions, each one of which has its logical subdivisions. One of these large divisions may be called the division of health examination. It has to do with the health examination of the individual student and with the health advice that is based on and consequent to such examination. The second division has to do with health instruction covering the subject matter of physical training. The third division covers directed experiences in right living and the formation of health habits, and includes the special activities noted above.
We often refer to the first division noted above as the division of medical inspection, physical examination, or health examination; to the second as hygiene, physiology, biology, or bacteriology; and to the third as gymnastics, physical exercise, organized play, recreation, athletics, or narrowly as physical training.
The prime purpose of collegiate physical training, then, is to furnish the student such information and such habit-forming experiences as will lead him to formulate and practice an intelligent policy of personal health control and an intelligent policy of community health control. The collateral and special objects of physical training vary with the individual student under the influence of his previous training and his present and future life plans.
The Collegiate Department of Physical Training is primarily concerned, therefore, with the acquisition and conservation of human health--mental, moral, and physical health. Because of his physical training, the college man should live longer; he should meet his environments obligations more successfully; he should be better able to protect himself from, and better able to avoid, injury; he should lose less time on account of injury, poor health, and sickness; he should get well more rapidly when he is sick; he should be better able to recover his health and strength after injury or illness; and he should therefore give to society a fuller, happier, and more useful life.
Such a department is concerned secondarily with (_a_) those special defects of earlier physical training that bring to college, students in need of neuro-muscular training and organic development, (_b_) with social, ethical, and character training, and (_c_) with the conditioning and special training of students for athletic competition or for other extraordinary physical and physiological demands.
In the light of the above statements, the objects of physical training may be summarized as follows:
I. The fundamental and ever present object of physical training is the acquisition and conservation of vigorous, enduring health, the summated effect of perfect functions in each and every organ of the human body.
II. The special objects of physical training vary in their needs for emphasis at different age periods and under the changing stresses of life. Among the more important of these special objects are:
(1) General, normal growth. An object in the early age periods.
(2) Neuro-muscular development, coördination, and control. Accomplished best in early age periods.
(3) Special organic (anatomical and functional) development. Optimum period in childhood and youth.
(4) Social, ethical, and moral training. Character building. Objects more easily secured in childhood and youth.
(5) Preparation for some supreme physical and physiological test; e.g., athletic competition, police or fire service, military service. Most desirable training period in late youth and early maturity. Must depend, however, on the effects of earlier physical training.
(6) The formation of health habits. Best accomplished in early life but commonly an important function of the College Department of Physical Training.
(7) The conservation of health. Always an object, but more particularly so in the middle and later life.
THE MEDICAL EXAMINATION
In the American college of today, the student's first contact with the Department of Physical Training is very likely to be in the examining room. In the College of the City of New York[12] it has become the established custom to require a satisfactory health examination before admitting the applicant to registration as a student in the college. Entering classes are enrolled in this institution at the beginning of each term, and in each list of applicants there are always a few to whom admission is denied because of unsatisfactory health conditions.
In each case in which admission is denied because of unsatisfactory health, the individual is given careful advice relative to his present and probable future condition, and every effort is made to help the applicant plan his life so that he may be able at a later time to enter the college. Of course, it occasionally happens that applicants are found with serious and incurable health defects which make it very improbable that they will ever be in condition to attempt a college education.
=Scope of health examination=
The health examination of the student should cover those facts in his family and personal health history that are likely to have a bearing upon his present or future health, and the examination should include a very careful investigation of the important organs of his body. This examination calls for expert medical and dental service.
=How to conduct health examination=
The most useful examiner is he who is at the same time a teacher. Nowhere else is a better or even an equally good opportunity given to drive home impressively, and sometimes dramatically, important lessons in individual hygiene. Through a pair of experimental lenses placed by his examiner before his hitherto undiscovered visual brain cells, the young student who has had poor vision and has never known it, may obtain, for the first time, a glimpse of the beauty in his surroundings.
The dental examiner who finds bad teeth and explains bad teeth to the student whose health is being, or may be, destroyed by such teeth, has before him all the elements necessary for very effective health instruction.
The health examination should be a personal and private affair. It is often best not to have even a recorder present. The student should understand that whatever passes between him and his examiner is entirely confidential.
All advice given a student at these examinations should be followed up if it is the kind of advice that can be followed up. If the advice involves the attention of a dentist or treatment by a physician, time should be allowed for making arrangements and for securing the treatment necessary. After that time has elapsed the student should be called upon to report with information from his parent or guardian, or from his family health adviser, indicating what has been done or will be done for the betterment of the conditions for which the advice was originally given. In the hands of a tactful examiner--one who is a teacher as well as an examiner--the student and parent, particularly the parent, will coöperate effectively in this plan for the development of health habits of the student. Less than three tenths of one per cent of the parents of City College students refuse to secure special health attention for their boys when we do so advise.
These examinations should be repeated at reasonable intervals throughout the entire college course. We have found in the College of the City of New York that a repetition every term is none too frequent. Visual defects, dental defects, evidences of heart trouble and signs of pulmonary tuberculosis, and other defects, not infrequently arise in cases of individuals who have been seen several times before without showing any evidence of poor health. It is hoped that these repeated examinations may lead to the continuation of such habits of bodily care in postgraduate years.
A careful and concise record must be made covering the main facts of each examination and of each conference with the student subsequent to his examination. These memoranda enable the examiner at each later examination to talk to the student with a knowledge of what has been found and what has been said and what has been done on preceding examinations, and on preceding follow-up conferences. As a result, the examiner-teacher is in position to be very much more useful not only because of significant facts before him concerning the student with whom he is talking, but also because of the greater confidence which the student will necessarily have in an examiner who is obviously interested in him and who possesses such an accurate record of his health history.
These examinations should apply to every student in a college or a university, regardless of the division to which he belongs. The need for health instruction or for the establishment of health habits, in order that one may be physically trained for the exigencies of life, is not peculiar to any student age period or to any academic or technicological group, or to a college for men or a college for women.
One of the dangers present in these college examinations is the tendency of the examiner to become more interested in the number of students examined and the number of diagnoses made than in the good influence he may have upon the health future of the student.
Every "case" should be treated by the health examiner as if it were the first and only case on hand for the day. The student certainly classifies the examiner as the first and only one he has had that day. The examiner should plan to make every contact he has with a student a help to the student.
HEALTH INSTRUCTION
A second large division of physical training deals with health instruction. As has been pointed out above, the division of health examination produces a very important and very useful opportunity for individual health instruction.
=Content of hygiene instruction=
Hygiene, however, is presented commonly to groups of students in class organization rather than individually. Anatomy, physiology, psychology, bacteriology, pathology, general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene are sciences, or combinations of sciences, from which physical training draws its facts. These sciences and those phases of economics and sociology that have to do with the economic and social influences of health and disease, of physical efficiency and physical degeneracy, supply physical training with its general subject matter.
Health instruction, then, as a part of physical training, draws its content from these sources. A logical plan of class instruction would, therefore, include the elements of anatomy, physiology, psychology, bacteriology (and general parasitology), pathology, economics, and sociology, as a basis for a more complete presentation of the facts of general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene.
=Method of health instruction=
The most satisfactory presentation of these subjects involves the grouping of students into small classes, the employment of laboratory methods, the use of reference libraries, and the assignment of problems for investigation and study, with a general group discussion of these problems.
Unfortunately, college classes are large and the number of teachers employed in the department of physical training, or in those departments from which physical training draws its science and its philosophy, is small, so that it is impractical to plan to give this instruction to small groups of students covering this range of subject matter.
As a result, the lecture method with its obvious defects and shortcomings is the common medium for the health instruction of college students organized into classes. The more intimate and detailed instruction in these subjects is secured in special courses and in professional schools.
In the College of the City of New York, we expect that students who come to us from high schools and preparatory schools have had the elements of anatomy and physiology either in courses on those subjects or in courses in biology.[13] Our health instruction, therefore, has been developed along the lines of lectures on general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene running through the four terms of the freshman and sophomore years.
These lectures are given in periods of from ten to fifteen minutes each, preceding class work in various forms of physical exercise. They are often called "floor talks." The shortness of the presentation favors vigor of address; necessitates a concise organization of material and a clarity and brevity of statement; and is more likely to command student attention and concentration. It has, however, its obvious defects. In these lectures persistent effort is made to influence the daily habits of the student. The lecture content is selected with reference to the practical problems of the daily life of the individual and of the community of which he is a part. It is obvious that the amount of time devoted to the presentation of the subject matter is utterly inadequate.
Short written tests are given once each month, and a longer written test is given at the end of each term. These examinations stimulate the student to organize his information and make it more completely his own property. The classes are too large[14] and the instructional force relatively too small to permit the assignment of references, presentation of reports, and the conduct of investigations.
Further instruction in physiology and bacteriology is secured in this institution through elective courses open to students in their junior and senior years. These elective courses, however, are not planned primarily for the health education of the student, but rather for his partial preparation as a teacher of physical training, a student of medicine, a scientific specialist, or for public health work.
HEALTH-FORMING ACTIVITIES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
The third division of activities contains the health-habit-forming influences covered by the Department of Physical Training. These influences are formed partly in connection with the follow-up activities associated with the health examinations and advice noted above; partly through impressions made by way of individual and class instruction concerning the laws of health (also noted above); and partly through systematic class work, group work, and individual work in gymnastics, organized recreation, games, play, and athletics.
The student who has been given a health examination each term throughout his college career will be very likely to continue the practice as a habit after graduation. This habit will follow more surely if the examiner has been a real health teacher and not a perfunctory recorder of observations made upon the student. A lack of sympathy and tact may easily prejudice the student against the examination.
The student who has been led regularly to care for defects of one sort or another; whose contact with his examiner-teacher in conferences following up the advice that has been given at the time of examination has been accompanied by the right sort of explanation and mutual understanding, will be more likely to continue to exercise that sort of care for the welfare of his body after he is no longer under the influence of the college.
The student who has seen the application of class health talks to his everyday problems is likely to be influenced to the practice of consequent health habits, particularly if those short lectures serve to correlate his various habit-forming experiences while in college.
And finally, the student who is brought into contact with regular systematic exercise may, if the exercise is attractive and interesting, achieve a health habit that will be carried out into his postgraduate life.
The existence of the Department of Physical Training would be amply justified if its influence upon the health and vigor of the student were limited to the period of his stay in college. The full success of this department, however, like that of all other college departments, must be measured by its influence upon the life of the student after he has left college. The formation of lasting health habits is, therefore, the most important object of this department.
=Place of physical exercise in program for physical education=
Regular appropriate physical exercise is one of our most important health habits. It is perhaps safe to say that for the average individual it is the most important health habit. This is true because of its intimate and impressive influence upon all the fundamental organic functions of the body. Physical exercise in the American college is provided either as organized class work in the gymnasium, or by means of voluntary recreational opportunities, or through athletics.
=Class work in physical exercise=
Class work may include: marching, mass drills with or without light apparatus, work on heavy apparatus, games, dancing, swimming, and track and field work. This class work may be indoors or outdoors, depending on the season or climate.
=Additional facilities for physical exercise=
Voluntary recreational opportunities are offered through free mass drills open to all students who may desire to take them regularly or irregularly; through open periods for apparatus work; and through facilities and space for games, swimming, mass athletics, and so on.
=Recreational activities and athletics=
Competitive athletics are typical of the American college. Theoretically, athletics are open to all students. Practically, in many of our colleges athletics are made available only to the student with leisure time and exceptional physique. Consistent effort is being made today by college authorities to provide opportunities for intramural (interclass, intergroup, and mass) athletics for the whole student body; at the same time preserving the desirable features of the more specialized intercollegiate competitions.
=Inculcating habits of physical exercise=
Physical exercise in these various forms has its immediate and valuable influence upon the health condition of the individual student, if taken in sufficient quantity. It has its lasting and very much more important influence in those cases in which physical exercise becomes a habit. It has, therefore, become the increasing concern of the college teacher of physical training to develop activities in physical exercise that the student may use after graduation. Teachers of physical training have become more and more impressed with the importance of interesting exercise, not only because interesting exercise is more likely to become habitual exercise, but also because exercise that is accompanied by the play spirit, by happiness and joy, is physiologically and therefore healthfully of very much more value to the individual. The relationship between cheerfulness and good health has become very firmly established through the scientific researches of the modern physiologist. We know that health habits which are associated with cheerfulness and happiness are bound to be more effective.
=Opportunities for character building=
The teacher of physical training finds opportunity for incidental and yet very important instruction leading to the formation of fine qualities of character and fine standards of personal conduct. These opportunities arise constantly in the various general types of physical exercise found in the curriculum of the department of physical training. They are especially present in those activities in which competition occurs, as in play, games, and athletics. These activities do not in themselves produce excellent qualities of character or high standards of conduct, but the teacher--whether he be called a coach or a trainer or a professor of hygiene--who sets a good example and who insists that every game played, and every contest, whether it be in a handball court between college chums or on the football field between college teams, shall be clean and fair, is using in the right way one of the opportunities present in the entire college life of the student, for the formation of fine character.
SPECIAL EXERCISES FOR SPECIAL GROUPS
In any given group of college students one will find a number of individuals in need of special or modified physical exercise. These students may be grouped commonly under the following heads: (1) undeveloped, (2) bad posture, (3) awkward, (4) originally weak, (5) deformed.
Some of these students suffer from defects that are remediable, Some of these defects are due to poor physical training in earlier years. Some are the results of disease. All of them call for modified exercise and recreation. The fact that a student may fall into one of these groups in no way justifies the assumption that he is therefore no longer subject to the laws of health or to the need for rational health habits. As a matter of fact, such cases generally call for greater care and attention in the formulation and operation of a rational policy of right living.
Every student physically able to go to college is physically able to exercise. No student in attendance on recitations anywhere can offer a rational plea for exemption from exercise, The individual whose physical condition contraindicates all forms of exercise needs careful medical advice and probably needs hospital or sanitarium treatment.
College Departments of Physical Training are planning for cases in need of special or modified exercise, through the organization of special classes and through individual attention. In the College of the City of New York we attempt to group the weak students in a given class, into squads of four such students with a squad leader, a student. The awkward students are grouped in the same manner. The exercise of the cripple and the student with serious organic weakness is individualized. These special individualized cases are under the direct supervision of a physician on the staff.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDENTS FOR PRESCRIBED WORK IN THE COLLEGE COURSES
In this college, organized, directed physical exercise as outlined above is covered in the division of physical training, the division of recreation, and the division of athletics, all of which are subdivisions of the Department of Hygiene.
The enrollment in the required classes in the division of Physical Training varies from thirty in the smaller classes to over two hundred in the larger. The total enrollment has been approximately eleven hundred each term for several years. These courses are required of all students during the first four collegiate terms. Each of these four courses requires three hours a week, distributed over two or into three periods, and credits the student with one half point toward graduation. This time allowance is, however, inadequate.
The class organization in the division of the Department of Hygiene is based on a unit composed of five students. Each of these units or squads contains one student who is designated as the "leader" of that unit.
Persistent effort is made to assign students of like physical development and needs to the same squads. In this manner a single class of a hundred young men will have a graduation on the basis of proficiency which makes it possible for the teacher to come very near to the rational application of exercise for the individual student.
These units or squads are organized into divisions, each division being made up of four squads. Each division is under the supervision and instruction of a member of the departmental staff. In any given class, then, there is a regular instructor for each group of twenty students, and a student leader for each group of four students. The aim in this organization is to establish a relationship between the instructor and his twenty students that will secure for him an intimate knowledge of each young man, relating to his physical training needs, general and special.
=A class period in physical exercise=
A typical class period is made up of a short health talk, 10 minutes; a mass drill, 10 minutes; apparatus period, two changes, 20 minutes; and a play period, 15 minutes. If the health talk is not given the play period is lengthened.
The mass drills referred to above are made up of drill in marching and in gymnastics with and without hand apparatus. These drills are graded within the term and from term to term so that a desirable variety is secured. They are devised for disciplinary, postural, developmental, and health purposes. During the progress of the drill the instructors present inspect the posture and work of the students in their divisions.
The apparatus periods referred to include work on the conventional pieces of gymnastic apparatus, with the addition of chest weights, an indoor track, and a swimming pool. The squad organization for this work gives opportunity for the development of student leadership which is often of extraordinary educational value to the individual boy. These periods, because of this squad organization, may be utilized for such _special exercise_ emphasis as may be decided upon for any given group of students. It is here that _special conditioning_ may be given those young men who are planning for military training or who need selected exercise for neuro-muscular development.
The play period in the regular class program is devoted largely to looser games that contain a predominating element of big muscle activities. Competition is a fairly constant factor. Here, again, our squad unit permits us to assign selected groups of students to special types of games. It is feasible, in this organization, to satisfy a need for the training that is furnished by highly organized games, fighting games, and by games and out-of-door events that develop special groups of muscles and special coördinations.
A well-organized Collegiate Department of Physical Training could coöperate very effectively with a Collegiate Department of Military Training. The squad organization in apparatus periods and in play periods offers the best possible avenue for a successful emphasis of several of the very important phases of military physical training.
=Recreational facilities in addition to prescribed work=
The division of recreation in the Department of Hygiene in the College of the City of New York, takes charge of all recreational and athletic space and all recreational and intramural athletic activities in those periods of the day in which regular class work does not take precedence. Students of all classes are admitted freely throughout their four collegiate years to these activities, and a studied effort is made to increase their attractiveness as well as to secure from them their full social and character-training values. Such values depend to a very large degree upon the experienced supervision and direction given these activities. It does not follow that the creation of play opportunity is bound to produce good citizenship. The quality of the product depends upon the quality of the man or men in charge of the enterprise.
The most important mission of the Recreational Division is its purpose to furnish the student lasting habits of play and recreation based upon the physical development he has secured in his earlier experiences in physical training. After all, one's physical training should begin at birth and continue throughout life.
The Division of Athletic Instruction is concerned with all plans for intercollegiate athletics, including organization, financing, training, coaching, and scheduling. All these activities are under the direction of members of the staff of the Department of Hygiene. There is no one employed in this relationship who is not a member of the staff. Constant attempts are made, in every reasonable way, to accomplish the athletic ideals that have been set up by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Clean play, honorable methods, and sportsmanly standards dominate the theory and practice of this athletic instruction and supervision.
The scope and content of physical training which I have attempted to present in these pages is brought out more clearly by the following announcement of the Department of Hygiene of the College of the City of New York:
HYGIENE (1916-17)
The Department of Hygiene is made up of the divisions of Physical Training, Physiology, Bacteriology, Health Examination, Recreational Instruction, and Athletics.
Through these divisions the Department attempts to train young men for the exigencies of life through the establishment of enduring habits of health examination and repair, health information and individual and community protection against the agents that injure health and cause disease, and through the establishment of wise habits of daily life.
This organization gives opportunity for the development of neglected organic and neuromuscular growth, coördination and control; for the social, ethical, and moral training (character building influences) inherent in wisely supervised athletic and recreational experiences; and for the special conditioning that accompanies training for severe physical and physiological competition and other tests.
Finally, preparation may be secured for life work along certain lines of research, certain medical sciences, various phases of public health, physical training and social work.
In addition, this Department is concerned with all those influences within the College which affect the health of the student. Every reasonable effort is made to keep the institution safe and attractive to the clean, healthy individual.
DIVISION OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
1. _Course One._
(_a_) Lectures. "Some of the common causes of disease."
(_b_) Physical Exercise.
i. Graded mass drills.
(_a_) Elementary drills are used in order to develop obedience, alertness, and ready response to command, accurate execution, good posture and carriage and facility of control.
(_b_) More advanced drills are given in which movements are made in response to commands. Strength, endurance, and coördination are brought into play.
ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five students each.
iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play.
iv. Swimming. Each student is required to learn to swim with more than one variety of stroke.
Prescribed. Freshman, first term; three hours a week; counts 1/2.
2. _Course Two._
(_a_) Lectures. "The carriers of disease."
(_b_) Physical Exercise.
i. Graded mass drills. Two-count movements. These drills are continuations of, but more advanced than those given in the preceding term.
ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five.
iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play.
iv. Swimming. Each student is required to develop endurance in swimming.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 1.
Prescribed. Freshman, second term; three hours a week; counts 1/2.
3. _Course Three._
(_a_) Lectures. "The contributory causes and carriers of disease."
(_b_) Physical Exercise.
i. Graded mass drills. Four-count movements. More advanced work.
ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five.
iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play.
iv. Swimming. Diving, rescue and resuscitation of the drowning.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 2.
Prescribed. Sophomore, first term; three hours a week; counts 1/2.
4. _Course Four._
(_a_) Lectures. "Defenses against poor health and disease."
(_b_) Physical Exercise.
i. Advanced graded mass drills. Eight-count movements.
ii. Advanced graded apparatus work. For squads of five.
iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play.
iv. Swimming. Advanced continuation of requirements outlined for Courses 2 and 3.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 3.
Prescribed. Sophomore, second term; three hours a week; counts 1/2.
_Modified Course._
In each of the above required courses provision is made for those students whose organic condition may permanently disqualify them for the regular scheduled work. This special work is under the immediate direction of a medical member of the Staff.
5. _Intermediate Physical Training._
This course is planned to supply the student with such organic development and efficiency as will enable him to demonstrate successfully as a teacher various type exercises for classes in elementary and intermediate indoor and outdoor gymnastics, aquatics, games, play and athletics.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 4. Three hours a week; counts 1/2.
6. _Advanced Physical Training._
This course is a continuation of Course 5, and is designed for the physical equipment of teachers of more advanced physical work.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 5. Three hours a week; counts 1/2.
7. _Class Management._
This course supplies the practical instruction and experience needed for the training of special teachers in the management of elementary and intermediate classes in various forms of physical exercise.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 6 and 32. Fall term, three hours a week; counts 1.
8. _Class Management._
This course is a continuation of Course 7. It is planned to give a training in the management of more advanced classes.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 7. Spring term, three hours a week; counts 1.
9. _Control of Emergencies and First Aid to the Injured._
This course supplies instruction concerning the management and protective care of common emergencies. The instruction is practical and rational. It covers such emergencies as: sprains, fractures, dislocations, wounds, bruises, sudden pain, fainting, epileptic attacks, unconsciousness, drowning, electric shock, and so on.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 32. Fall term, two hours a week; counts 1.
10. _Theory and Practice of Individual Instruction in Hygiene and in Departmental Sanitation._
Students taking this subject will be given practical first hand experience of special use to teachers; (a) in connection with health examination, inspection, conference, consultation, and follow up service carried on in the departmental examining room; and (b) in connection with the sanitary supervision carried on by the department.
Prerequisites or Co-requisites: Hygiene 32, 41 and 48. Spring term, six hours a week in two periods of three hours each; counts 2.
DIVISION OF PHYSIOLOGY
32. _Elements of Physiology._
This subject deals with the general concepts of the science of physiology, the chemical and physical conditions which underlie and determine the action of the individual organs, and the integrative relationship of the parts of the body.
One lecture, one recitation and two laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
33. _Special Physiology._
A study of the fundamental facts of physiology and methods of investigation. The aim is to give a complete study of certain topics: the phenomena of contraction, conduction, sense perception and the various mechanisms of general metabolism. Laboratory work is arranged to show the methods of physiologic experimentation and to emphasize the necessity of using care and accuracy in their application.
Spring term, two lectures and three laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
34. _Physiology of Nutrition._
The aim of this subject is to study broadly the metabolism of the human body. In the development of this plan the following topics will be considered: the food requirements of man, the nutritive history of the physiologic ingredients, the principles of dietetics and their application to daily living.
Fall term, two lectures and three laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
DIVISION OF BACTERIOLOGY
41. _General Bacteriology._
Lectures, recitations and laboratory work introducing the student to the technique of bacteriology and to the more important facts about the structure and function of bacteria. Special applications of bacteriology to agriculture and the industries are discussed, and brief references are made to the activities of allied microbes, the yeasts and molds. The general relations of bacteria to disease and the principles of immunity and its control are included.
One lecture, one recitation and four laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
42. _Bacteriology of Foods._
This includes the bacteriologic examination of water, sewage, air, milk, the various food products together with the methods used in the standardization of disinfectants, a detailed study of yeast and bacterial fermentation and their application to the industries. Numerous trips to industrial plants will be made.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41.
Fall term, one lecture and six laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
43. _Bacteriology of Pathogenic Micro-organisms._
This subject is devoted to the laboratory methods of biology as applied in the state and municipal boards of health. Practice will be given in the methods used for the diagnosis of diphtheria, tuberculosis, malaria, rabies, and other diseases caused by micro-organisms, together with a detailed study of the groups to which they belong.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41.
Spring term, one lecture and six laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
44. _Potable and Industrial Water._
Very few industries are independent of a water supply. No one is independent of the source of his drinking water. Water varies in its usefulness for definite purposes.
This subject differentiates between various waters, takes them up from industrial and hygienic standpoints, considers softening, filtering, purifying and water analysis.
Work is divided into three groups.
A. Industrial Water ) } given in the Chemistry Department. B. Potable Water )
C. Water Bacteriology ) } given in the Department of Hygiene. (microscopy of water) )
Municipal students may elect any or all of the three groups.
Prerequisite: Chemistry 4 and Hygiene 41. Chemistry 9 is desirable.
Spring term, seven hours a week; counts 3.
48. _Municipal Sanitation._
Lectures, discussions and visits to public works of special importance. The principles which underlie a pure water supply and the means by which the wastes of the city, its sewage and garbage may be successfully disposed of, and the problems of pure milk and pure food supplies, the housing question with its special phase of ventilation and plumbing, and the methods by which a municipal board of health is organized to fight tuberculosis and other specific diseases will be studied.
Fall term, two lectures and one field trip a week; counts 3.
49. _Municipal Sanitary Inspection._
_Professor B---- and Bureau of Foods and Drugs, New York City Department of Health._
The seminar work of this subject is done in the College and the field work in company with and under the direct supervision of an Inspector of the Department of Health of the City. The subject is limited to six students each semester, and is intended for those planning to go into this branch of the City's service. The qualifications will be based upon individuality, personality playing an important part.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41 and 48 and Chemistry 19.
Spring term, two seminar hours, one recitation and one inspection tour a week; counts 3.
50. _Research._
Seniors who have completed satisfactorily a sufficient amount of work in the Department may be assigned some topic to serve as a basis for a thesis which will be submitted as credit for the work at its completion. The student will receive the advice of the instructor in the subject in which the research falls, but as much independent work as possible will be insisted upon. The purpose is to introduce the student into research methods, and also to foster independence.
DIVISION OF HEALTH EXAMINATION
I. _Individual Instruction in Hygiene._
This instruction is of a personal confidential character, and is given in the form of advice based upon medical history supplied by the individual, and upon medical and hygienic examinations and inspections of the individual.
(_a_) Medical and hygienic history and examination.
In this relationship with the student the Department attempts to secure such information concerning environmental and habit influences in the life of the student as may be used as a basis for supplying him with helpful advice concerning the organization of his policy of personal health control. The medical examinations are utilized for the purpose of finding remediable physical defects whose proper treatment may be added to the physiological efficiency and therefore to the health possibilities of the student.
Prescribed: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and special students. Once each term. No credits.
(_b_) Hygiene inspections.
These inspections are applied in the mutual interest of personal, departmental and institutional hygiene.
Prescribed: freshman and sophomore.
(_c_) Conferences.
All students who have been given personal hygienic or medical advice are required to report in conference by appointment in order that the advice may be followed up.
All individuals found with communicable diseases are debarred from all classes until it is shown in conference that they are receiving proper medical treatment, and that they may return to class attendance with safety to their comrades.
All individuals found with remediable physical or hygienic defects are required to report in conference with evidence that the abnormal condition has been brought to the serious attention of the parent, guardian or family medical or hygienic adviser. Students failing to report as directed may be denied admission to all classes.
II. _Medical and Sanitary Supervision._
(_a_) Sanitary supervision.
An "Advisory Committee on Hygiene and Sanitation" with the Professor of Hygiene as Chairman, has been appointed by the President. This committee has been instructed to "inquire from time to time into all our institutional influences which are likely to affect the health of the student and instructor, and to make such reports with recommendations to the President as may seem wise and expedient."
(_b_) A medical examination is required of all applicants for admission to the College. Approval of the Medical Examiner must be secured before registration is permitted.
(_c_) Medical consultation.
Open to all students. (Optional.)
(_d_) Medical examination of Athletes.
Required of all students before admission to athletic training and repeated at intervals during the training season.
(_e_) Treatment.
Emergency treatment is the only treatment attempted by the Department. Such treatment will be applied only for the purpose of protecting the individual until he can secure the services he selects for that purpose.
(_f_) Conferences.
(See "c" under I.)
(_g_) Laboratory: The Department Laboratories are equipped for bacteriological and other analyses. The water in the swimming pool is examined daily. The laboratory service is utilized to identify disease carriers, and in every other reasonable way to assist in the protection of student health.
DIVISION OF RECREATIONAL INSTRUCTION
Liberal provision is made by the College for voluntary recreational activities indoors and outdoors during six days of the week and throughout vacation periods. Emphasis is laid on recreation as a health habit and a means of social training.
DIVISION OF ATHLETICS
(1) _Athletic Supervision._
Three organizations are concerned:
(_a_) The Faculty Athletic Committee, which has to do with all athletic activities that involve academic relationships.
(_b_) The Athletic Council, a committee of the Department of Hygiene, charged with the supervision of all business activities connected with student athletic enterprises.
(_c_) The Athletic Association of the Student Body.
(2) _Athletic Instruction._
The Department utilizes various intramural and extramural athletic activities for the purpose of securing a further influence on the promotion of health habits, the development of physical power, and the establishment and maintenance of high standards of sportsmanly conduct on part of the individual and the group.
At present the schedule includes the following sports: baseball, basket ball, track and field, swimming and water polo, tennis, soccer foot ball, and hand ball.
THOMAS ANDREW STOREY, M.D. _College of the City of New York_
[It was hoped that it would be possible to include with Professor Storey's chapter a number of forms and photographs calculated to serve as aids in the organization and conduct of a College Department of Hygiene. As Professor Storey's work is very distinctive, other institutions which are striving to organize effective departments of physical education would have found his experiences as graphically depicted in these photographs and summed up in these charts extremely helpful. Unfortunately it has proved impossible to print them here on account of limitations of space, but all who are interested in securing further information can obtain these valuable guides in the introductory stages of the inauguration of a Department of Hygiene by applying to the College of the City of New York. EDITOR.]
Footnotes:
[12] The construction of this chapter on the teaching of physical training is based very largely upon the experiences and organization of the Department of Hygiene in the College of the City of New York.
[13] This precollegiate instruction is, unfortunately, uniformly poor in so far as it relates to health.
[14] The present enrollment in these classes, February, 1919, is approximately 1500.