Chapter 7

THE INTRODUCTORY STUDIES

CHAPTER

I HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE _Stephen P. Duggan_

II PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING _Sidney E. Mezes_

III GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING _Paul Klapper_

I

HISTORY AND PRESENT TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE

1. THE COLONIAL PERIOD

=The predominance of the religious motive=

The American colonies were founded chiefly by Englishmen who came to America for a variety of reasons. Some of these were economic and political, but the most important of their reasons was the desire to practice their religious convictions with greater freedom than was permitted at home. Apart from the state religion, however, all the colonists were animated by a love for English institutions which they transplanted to the New World, and among these institutions were the grammar school and the college. Wherever the Reformation had been chiefly a religious rather than a political and ecclesiastical movement, the interest in education and the effect upon it were direct and immediate. This was true where Calvinism prevailed, as in the Netherlands, Scotland, and among the Puritans in England. Hence it is natural to find that the first effective movements in America toward the establishment of educational institutions, both elementary and higher, should have taken place in New England.

A large proportion of university graduates were included among the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were chiefly graduates of Cambridge, which had always been religiously more tolerant than Oxford, and especially of Emmanuel College, which was the stronghold of Puritanism at Cambridge. It was natural that these men, leaders in the affairs of the colony, should want to establish a New Cambridge University, but it is astonishing that they were able to do so as early as 1636, only six years after the founding of this colony. Two years later the college was named after John Harvard, a clergyman and a graduate of Emmanuel, who upon his death bequeathed half his estate and all his fine library of three hundred volumes to the college. The religious motive predominated in the founding of Harvard, for though the colonists longed "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity," they were actuated chiefly by dread "to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."

Harvard remained the sole instrument in the colonies for that purpose for more than half a century. In 1693 the College of William and Mary was founded in Virginia, with the most generous endowment of any pre-Revolutionary college, generous because of the help received from the mother country. It was the child of the Church of England, and its president and its professors had to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. Subscription to a religious creed was also demanded of the president and tutors of the third American college, founded in 1701. This Collegiate Institute, as it was called, moved from place to place for more than a decade, but finally it settled permanently in New Haven in 1717. It afterward received the name of Yale College in honor of Elihu Yale, who had given it generous assistance.

As a result of the founding of these three institutions, the New England and the Southern colonies had their need for ministers fairly well supplied, but this was not yet true of the Middle colonies. However, the Presbyterians had become particularly strong in the Middle colonies, and their religious zeal resulted in the establishment of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1746.

A few years later Benjamin Franklin advanced for the college a new _raison d'être_. In 1749 he published a pamphlet entitled "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," in which he advocated the establishment of an academy whose purpose was not the training of ministers but the secular one of developing the practical virtue necessary in the opening up of a new country. The Academy was opened in 1751, and the charter, granted in 1755, designated the institution as "The College, Academy, and Charitable School of Philadelphia." Though the extremely modern organization and curriculum suggested by Franklin were not realized, the institution, which was afterward called "The University of Pennsylvania," offered the most liberal curriculum of any college in the colonies up to the Revolution.

The human motive was uppermost also in the establishment of King's College in 1754. The colonial assembly desired its establishment to enhance the welfare and reputation of the colony, and the only connection between the college and the Church of England lay in the requirement that the president should be a communicant of that church and that the morning and evening service of the college should be performed out of the liturgy of that church. But the religious motive again comes to the fore in the establishment of Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, primarily to train ministers for the Baptist churches; of Queens, afterwards named Rutgers, in 1766, to provide ministers for the Dutch Reformed churches; and of Dartmouth, in 1769, from which it was hoped at first that the evangelization of the Indians would proceed.

=Character of the colonial college=

These colonial colleges in their histories bear a great resemblance to one another. They were almost all born in poverty and led a desperate financial existence for many years. In some cases survival was possible only as the result of the untiring self-sacrifice of some great personality like Eleazar Wheelock, the first president of Dartmouth; in all cases, of the devotion of teachers and officers. Their beginnings were all small; in some cases the president was the only member of the instructing staff and taught all the subjects of the curriculum. The students were few in number, the equipment was simple, the buildings usually consisting of a house for the president, in which he often heard recitations, a dormitory for the students, and a college hall. Libraries, laboratories, and recreational facilities were usually conspicuous by their absence. In fact, as the curriculum consisted almost exclusively of philosophy, Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and a little mathematics, there was no great need of much equipment. The classics were taught by the intensive grammatical method; in philosophy there was a great deal of dialectical disputation; rhetoric was studied as an aid to oratory; mathematics included only arithmetic and geometry. The aim of instruction was, not to give a wide acquaintance with many fields of knowledge for cultural and appreciative purposes, but rather to develop power through intensive exercise upon a restricted curriculum. But the value of the materials utilized to produce power which would function in oratory, debate, and diplomacy is splendidly illustrated in the decades before the Revolution. The contest between the colonies and the mother country was essentially a rational contest in which questions of constitutional law and, indeed, of the fundamental principles of civil and political existence were debated. Splendidly did the leaders of public opinion in the colonies, almost every one of whom was a graduate of a colonial college, defend the cause of the colonists in pamphlet and debate. And when debate was followed by war, twenty-five per cent of the twenty-five hundred graduates of the colonial colleges were found in the military service of their country. At the close of the struggle for independence, it was again upon the shoulders of the men who had gained vision and character in the colonial colleges that the burden fell of organizing the mutually suspicious and antagonistic colonies into one nation. Space will not permit even of the enumeration of the great leaders who graduated from all the colonial colleges, but an idea of the service rendered by those institutions to the new nation may be obtained by mentioning the names of a few statesmen who received their instruction in one of the least of them, William and Mary. In its classrooms were taught Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Randolph, James Monroe, and John Marshall.

2. THE NATIONAL ERA

=French influence=

French influence upon American political and intellectual life had become quite pronounced as the result of the contact between the leaders of the two peoples during and after the Revolution. That influence was reflected in the colleges. Instruction in the French language was offered in several of the colleges before the close of the eighteenth century, and a chair of French was established at Columbia as early as 1779 and at William and Mary in 1793. The secularizing influence of the French united also with the democratizing influence of the Revolution in diminishing the influence of the church upon the colleges and emphasizing the influence of the State and especially the relations between college and people. Of the fourteen colleges founded between 1776 and 1800, the majority were established upon a non-sectarian basis. These included institutions of a private nature like Washington and Lee, Bowdoin, and Union, as well as institutions closely related to the state governments like the Universities of North Carolina and of Vermont. There can hardly be any doubt that the French system of centralized administration in civil affairs influenced the establishment of the University of the State of New York. The University of the State of New York is not a local institution, but a body of nine regents elected by the legislature to control the administration of education throughout the State of New York. Though organized by Alexander Hamilton, it was in all probability much influenced by John Jay, who returned from France in 1784. But the most potent factor in the spread of French influence in the early history of our country was Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson was American minister to France, he studied the French system of education and embodied ideas taken from it in the organization of the University of Virginia. This occupied much of his attention during the last two decades of his life. The University was to be entirely non-sectarian and had for its purpose (1) to form statesmen, legislators, and judges for the commonwealth; (2) to expand the principles and structure of government, the laws which regulate the intercourse of states, and a sound spirit of legislation; (3) to harmonize and promote the interests of all forms of industry, chiefly by well-informed views of political economy; (4) to develop the reasoning faculties of youth and to broaden their minds and develop their character; (5) to enlighten them with knowledge, especially of the physical sciences which will advance the material welfare of the people. These progressive views of what the college should aim to do were associated with equally advanced views of college administration, such as the elective system and the importation of professors from abroad. The remarkable vision, constructive imagination, courage, and faith of Jefferson in his break with what was traditional and authoritative in education has been justified by the fine career of the university which he founded.

=The state universities system=

All the colleges that were established before the Revolution, and most of those between the Revolution and the year 1800, had received direct assistance from the colonial or state government either in grants of land, money, the proceeds of lotteries, or special taxes. Most of them, however, were dependent upon private foundations and controlled by denominational bodies. The secularizing influence from France, the growing interest in civic and political affairs, and the democratic spirit resulting from the Revolution combined to develop a distrust of the colleges as they were organized and a desire to bring them under the control of the state. This was apparent in 1779, when the legislature of Pennsylvania withdrew the charter of the college of Philadelphia and created a new corporation to be known as "The Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania"; it was shown in 1787 when Columbia College was granted a new charter by the state legislature, under which the board of trustees were all drawn from the Board of Regents of the State; it was made most evident in 1816 when the legislature of New Hampshire transformed Dartmouth College into a university without the consent of the board of trustees and empowered the governor and council to appoint a Board of Overseers. In the celebrated Dartmouth College case, 1819, the old board of trustees, when defeated before the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in their suit for the recovery of property which had been seized, carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States and engaged Daniel Webster as their counsel. The Court declared the act of the New Hampshire legislature in violation of the provision of the Constitution of the United States which reads that "No state shall pass any ... law impairing the obligation of contracts." The decision drew a sharp distinction between public and private corporations, and a necessary inference was that most of the existing institutions for higher education were in the latter class. The result was to strengthen the rising demand for publicly controlled institutions. The Southern and Western states across the Alleghanies that were on the point of framing state constitutions made provision for state universities under state control.

The intention to provide higher education freely for the people had already received its greatest impetus in an Act of Congress passed shortly after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the organization of the Northwest Territory. By that act two entire townships of public land were reserved to the states to be erected out of the territory, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be devoted to the establishment of a state university. These universities followed swiftly upon the establishment of new states, and the democratic ideal that prevailed is shown in the determination that the state university was to be the crown of the public educational system of the state. This is well illustrated in the provision of the constitution of Indiana, adopted in the very year of the Dartmouth College decision, 1819, which reads, "It shall be the duty of the General Assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all." Circumstances did permit in the following year, and the provisions of the bill materialized. The national policy of granting public lands for educational purposes to new states was continued, and one or two townships were devoted in each case to the establishment of a state university. National assistance to higher education was given on an immense scale in 1862, when the Morrill Act was passed providing for the grant of 30,000 acres of land for each representative and senator, to be devoted to the support in each state of a higher institution of learning, in which technical and agricultural branches should be taught. Within twenty years every state in the Union had taken advantage of this splendid endowment, either to found a new state university which would comply with the requirements as regards courses of instruction or to establish an agricultural college as an independent institution, or in connection with some already existing institution. Not only do some of the finest state universities like those of California, Illinois, and Minnesota owe their origins to the Morrill Act, but others owe to it their real beginnings as institutions of collegiate grade. Up to the passage of the Morrill Act a dozen state universities struggled to maintain themselves with meager revenues and few students. They were trying to do broad academic work, but by no means reached the standards of the strong colleges in the eastern part of the country.

The establishment of state-supported and state-controlled universities in the commonwealths organized after the close of the eighteenth century by no means put an end to the establishment of colleges upon religious foundations. Denominational zeal was very strong in the decades preceding the Civil War, and the church was the center of community life in the newly settled regions. The need to provide an intelligent ministry and also a higher civilization led to the establishment of many small sectarian colleges in the new states. Despite the fact that practically all of them would today be considered only of secondary grade, they accomplished a splendid work and provided ideals and standards of intellectual life in a new country whose population was engaged chiefly in supplying the physical needs of life. The response made in the Civil War by the institutions of higher education throughout the United States, whether privately or publicly supported, was a magnificent return for the sacrifices endured in their establishment and maintenance. Everywhere throughout the North the colleges were depleted of instructors and students who had entered the ranks, and in the South nearly all the colleges were compelled to close their doors. Upon the shoulders of their graduates fell the burden of directing civil and military affairs in state and nation.

3. THE MODERN ERA

Were a visitor to Harvard or Columbia in 1860 to revisit it today, the changes he would observe would be startling. The elective system, graduate studies, professional and technical schools, an allied woman's college, and a summer session are a few of the most noticeable activities incorporated since 1860. It would be impossible to set any date for the beginning of this transformation, so gradual and subtle has it been, but the accession of Dr. Charles W. Eliot to the presidency of Harvard College in 1869 and the establishment of Johns Hopkins University in 1876 are definite landmarks.

This chapter is a history of the American college, and space will not permit of a detailed description of these activities but simply of a narration of the way they developed and of the forces which brought them into being.

=The curriculum and the elective system=

It has already been mentioned that the curriculum of the average American college at the beginning of the nineteenth century differed but little from the curriculum followed in the middle of the seventeenth. The reason is simple. The curriculum is based upon the biological principle of adaptation to environment, and the environment of the average American of 1800 differed but slightly from his ancestor of a century and a half previous. The growth of the curriculum follows, slowly it is often true, upon the growth of knowledge. The growth of knowledge during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was slow and insignificant compared to its marvelous growth in the nineteenth century, particularly in the last half of it. The great discoveries in science, first in chemistry, then in physics and biology, resulted in their gradually displacing much of the logic and philosophy which had maintained the prime place in the old curriculum. The interest aroused in the French language and literature by our Revolution; in the Spanish by the South American wars of independence; and in the German by the distinguished scholars who studied in the German universities during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, caused a demand that those languages as well as English have a place in the curriculum. This could be secured only by making them partly alternatives to the classical languages. The Industrial Revolution, based as it was upon the application of science to industry, not only gave an impetus to the establishment of technical schools, but by revolutionizing the production and distribution of wealth pushed into the curriculum the science that deals with wealth, political economy. The growth of cities that followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the conflicts between the interests of classes,--viz., landowners, capitalists, and laborers,--the rapid decay of feudalism and the spread of political democracy following the French Revolution, the expansion of commerce to all corners of the globe and the resulting development of colonialism, all these human interests gave a new meaning to the study of history and politics which caused them to secure a place of great prominence in the curriculum during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

It is perfectly obvious that as the time at the student's disposal remained the same, if he were to pursue even a part of the new subject matter that was gradually admitted into the curriculum, the course of study could no longer remain wholly prescribed and he would have to be granted some freedom of choice. The growth in number of students also produced changes in administration favorable to the introduction of the elective system. In the early history of the American college one instructor taught a single class in all subjects, and it was not until 1776 that the transfer was made at Harvard from the teaching of classes by one instructor to the teaching of each subject by one instructor. With increase in numbers the students were unable to receive in each year instruction by every member of the teaching staff. In spite of the quite obvious advantages of the elective system, it was obstinately resisted by the defenders of the classics and also of orthodox religion and at first made but slow progress. Thomas Jefferson gave it the first great impetus when he made it an essential element in the organization of the University of Virginia in 1825. Francis Wayland, president of Brown University and one of the few college presidents of his day who were educators in the modern sense, made a splendid exposition and defense of it in 1850 in his "Report to the Corporation of Brown University on Changes in the System of Collegiate Education." But the elective system waited upon the elevation of Charles W. Eliot to the presidency of Harvard in 1869 for its general realization; in 1872 the senior year at Harvard became wholly elective; in 1879, the junior year; in 1884, the sophomore year; and in 1894 the single absolute requirement that remained in the entire college course was English A. The action of Harvard was rapidly imitated to a more or less thorough extent throughout the country.

Probably no two colleges administer the elective system in the same way. There has been a considerable revulsion of opinion against unrestricted election of individual subjects. In many colleges the subjects of the curriculum were arranged into groups which must be elected _in toto_. This resulted in the multiplication of bachelor's degrees, each indicating the special course--arts, science, philosophy, or literature--which had been followed. At the present time the tendency is to prescribe the subjects considered essential to a liberal education chiefly in the first two years and to permit election among groups of related courses in the last two. This has maintained the unity that formerly prevailed and introduced greater breadth into the curriculum. It has also brought the new bachelor's degrees into disfavor, and today the majority of the best colleges give only the A.B. degree for the regular academic course. Valuable modifications in the elective system are constantly being adopted. One such is the preceptorial system at Princeton and elsewhere, under which the preceptors personally supervise the reading and study of a small group of students and can therefore advise them from personal knowledge of their capacity. Another is the system of honor courses adopted at Columbia and elsewhere, whereby a distinction is made between mere "passmen" and students desirous of attaining high rank in courses that are carefully organized in sequence.

=German Influence and graduate study=

The introduction of new subjects into the curriculum of the college and the adoption by it of the elective system owe much to German influence upon American education. Though this influence was partly exerted by the study of the German language and literature, it resulted chiefly from the residence of American students at German universities. The first American to be granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from a German university was Edward Everett, who received it at Göttingen in 1817. He was followed by George Ticknor, George Bancroft, Henry W. Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, Frederick Henry Hedge, William Dwight Whitney, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, and a host of scholars who shed luster upon American education and scholarship in the mid-nineteenth century. Most of these men became associated with American colleges in some capacity and had a profound influence upon their ideals, organization, and methods of teaching. They came back devoted advocates of wide and deep scholarship, of independent research, and of the need of such scholastic tools as libraries and laboratories. But especially did they give an impetus to the movement in favor of freedom of choice (_Lernfreiheit_) in studies. Only by the adoption of such a principle could the pronounced tastes or needs of individual students be satisfied.

Some slight effort had been made in the first four decades of the nineteenth century by a few of the colleges to conform to the desire of students for further study in some chosen field, but the results were negligible. In 1847 Yale established a "department of philosophy and the arts for scientific and graduate study leading to the degree of bachelor of philosophy." The first degree of doctor of philosophy was bestowed in 1861, but a distinct graduate school was not organized until 1872. Harvard announced in the same year the establishment of a graduate department to which only holders of the bachelor's degree would be admitted and in which the degrees of doctor of philosophy and doctor of science would be conferred. The graduate department was not made a separate school, however, until 1890.

The greatest impetus to the establishment of graduate schools in the American universities was made by the establishment of Johns Hopkins University in 1876. Upon its foundation the chief aim was announced to be the development of instruction in the methods of scientific research. The influence of this institution upon the development of higher education in the United States has been incalculably great. Johns Hopkins was not a transplanted German university. The unique place of the college in American education was shown by the fact that graduate schools have followed the lead of Johns Hopkins in building upon the college. Even Clark University at Worcester, founded in 1889 upon a purely graduate basis, established an undergraduate college in 1902.

One of the most gratifying features of higher education in the United States during the past quarter century has been the extension of graduate schools to the strong state universities. Research work in them usually began in the school of agriculture, where the intensive study of the sciences, particularly chemistry and biology, had such splendid results in improved farming and dairying that legislatures were gradually persuaded to extend the support for research to purely liberal studies. With the growth and development of graduate schools in this country, the practice of going to Europe for advanced specialized study has abated considerably. It will probably so continue in the future, particularly with regard to Germany. On the other hand, should the new ideal of international good will become a living reality, education through a wide system of exchange professors and students may be expected to make its contribution.

=Technical and professional study=

While the graduate school was built upon the college, the technical school grew up by the side of it or upon an independent foundation. The first technical school was established at Troy, New York, in 1824, and was called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, after its founder, Stephen Van Rensselaer. For a score of years no other development of consequence was made, but in 1847 the foundations were made of what have since become the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard and the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. The passage of the Morrill Act in 1862 had a quickening effect on education in engineering and agriculture. In the decade from 1860 to 1870 some twenty-two technical institutions were founded, most of them by the aid of the land grants. The most important of them is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where instruction was first given in 1865 and which has exerted by far the greatest influence upon the development of scientific and technical education. The best technical schools require a high school diploma for admission and have a four-year course of study, but the only technical school on a graduate basis is the School of Mines at Columbia University.

Professional education in theology, law, and medicine in the United States was conducted chiefly upon the apprenticeship system down into the nineteenth century. Though chairs of divinity existed in the colonial colleges in the eighteenth century, systematic preparation for the ministry was not generally attempted and the prospective minister usually came under the special care of a prominent clergyman who prepared him for the profession. In 1819 Harvard established a separate faculty of divinity, and three years later Yale founded a theological department. Since then about fifty colleges and universities have established theological faculties and about 125 independent theological schools have been founded as the result of denominational zeal. A majority of all these institutions require at least a high school diploma for admission; half of them require a college degree. Nearly all offer a three-year course of study and confer the degree of bachelor of divinity.

Previous to the Civil War the great majority of legal practitioners obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became associated with it in 1830. Up to 1870 but three terms of study were required for a degree; until 1877 students were admitted without examination, and special students were admitted without examination as late as 1893. Since then the advance in standards has been very rapid, and in 1899 Harvard placed its law school upon a graduate basis. Though but few others have emulated Harvard in this respect, the improvement in legal education during the past two decades has been marked. Of the 120 law schools today, the great majority are connected with colleges and universities, demand a high school diploma for admission, maintain a three-year course of study, and confer the degree of LL.B. Twenty-four per cent of the twenty thousand students are college graduates. In some of the best schools the inductive method of study--i.e., the "case method"--has superseded the lecture, and in practically all the moot court is a prominent feature.

Entrance into the medical profession in colonial times was obtained by apprenticeship in the office of a practicing physician. The first permanent medical school was the medical college of Philadelphia, which was established in 1765 and which became an integral part of the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. Columbia, Harvard, and Dartmouth also founded schools before the close of the eighteenth century, and these were slowly followed by other colleges in the early decades of the nineteenth century. During almost the entire nineteenth century medical education in the United States was kept on a low plane by the existence of large numbers of proprietary medical "colleges" organized for profit, requiring only the most meager entrance qualifications, giving poor instruction, and having very inadequate equipment in the way of laboratories and clinics. In fact, medical education did not obtain a high standard until the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1893. Since then the efforts of the medical schools connected with the strong universities and of the Rockefeller Foundation to raise the minimum standard of medical education have resulted in the elimination of the weakest medical schools. The total number fell from 150 in 1900 to 100 in 1914. Not all of these demand a high school diploma for admission, though the tendency is to stiffen entrance requirements, but all have a four-year course of study. In most institutions experience in laboratory, clinic, and hospital has superseded the old lecture system as the method of instruction. Closely associated with the progress in medicine and to a great extent similar in history has been the progress in dentistry and pharmacy. There are now fifty schools of dentistry, with nearly 9000 students, and seventy-two schools of pharmacy, with nearly 6000 students.

One of the most gratifying advances in professional education has been that of the teacher. Practically all the state universities and many of the universities and colleges upon private foundations have established either departments or schools of education which require at least the same entrance qualifications as does the college proper and in many cases confine the work to the junior and senior years. Teachers College of Columbia University is on a graduate basis. Though many of the 250 training and normal schools throughout the country do not require a high school diploma for admission, the tendency is wholly in that direction. In no field of professional education has the application of scientific principles to actual practice made such progress as in that of the teacher.

=College education for women--The independent college=

Few movements in the history of American education had more important results than the academy movement which prevailed during the period between the Revolution and the Civil War. Possibly the principle upon which the new nation was established, i.e., the privilege of every individual to make the most of himself, influenced the founders of the academies to make provision for the education of girls beyond the mere rudiments. Certainly this aspect of the movement had a far-reaching influence. Some of the earliest of the academies admitted girls as well as boys from the beginning, and some soon became exclusively female. When it became evident from the work of the academies that sex differences were not of as great importance as had been supposed, it was not a long step to higher education. Some of the academies added a year or two to the curriculum and took on the more dignified name of "seminary." In this transition period the influence of a few great personalities was profound, and even a brief sketch of the history of women's education cannot omit to mention the splendid work of Emma Willard and Mary Lyon. Mrs. Willard was an exponent of the belief that freedom of development for the individual was the greatest desideratum for humanity. She not only diffused this idea in her addresses and writings but tried to utilize it in the establishment in 1814 of the Troy Female Seminary, which was the forerunner of many others throughout the country. Mary Lyon was rather the representative of the religious influence in education, the embodiment of the belief that to do one's duty is the great purpose in life. In 1837 she founded Mount Holyoke Seminary, which had an influence of inestimable value in sending well-equipped women throughout the country a teachers. The importance of this service was particularly evident during the period of the Civil War.

Although a number of excellent institutions for women bearing the name of college were founded before the Civil War, the first one of really highest rank was Vassar College, which opened its doors to students in 1865. Smith and Wellesley were founded in 1875, and Bryn Mawr in 1885. These four colleges are in every respect the equal of the best colleges for men. They are the most important of a dozen independent colleges for women, almost all of which are situated in the East. To establish the independent college was the chief method adopted in the older parts of the country to solve the problem of women's higher education, rather than to reorganize colleges for men where conditions were already established.

=The development of coeducation=

The independent college is not the method that has prevailed in the West. When the inspiration to higher education for women arrived west of the Alleghanies, conditions, especially lack of resources, practically necessitated coeducation. Oberlin, founded in 1834, was the first fully coeducational institution of college grade in the world. In 1841 three women received from it the bachelor's degree, the first to get it. Oberlin's success had a pronounced influence on the state universities, which, it was argued, should be open and free to all citizens, since they were supported by public taxation. Almost all the state universities and the great majority of the colleges and universities on private foundations are today coeducational. The results predicted by pessimists, viz., that the physical health of women would suffer, that their intellectual capacity would depreciate scholarship, and that the interests of the family would be menaced, have not eventuated.

=The affiliated college for women=

The spread of coeducation in the state universities of the West and the South and its presence in the newer private universities like Cornell and Chicago had an influence upon the older universities of the East. This influence has resulted in a third method of solving the problem of women's education; viz., the establishment of the affiliated college. Several universities have established women's colleges, sometimes under the same and sometimes under a different board of trustees, to provide the collegiate education for women which is given to men by the undergraduate departments. Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia University, Radcliffe College, affiliated with Harvard University, Woman's College, affiliated with Brown University, the College for Women, affiliated with the Western Reserve University, and the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women, affiliated with Tulane University, have all been founded within the past forty years.

=Graduate and professional studies for women=

All the universities for men except Princeton and Johns Hopkins and all the fully coeducational institutions admit women upon the same terms as men to graduate work. Graduate work is also undertaken with excellent results in some of the independent women's colleges, as at Bryn Mawr. Professional education for women has been coeducational from the beginning, with the exception of medicine. The prejudice against coeducation in that profession was so strong that five women's medical schools were organized, but they provide instruction for little more than a quarter of the women medical students. The increase in the number of women in professional schools has not by any means kept pace with the increase in the colleges. It appears that, with the exception of teaching, woman is not to be a very important sector in the learned professions in the near future.

=Undergraduate life--Fraternities=

Nothing differentiates more clearly the American college from European institutions of higher education than the kind of non-scholastic activities undertaken by the students. From the very beginning the college became a place of residence as well as of study for students from a distance, and the dormitory was an essential element in its life. With increase in numbers, especially after the Revolution, when all distinctions of birth or family were abolished, students naturally divided into groups. The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded in 1776 at William and Mary, with a patriotic and literary purpose, and membership in it has practically ever since been confined to graduates who have attained high scholastic standing. When one speaks of college fraternities, however, he does not refer to Phi B K, but to one of the intercollegiate social organizations which have chapters in several colleges organized somewhat upon the plan of a club and whose members live in a chapter house. The first such fraternity was founded at Yale in 1821, but it was limited to the senior class. The three fraternities established at Union in 1825-1827 form the foundation of the present system. The fraternities spread rapidly and are today very numerous. There are about thirty of national importance, having about a thousand chapters and a quarter of a million members. The fraternity system is bitterly attacked as being undemocratic, expensive, emphasizing social rather than scholastic attainments, and, generally speaking, a divisive rather than a unifying factor in college life. Hence some colleges have abolished it. Fraternities have been defended, however, as promoting close fellowship and even helping to develop character. So strongly are they entrenched, not only in undergraduate but also in alumni affection, that they probably form a permanent element in college life.

=Religious life=

The early American college was primarily a place to prepare for the ministry, and personal piety was a matter of official enforcement. For a number of reasons religious zeal declined in the eighteenth century. After the Revolution, under the influence of the new political theories and of French skepticism the percentage of students professing to be active Christians fell very low. In the early nineteenth century the interest of students in religion increased, and religious organizations in a number of colleges were founded. Practically all of these later gave way to the Young Men's Christian Association, which has now over 50,000 members organized in almost all the colleges of the country save the Roman Catholic. The religious interests of Roman Catholic students are in many colleges served by the Newman Clubs and similar organizations, and of Jewish students by the Menorah Society. The religion of college students has become less a matter of form and speech and more a matter of service--social service of many kinds at home and missionary service abroad.

=Physical education=

The educational reformers of Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries placed great emphasis upon a more complete physical training. This interest was felt in the United States, and simple gymnastic apparatus was set up at Harvard and Yale in 1826. The movement spread very slowly, however, due probably to ignorance of its real physiological import. Since the Civil War the development of the gymnastic system has been rapid, and now practically every first-class college has its gymnasium, attendance upon which is compulsory, and some have their stadium and natatorium. Of independent origin but hastened by the spread of the gymnasium is the vast athletic interest of undergraduates. Its earliest form, conducted on a considerable scale, was rowing. The first rowing club was formed at Yale in 1843, and the first intercollegiate race was rowed on Lake Winnepesaukee in 1852, Harvard defeating Yale. Rowing is now a form of athletics at every college where facilities permit. The first baseball nine was formed at Princeton in 1859, and the game spread rapidly to all the other colleges. Football in a desultory and unorganized way made its appearance early in the nineteenth century. As early as 1840 an annual game was played at Yale between the freshmen and the sophomores, but the establishment of a regular football association dates from 1872, also at Yale. In the following year an intercollegiate organization was formed, and since then football has increased in popularity at the colleges to such an extent that just as baseball has become the great national game, so has football become the great American collegiate game. Track athletics is the most recent form of athletic sports to be introduced into the college, and most colleges now have their field days. In addition to these four major forms of college sports, tennis, lacrosse, basketball, and swimming also have a prominent place. The four major sports are usually under the control of special athletic associations, which spend large sums of money and have a great influence with the students. In fact, so great has become the interest of college students in athletics that much fear has been expressed about its influence upon scholastic work, and voices are not lacking demanding its curtailment.[1] Military training is a phase of physical education which, though it had earlier found a place in the land-grant institutions, came to the fore as a part of the colleges' contribution to winning the world war. Students' Army Training Corps were established at many of the higher institutions of the country, and the academic studies were made to correlate with the military work as a nucleus. At the present time, however, the colleges are putting their work back on a pre-war basis, and it seems most unlikely that military training will survive as a corporate part of their work.

=Student literary activities--College journalism=

Journalism, though its actual performance is limited to a small number of students, has had an honored place as an undergraduate activity for almost a hundred years. It served first as a means of developing literary ability among the students, afterwards as a vehicle for college news, and now there has been added to these purposes the uniting of alumni and undergraduates. Hence we find among college journals dailies, monthlies, and quarterlies, some of them humorous and some with a serious literary purpose. Journalism is not the only method of expressing undergraduate thought. There has been a great revival of intracollegiate and of intercollegiate debating in recent years. Literary societies for debating the great issues preceding the Revolution was the first development of undergraduate life, and every college before and after the Revolution had strong societies. As undergraduate interests increased in number, and especially as the fraternity system began to spread, debating societies assumed a relatively less important place, but in the past two decades great interest has been revived in them. The glee club, or choral society, along with the college orchestra, minister to the specialized interests of some students, and the dramatic association to those of others. One significant result of such activities has been to establish a nexus between the college and community life.

=Student self-government=

One other feature of undergraduate life cannot be overlooked; viz., student self-government. The college student today is two or three years older than was his predecessor of fifty or sixty years ago. Moreover, with the great increase in the number of students has come a parallel increase in complexity of administration and in the duties of the college professor. Finally, a sounder psychology has taught the wisdom of placing in the hands of the students the control of many activities which they can supervise better than the faculty. As a result of these and of other influences, in many colleges today all extra-scholastic activities are either supervised by the student council, the members of which are elected by the students, or by a joint body of student and faculty members. The effect in almost every instance has been the diminution of friction between the faculty and students and the development of better relations between them. In some colleges the honor system is found, under which even proctoring at examinations does not exist, as all disciplinary matters, including the decision in serious offenses like cheating, rest with the student council. Student self-government is only one evidence of the democratization that has taken place in the administration of the college during the past two decades. Even more noticeable than student self-government is the tendency recently manifested to transfer more of the control of the government of the college from the board of trustees to the faculty.

=New opportunities in higher education=

With the extension of commerce and the attempt to bring it under efficient organization in the nineteenth century, the demand has been made upon the colleges to train experts in this field. Germany was the first to engage in it, and just before the war probably led the world. France and England have remained relatively indifferent. In America, the so-called "business college" proved entirely too narrow in scope, and beginning with the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania (1881), the higher institutions have begun to train for this important field. Some of the colleges of commerce, like those of Dartmouth and Harvard, demand extensive liberal preparation; others, like Wharton and the schools connected with the state universities, coördinate their liberal and vocational work; a few, like that of New York University, give almost exclusive attention to the practical element.

Two other movements might be mentioned as illustrating the attempt to extend the opportunity for higher education to an ever increasing number of people. One is the development of extension courses and the other the offering of evening work to those who cannot attend the regular sessions. These are both steps in the direction of equality of opportunity which is the ultimate aim of education in a democratic country.

=The future of the college in American education--Relation to secondary schools=

The college preceded the high school in time, and when the high school began its career in the middle of the nineteenth century it was made tributary to the college in all essentials. By deciding requirements for admission, the college practically prescribed the curriculum of the high school; by conducting examinations itself it practically determined methods of teaching in the high school. But a remarkable change in these respects has taken place in the past two decades. The high school, which is almost omnipresent in our country, has attained independence and today organizes its curricula without much reference to the college. If there be any domination in college entrance requirements today, it is rather the high school that dominates. Over a large part of the country, especially in states maintaining state universities, there are now no examinations for entrance to college. The college accepts all graduates of _accredited_ high schools--i.e., high schools that the state university decides maintain proper secondary standards. This growth in strength and independence has been accompanied by a lengthening of the high school course from two years in the middle of the last century to four years at the present time.

=The junior college=

With the introduction of the principle of promotion by subject instead of by class, the strong high schools have been enabled to undertake to teach subjects in their last years which were formerly taught in the first years of the college. They have done this so well that the practice has grown up in some parts of the country, especially on the Pacific Coast, of extending the course of the high school to six years and of completing in them the work of the first two years of college. This enables more young men and women throughout the state to receive collegiate education, and as the best-equipped teachers in the high schools are usually in the last years and the worst-equipped teachers in the college are usually in the first years, the system makes for better education. Moreover, it relieves the state universities of the crowds of students in the first two years and permits overworked professors to concentrate upon the advanced work of the last two years and upon research work in the graduate schools. A system which offers so many advantages and is so popular both in the high school and the university bids fair to spread.

=The abbreviated and condensed college course=

While the movement making for the elimination of the college from below has been taking place in the West, another movement having the same effect has been taking place in the East, only the pressure has been from above. The tendency is spreading for the professional schools of the strong universities to demand a college degree for admission. If the full four years of the college are demanded in addition to the four years of the secondary school and the eight years of the elementary school, the great majority of students will begin their professional education at twenty-two and their professional careers at twenty-six, and they will hardly be self-supporting before thirty. This seems an unreasonably long period of preparation compared to that required in other progressive countries. The German student, for example, begins his professional studies immediately upon graduation from the gymnasium at eighteen. Hence the demand has arisen for a shortening of the college course. This demand has been met in several ways. In some colleges the courses have been arranged in such a way that the bright and industrious student may complete the work required for graduation in three years. In others, as at Harvard, the student may elect in his senior year the studies of the first year of the professional school. Another tendency in the same direction is to permit students in the junior and even in the sophomore years to elect subjects of a vocational nature. This has been bitterly contested by those who hold that the minimum essentials of liberal culture should be acquired before vocational specialization begins. Columbia _permits_ a student to complete his college and professional studies in six years, and at the end of that time he receives both the bachelor's and the professional degrees.

It is to be noted, however, that these solutions of the problem and, in fact, most other solutions that have been suggested, apply only to a college connected with a university; they could not be administered in the independent college. But a movement has developed in the Middle West which may result in another solution; i.e., the Junior College. It can be best understood by reference to the policy of the University of Chicago. That institution divides its undergraduate course into two parts: a Junior College of two years, the completion of whose course brings with it the title of Associate in Arts, and a Senior College of two years, the completion of whose course is rewarded with the regular bachelor's degree. There have become affiliated with the University of Chicago a considerable number of colleges throughout the Mississippi Valley which have frankly become Junior Colleges and confine their work to the freshman and sophomore years. And this has become true of other universities. It would seem inevitable that the bachelor's degree will finally be granted at the end of the Junior College and some other degree, perhaps the master's, which has an anomalous place in American education in any case, at the end of the Senior College. This has, in fact, been suggested by President Butler. The University of Chicago has also struck out in another new direction. Provided a certain amount of work is done in residence at the University, the remainder may be completed _in absentia_, i.e., through correspondence courses.

The Junior College movement has had the excellent result of inducing many weak colleges to confine their work to what they really can afford to do. Many parts of our country have a surplus of colleges, chiefly denominational. Ohio alone has more than fifty. The cost of maintaining dormitories, laboratories, libraries, apparatus, and other equipment and paying respectable salaries cannot be met by the tuition fees in any college. The college must either have a large income-producing endowment, which few have, or must receive gifts sufficient to meet expenses. Gifts to colleges and universities form one of the finest evidences of interest in higher education in the United States, and reach really colossal proportions. In the past fifty years, during which this form of generosity has prevailed, over 600 million dollars have been given, and in 1914 gifts from private sources amounted to more than 30 million dollars. Most of this money is given to the non-sectarian institutions and not to the small denominational colleges scattered over the country. As they are in addition unable to compete with the state universities, they are for every reason justified in becoming Junior Colleges. But this does not apply to the old independent colleges, such as Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, etc., which have loyal and wealthy alumni associations. They have the support necessary to retain the four-year course and seem determined to do so.

Just what the outcome of the whole question of shortening the college course may be is not now evident. That concessions in time must be made to the demand for an earlier beginning of professional education seems certain. That the saving should be made in the college course is not so certain. A sounder pedagogy seems to indicate that one year, if not two, can be saved in the period from the sixth to the eighteenth year. It is probable that the arbitrary division of American education into elementary, secondary, collegiate, and university, each with a stated number of years, will give way to a real unification of the educational process. Most Americans would regret to see the college, the unique product of American education, which has had such an honorable part in the development of our civilization, disappear in the unifying process.

STEPHEN PIERCE DUGGAN _College of the City of New York_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography on the American college is almost inexhaustible. The list here given is confined to the best books that have appeared since 1900.

ANGELL, J. B. _Selected Addresses._ New York, 1912.

Association of American Universities. Proceedings of the Annual Conference.

BUTLER, N. M. _Education in the United States._ New York, 1900.

CATTELL, J. M. _University Control._ New York, 1913.

CRAWFORD, W. H. (editor). _The American College._ New York, 1915. (Papers by Faunce, Shorey, Haskins, Rhees, Thwing, Finley, Few, Slocum, Meiklejohn, Claxton.)

Cyclopedia of Education, article on "American College." New York, 1911.

DEXTER, E. G. _History of Education in the United States._ New York, 1904.

DRAPER, A. S. _American Education._ Boston, 1909.

FLEXNER, A. _The American College: A Criticism._ General Education Board, New York, 1908.

FOSTER, W. T. _Administration of the College Curriculum._ Boston, 1911.

HARPER, W. R. _The Trend in Higher Education._ Chicago, 1905.

KINGSLEY, C. D. _College Entrance Requirements._ United States Bureau of Education, 1913.

MACLEAN, G. E. _Present Standards of Higher Education in the United States._ United States Bureau of Education, 1913.

National Association of State Universities in the United States of America. Annual Transactions and Proceedings.

RISK, R. K. _America at College._ London, 1908.

SNOW, L. F. _College Curriculum in the United States._ New York, 1907.

THWING, C. F. _History of Higher Education in the United States._ New York, 1906.

---- _The American College; What It Is and What It May Become._ New York, 1914.

---- _College Administration._ New York, 1900.

WEST, A. F. _Short Papers on American Liberal Education._ New York, 1907.

Footnotes:

[1] W. T. Foster in N.E.A. Reports, 1915.

II

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR COLLEGE TEACHING

=Introduction=

Were this chapter to be a discussion of schemes of training, now in operation, that had been devised to prepare teachers for colleges, it could not be written, for there are no such schemes. Many elementary and secondary teachers have undergone training for their life work, as investigators have, by a different regimen, of course, for theirs. But if college and university teachers do their work well, it is because they are born with competence for their calling, or were self-taught, or happened to grow into competence accidentally, as a by-product of training for other and partly alien ends, or learned to teach by teaching.

There are able college men, presidents and others, who view this situation with equanimity, if not with satisfaction. Teachers are born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native teaching faculty, and mechanize our class procedure, it is objected.

Had the subject of training for college teaching been discussed, no doubt other objections would have been advanced. But it has not been discussed, as will be seen from the very scant bibliography at the end of the chapter. No plan of training for college teaching is in operation, and no discussion of such a plan can be found. Each of a half-dozen men has argued his individual views, and elicited no reply.

This state of facts notwithstanding, the subject is well worth discussing, and one may even venture to prophesy that in a decade, or at latest two, the subject will have a respectable literature, and enough training plans will be in operation to permit fruitful comparisons.

When specific training is first urged for specialized work, there always is opposition. The outgoing generation remembers the opposition to specialized training for law, medicine, and engineering, to say nothing of farming, school teaching and business. But in spite of obstructive and retarding objections, specialized types of training for specialized types of work have grown in number and favor, and today we are being shown convincingly that nations which have declined to set up the fundamental types of special training find themselves able to make effective only a fraction of their resources. The majority of the personnel in every higher calling has about average native aptitude for it, and it is just the average man who can be improved in competence for any work by training directed to that end rather than to another. This is, of course, true of college teaching.

=How the college teacher has been and is trained=

In early days in this country the great majority of college teachers were clergymen, trained in most cases abroad. Later bookish graduates came to be the chief source of supply, their appointment in their own colleges, and infrequently in others, following close upon their graduation. Well into the third quarter of last century college faculties were selected almost exclusively from these two types, representatives of the former decreasing and of the latter increasing in relative number. Neither type was specifically trained for teaching in colleges or elsewhere.

With the founding and developing of Johns Hopkins University a new era in higher education opened in this country. The paucity of exact scholarship came to be known, and the country's need of scholarship to be appreciated. In colleges grown from English seedlings we sought to implant grafts from German universities. Independent colleges and colleges within universities, while still called upon by American traditions and needs to prepare their students for enlightened living by means of a broadening and liberating training, came to be manned preponderatingly by narrowly specialized investigators, withdrawn from everyday life, with concentrated interests focused upon subjects or parts of subjects, rather than upon students. Little thought was, or is yet, given to the preparation of college teachers for their duties as teachers, and that little rested, and still in large measure rests, satisfied with the assumption that by some unexplained and it may be inexplicable transfer of competence a man closeted and intensively trained to search for truth in books and laboratories emerges after three or more years well equipped for divining and developing the mental processes and interests of freshmen.

Once fairly examined, this assumption lacks plausibility. "We consider the Ph.D. a scholar's degree and not a teacher's degree," says the dean of one of our leading graduate schools, and yet preparation for this scholar's degree has been and is practically the only formal preparation open to college teachers in this country.

=Equipment needed by college teachers=

It goes without saying that scholarship is one of the basal needs of college teachers, a scholarship that keeps alive, and is human and contagious. But it should be remembered that there are several kinds of scholarship, and it is pertinent to ask what kind college teachers need. Should they, for instance, model themselves on the broad shrewdness and alluring scholarly mellowness of James Russell Lowell or on the untiring encyclopedic exactitude and minuteness of Von Helmholz? Or is there an even better ideal or ideals _for them_? I would suggest that the teacher's knowledge of his subject should, essentially, be of a kind that would keep him in intellectual sympathy with the undeveloped minds of his students, and this means chiefly two things. The more points of contact of his knowledge with the past experience and future plans of his students the teacher has at his command, the better teacher he will be; for he can use them, not as resting places, but as points of departure for the development of phases of his subject outside the students' experience. And secondly, the teacher should see his subject entire, with its parts, as rich in number and detail as possible, each in its proper place within the whole. For the students' knowledge of the subject is vague and general; he is trying to place it, and many other new things, in some kind of a coherent setting; in fact, he is in college largely for the very purpose of working out some sort of rudimentary scheme of things. The duty of the college teacher is to help him in this quite as much as to teach him a particular subject. And, besides, each particular subject can be best taught if advantage is taken of every opportunity to attach it to the only knowledge of it the student has, vague and general though it be. Highly specialized and dehumanized knowledge is not as useful for the college teacher as broad and vital knowledge, which is, of course, much harder to acquire. Even in the case of "disciplinary" subjects, there is no gain in concealing the human bearings. The teacher should be trained to seize opportunities in the classroom and out to help the student, through his subject and his maturer life experience, to see the bearing of what he is learning on the life about him and on the life he is to lead. This is the college teacher's richest opportunity and the opportunity that tries him most shrewdly. If he is to rise to it, his entire equipment, native and acquired, must come into play.

What else does the teacher need? So that he may select the best and continue to improve them, he needs a knowledge of the different methods and aims in the teaching of his subject, and, so far as possible, of the results attained by each. Too much of college teaching is a blind groping, chartless and without compass. Instead of expecting each inexperienced teacher to start afresh, he should set out armed with the epitomized and digested teaching experience of those that have gone before him.

Finally, the teacher needs a sympathetic and expert understanding of the thinking and feeling of college students. This should be his controlling interest. The teacher, his interest in his subject, and in all else except the student, should be instrumental, not final. Every available strand of continuity between studenthood and teacherhood should thereafter be preserved.

This need suggests a capital weakness of the training for the doctorate in philosophy as a preparation for teaching. As it proceeds it shifts the interest from undergraduate student to scholarly specialty, and steadily snaps the ties that bound the budding investigator to his college days. It also explains the greatness of some college teachers and personalities before the eighties. Their degrees in arts were their licenses to teach. They suffered no drastic loss of touch with undergraduate thought and life. In the early years of their teaching this sympathetic and kindly understanding was fresh and strong, and they used it in their classroom and wove it into the tissue of their tutorial activities. A discerning observer of college faculties can even today discover in them men and women who entered them by the same door as these great ones of old, irregularly as we would say now,--without the hallmark, and whose good teaching is a surprise to their doctored colleagues. In one institution I know of, the best five teachers some years ago were all of this type. The training of college teachers might well, it therefore seems, include an apprenticeship, beginning with, or in exceptional cases before, graduation from college.

=The college legislator and administrator=

But the duties and opportunities of the college teacher do not stop at the door leading from his classroom. In addition to dealing directly with students, individually and in groups, and even, if possible, with their families, as he grows in service he becomes, as faculty member and committeeman, a college legislator and administrator. In exercising these important functions he needs the equipment that would aid him to take the central point of view, a background of scholarly knowledge of what education in general and college education in particular are in their methods and in their social functions and purposes. There is too much departmental logrolling, as well as too much beating of the air in faculty meetings, and too many excursions into the blue in faculty legislation and administration arrangements. The educational views of faculty members greatly need to be steadied, ordered, and appreciably broadened and deepened by a developed and trained habit of thinking educationally under the safeguards of scientific method and on the basis of an adequate supply of facts. That pedagogy has made but the smallest beginning of gathering and ordering such facts and developing a scientific method in this field is not a valid objection. These tasks are no more difficult than others that have been compared, as _they_ will be, the sooner for being imposed.

It is significant that coincident with sharp and widespread criticism of the American college (justified in part by what college teachers have been made into by their training), appear demands on the part of faculties for more power. In this connection it may be remembered that autocracy is the simplest and easiest form of government, and that history shows that it can at least be made to work with less brains and training than are required for the working of democracy. As American colleges and universities have grown in complexity and responsibility, their faculties have lost power because they did not acquire the larger competence that was the indispensable condition of even reasonably successful democratic control. It is highly desirable that the power of faculties should increase to the point of preponderance. But the added power they will probably acquire will not be retained unless faculty members learn their business much better than they now know it in most institutions. Thomas Jefferson, when asked which would come to dominate, the states or the federal government, replied that in the long run each of the opposed pair would prevail in the functions in which it proved the more competent.

=A tentative scheme of training for college teachers=

To outline a scheme of such importance without any experience to examine as a basis is a very bold undertaking, and one that can hope for but partial success. What I shall propose, however, is similar to the proposals of Pitkin (5), Horne (11), and Wolfe (14), my only predecessors in this rash enterprise. The general spirit and purpose of our proposals are the same. But we disagree more or less in details--which is fortunate, as it may encourage discussion of the subject, which is the thing most needed. Indeed, a lively sense of this need has led me to venture some unpopular assertions. It may also be admitted that the desiderata for teachers mentioned above are not likely to be all insured by any system of training.

The proposal submitted for discussion is that a three-year graduate course be established, its spirit and purpose being to train young men to become _college_ teachers. This course should lead to a doctorate; e.g., to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, or of Doctor of Philosophy in Teaching, or of Docendi Doctor. What degree is selected is, in the long run, relatively unimportant, provided the course is soundly conducive to its end.

The course might well be divided into three parts, having the approximate relative value in time and effort of two fifths, two fifths, and one fifth. These parts should proceed simultaneously throughout the three years, the first being an apprenticeship--under supervision, of course--in the functions of the college teacher, the second a broad course of study and investigation of the subject to be taught, and the third a course of pedagogical study and investigation. Let me suggest a minimum of detail within these outlines.

The apprentice teacher would, naturally, do the least classroom teaching during his first year, and the most during his last. He would also each year "advise" a group of freshman in studies and in life, or coöperate with students in the conduct of athletics, dramatics, publication work, or other "activities." On all this apprentice work he would report, and in all he would be guided and supervised appropriately by the department whose subject he was teaching, by the department of education, and by other departments concerned. This and other parts of the training would attract others in addition to narrowly bookish graduates, something much to be desired (other parts would eliminate those not bookish enough), and would tend to keep alive in all apprentices an interest in students, especially in student character, and to prevent them from thinking of students as disembodied minds.

The course of study and investigation in the subject to be taught should be based on adequate undergraduate work in the same and allied fields, and should be something like the honor course in Oxford or Cambridge (or our _old_ M.A. course) in its conduct and purpose; it should hark back to our collegiate origin in England. The work should be in charge of a don, a widely and wisely read and a very human guide, philosopher, and friend. Stated class meetings and precise count of hours of attendance should receive little emphasis. But wide reading of the subject, in a spirit that breeds contagion, running off into a study, in books, laboratories, and meetings, of the human and practical bearings of the subject, should be required, and enough conference with the don should be had to enable him to judge and criticize the student's plan and amount of work, to test his mettle in handling the subject, and to aid him to grasp it as a whole and in its chief subdivisions, and to get glimpses of its bearings on and place in human life. This part of the training should lead up to and culminate in a thesis dealing with some major phase of the subject comprehendingly in its setting and connections. Naturally this program could be carried out most successfully with the social subjects, which lend themselves easily to culture, like history or philosophy, and less completely with the exact subjects, which are better fitted for precise discipline, like mathematics. But if treated, as far as possible, after the manner indicated, even the latter could be made better instruments for the training of college teachers than they are now in narrow specialization for the Ph.D. degree. Among returning Rhodes scholars some excellent material for dons could be found.

The fifth of the course directed to pedagogy should include a very brief study of the methods of teaching the chosen subject, with glimpses into teaching methods in general; and courses in the history and philosophy of education, with emphasis on, but by no means exclusive dealing with, the educational and social functions of the college. It might include an intensive investigation of some relatively simple college problem in preparation for future faculty membership. All this should, of course, be intimately articulated with the student's apprenticeship work. Such a course of pedagogical study should furnish a basis for better teaching methods and for helpful self-criticism therein; should encourage the formation of a habit of thinking and working out educational problems scientifically with eyes open to the purpose of the college as a whole; and should discourage departmental selfishness in legislation and administration.

=Incidental advantage=

The college would, under this plan, have some of its teaching done at minimum cost by student teachers, who should receive only the graduate scholarship or fellowship now customary for Ph. D. candidates. Care would be necessary to prevent the assignment to them of mere routine hackwork without training value. It is safe to say that, though slightly less mature, their services, being supervised, would be more valuable than those rendered during their first few years of teaching by most better-paid winners of the doctorate of philosophy, who, if they do so at all, grope their way to usefulness as teachers, with little aid from others more experienced.

With good teaching prepared for, required, and adequately rewarded (a point to be developed later), somewhat longer schedules could properly be assigned and further economy effected. Schedules would, of course, have to be kept short enough to allow ample time for reading, for some writing, and for faculty and committee work in later years. But time would not be required by _college_ teachers for specialized research, and the freedom from such tasks resulting for them would be a blessed relief to many who are now compelled to assume a virtue they have not, and to conceal the love of teaching they have. And when we bear in mind the heavy mass of uninspired and unimportant hackwork that is now dumped on the scholarly world, we shall welcome the prospect of a lightened burden for ourselves.

The need of students, especially of freshmen, for advisers is widely recognized. They come into a new freedom exercised in a new environment. This makes for bewilderment that involves loss of precious time and opportunities, and presents perils which involve possible injuries to many and certain injuries to some. Efforts, many and various, to constitute a body of advisers chosen from among faculty members have met with but little success. With few exceptions the task is not congenial to those who now man our faculties, and for that and other reasons they are ill fitted for it. But a greater measure of success has been attained, even under present conditions, when the coöperation of volunteers from among seniors and graduate students has been had. This suggests that the problem might come nearer solution when some dependence came to be placed upon the services of apprentices. Such service would be a part of their regular work having a bearing on their future career, and would therefore be supervised and rest on sustained interest and the consciousness that it was counting.

Finally, young student teachers would, under proper encouragement and arrangement, help materially to bridge the gulf, that is broader than is wholesome, between a faculty of mature men and young students. The mixing of these different generations, so far as possible, is much to be desired, difficult as it is to accomplish.

=Consequent change of plan in appointments and promotions=

This is not the place to discuss the details of appointment and promotion plans, interesting and important as they are. But it is evident that the scheme of training outlined, if adopted, would call for changes in present practices.

The appointing authorities of colleges looking for young teachers could ascertain their strong and weak points as they developed during their apprenticeship in classrooms and in other educational activities, as well as the quality and trend of their scholarship. They would not rest satisfied with ascertaining the minute corner of the field of philosophy, history, or physics in which a man recommended had done research. Records could be kept throwing much-needed light on the teaching ability, scholarship, and personality of candidates for appointment. In selecting _college_ teachers, appointing authorities would value this evidence and would come to prefer teaching power to investigating ability.

Moreover, the record keeping, and, no doubt, some of the supervision begun during the apprentice years would continue during the early instructorial years. This would render it possible to evaluate and to value effectiveness in teaching in making promotions. Ambitious teachers would no longer be practically forced, as their only resort, to neglect their students and give their best energies to publication in order to make a name and get a call, in the interest of promotion. The expert teacher would have a chance and a dignity equal to that of the skilled investigator. The individual could follow, and not be penalized for so doing, his own bent and the line of his highest capacity.

=Training of investigators=

The training now given in graduate schools here and elsewhere for the doctorate in philosophy will, of course, continue, and increase rather than diminish. Investigators will be preferred in research, in universities, and in some colleges and college departments. They will be increasingly prized in the government service and in important branches of industry. The recent terrible experiences burn into our minds the imperative need strong nations have of exact knowledge and of skill that has a scientific edge. And the specific training for these great tasks will be stronger when it is based on a college course in which highly effective and whole-hearted teaching is valued and rewarded.

SIDNEY E. MEZES _College of the City of New York_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANONYMOUS. Confessions of One Behind the Times. _Atlantic_, Vol. 3, pages 353-356, March, 1913.

CANBY, H. S. The Professor. _Harpers_, April, 1913.

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bulletin No. 2, May, 1908, pages 55-57.

FLEXNER, ABRAHAM. Adjusting the College to American Life. _Science_, Vol. 29, pages 361-372.

HANDSCHIN, C. H. Inbreeding in the Instructional Corps of American Colleges and Universities. _Science_, Vol. 32, pages 707-709. November, 1910.

HOLLIDAY, CARL. Our "Doctored" Colleges. _School and Society_, Vol. 2, pages 782-784. November 27, 1915.

HORNE, HERMAN H. The Study of Education by Prospective College Instructors. _School Review_, Vol. 16, March, 1908, pages 162-170.

PITKIN, W. B. Training College Teachers. _Popular Science_, Vol. 74, pages 588-595. June, 1909.

Report of the Committee on Standards of American Universities. _Science_, Vol. 29, page 172. November 17, 1908.

ROBINSON, MABEL L. Need of Supervision in College Teaching. _School and Society_, Vol. 2, pages 514-519, October 9, 1915.

SANDERSON, E. D. Definiteness of Appointment and Tenure. _Science_, Vol. 39, pages 890-896, June, 1914.

STEWART, Charles A. Appointment and Promotion of College Instructors. _Educational Review_, Vol. 44, 1912, pages 249-256.

WILCZYNSKI, E. J. Appointments in College and Universities. _Science_, February 28, 1909; Vol. 29, pages 336ff.

WOLFE, A. B. The Graduate School, Faculty Responsibility, and the Training of University Teachers. _School and Society_, September 16, 1916.

III

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLEGE TEACHING

=Status of teaching in the colleges=

The investigator of educational practices and methods of teaching is impressed with an unmistakable educational anti-climax, for the conviction grows on him that elementary school teaching is on a relatively high plane, that secondary school teaching is not as effective, and that collegiate teaching, with rare exceptions, is ineffective and in urgent need of reform. A superficial survey of educational literature of the last ten years shows that while the problem of the high school is now receiving earnest attention, elementary education continues to absorb the earnest efforts of an army of vitally interested investigators. The field of college pedagogics is still virgin soil, and no significant or extensive program for improved methods of teaching has yet been advanced.

Three earnest and intelligent students representing three colleges of undisputed standing were asked informally about their instructors for the current semester. Nothing was said to make these students aware that their judgment would hold any significance beyond the friendly conversation. The summary of opinions is offered, not because the investigation is complete and affords a basis for scientific conclusion, but because it reflects typical college teaching in three recognized institutions of more than average standing.

STUDENT NO. I | STUDENT NO. II | STUDENT NO. III | | _Teacher A_: A popular | _Teacher A_: A good | _Teacher A_: A very and interesting | teacher of mathematics.| popular teacher of teacher. Talks | He assigns a new lesson| English. If the final enthusiastically, but | for home study. The | examination is given talks all the time. | next day he asks | by another teacher, I Lessons assigned are | questions on the | may not have enough not heard. Students | lesson. The answers are| specific facts to seldom recite. Written | written out on the | pass. We began Chaucer quizzes on themes of | blackboards. After | last week. He spent a assigned reading are | fifteen minutes all | good part of each rated by an assistant. | students take their | session reading to us. The work comes back | seats and the work on | All of us were with an A, a C, or a D,| the blackboard is taken| surprised to find how but we do not know why | up for explanation. He | much more the text the rating was given. | explains every | meant than after our Frequently two students| difficulty very | own reading. In the who worked together are| clearly. We rarely | last session we went marked B and D | cover the lesson. Some | to our book on respectively for the | topics go unexplained | literature and tried same work. Sometimes a | because during the next| to justify the a student who "cribbed"| hour the blackboard | characterization which his outline from | problems are based on | the author gives of another who actually | the lesson. If I | Chaucer. The class "worked it up" receives| understood the second | agreed with all in the a higher mark than was | half of each lesson as | book except in one given for the original.| clearly as the first, | characterization. In | I would feel hopeful | the composition work we | of a good grade in the | took up the structure | final examination. | of short narratives. | | The assignment was to | | find narratives in | | current periodicals, | | in the writings of | | standard authors, in | | newspapers, and then | | attempt to find whether | | the structure we | | studied was followed. | | In each case we had to | | justify any departure | | from the standard. | | There was little time | | for the footnotes in | | Chaucer. I hope we are | | not asked for these on | | the final examination. | | | | _Teacher B_: Rather an | _Teacher B_: A dry | _Teacher B_: A very interesting teacher; | course in Art History | conscientious teacher assigns lessons from a | and Appreciation. We | of chemistry. He gives book. At the beginning | take up the history of | us a ten-minute written of the hour he asks | architecture, painting,| quiz each hour on the questions on the text | and sculpture. The | work in the book or on but is soon carried | names of the best | the matter discussed in away and rambles along | artists are mentioned, | the last lecture. The for the period, | and their many works | rest of the hour is touching on every | confuse us. We memorize| spent in explanation of subject. We never | Praxiteles, Phidias, | difficult points and in complete a chapter or | Myron, the ancient | the application of what topic. The succeeding | cairns, the parts of an| we learned of industry hour we take the next | Egyptian temple. | and physiology. It is chapter, which meets | Pictures are shown on | surprising to see the the same fate. Written | the screen. I elected | interest the class tests determine the | this course in the hope| shows in the chemical students' rank. The | that it would teach me | explanations of things grade for the written | something about | we never noticed test is announced, but | pictures, how to judge | before. the papers are not | them and give me | returned and one never | standards of beauty, | knows why the papers | etc., but it has been | were rated C or D. | history and not | | appreciation so far. | | We do not see any | | beauty in the pictures | | of old madonnas. Even | | the religious ones | | among us say this. | | | | | _Teacher C_: | _Teacher C_: A good, | _Teacher C_: A scholarly A conscientious teacher| clear, effective | instructor in history. in physics. He assigns | lecturer in chemistry. | He assigns thirty to a definite lesson for | Every lesson we learn a| forty pages in English each recitation of the | definite principle and | History, and then he term. At the beginning | its application. The | lectures to us about of the hour students go| laboratory work of each| the topics discussed by to the board to write | is related to the | the author. He points out answers to | lecture and throws | out errors in dates and questions on the | interesting side lights| places. Occasionally he lesson. The hour is | on it. We have quiz | calls on a student. At spent listening to the | sections once a week. | the end of each month recitation of each | Here the work is oral | he gives a written test. student and the | and written. | We remember little of explanation of | | what we learned and difficult points. We | | must "bone away" at never cover more than | | about 200 to 300 pages. one half of the lesson:| | His English is sometimes only one | | delightful and we enjoy third. The next hour | | listening at times, the questions are on | | but I seem to retain the new lesson, not on | | so little. "Yes, half the incompleted portion| | the term is up. We are of the former lesson. | | beginning the reign of My knowledge of physics| | Henry VII." is punctuated by areas | | of ignorance. These | | alternate with topics | | that I think I | | understand clearly. | | | | | | _Teacher D_: A quiet, | _Teacher D_: A very | _Teacher D_: A very modest man. Sits back | strict teacher of | enthusiastic lecturer comfortably in his seat| English literature. He | in economics. He and asks questions on | assigns text for study,| explains the important assigned texts. The | and we must be prepared| principles in questions review the | for detailed questions | economics. We follow text, and he explains | on each of the great | in a printed syllabus, in further detail the | writers. He is very | so that it is facts in the book. The | strict and detailed. We| unnecessary to take conscientious and | had to know all the | notes. He talks well capable student finds | fifteen qualities of | and makes things clear. him superfluous; the | Macaulay's style. "No, | We are given assignments indifferent student | we did not read | in S----'s "Elements of remains unmoved by his | Macaulay this term: we | Economics," on which we phlegmatic | study from a history of| are questioned by presentation; the poor | English literature that| another teacher. "Is student finds him a | tells us all about the | the work in the quiz help; the shirk who | master writers." | section related directly listens and takes notes| | to the lectures? is saved studying at | | Sometimes. No, we do home. | | not take current | | economic problems. These | | are given in a later | | elective course." | | | | _Teacher E_: A good | _Teacher E_: A quiet, | _Teacher E_: An teacher of Latin. He | dignified gentleman who| instructor in explains the work, | teaches us psychology. | psychology. His hours hears the lessons, | A chapter is assigned | are weary and dreary. gives drills, calls on | in the book, and the | A chapter is assigned almost everybody every | hour is spent hearing | in X's "Elements of hour. The written work | students recite on the | Psychology." He asks a is returned properly | text. He sticks closely| question or two and corrected and rated. | to the book. He | then repeats what the | explains clearly when | author tells us, even | the book is not clear | using the illustrations | or not specific enough.| and diagrams found in | The hours drag, for the| the text. Sometimes a | book is good and those | student reads a paper | who studied the lessons| which he prepared. "No, | weary at what seems to | we do not get very much | us needless repetition.| out of these papers | | read by students. But | | then we get just as | | little from the | | instructor. No, we | | never apply the | | psychology to our own | | thinking nor to | | teaching nor to the | | behavior of children | | or adults." | | | | _Teacher F_: One | _Teacher F_: A learned | _Teacher F_: A cannot pass judgment on| Latin scholar who is | forbidding but very this teacher of | very enthusiastic about| strict Latin teacher. mechanical drawing. He | his specialty. The | His questions are fast gives out a problem, | students exhibit | and numerous and the works a type on the | cheerful tolerance. He | hesitating student is board, and then | assigns a given number | lost. He assigns at distributes the plates.| of lines per day. These| least twenty-five per We draw. He helps us | we prepare at home. In | cent more per lesson when we ask for aid, | class we give a | than any other otherwise he walks | translation in English | instructor. The hour is about the room. I | that has distorted | spent in translating, suppose one cannot show| phrases and clauses | parsing, and quizzing teaching ability in | lest we be accused of | on historical and such a subject. | dishonesty in | mythological allusions. | preparation. The rest | Every "pony" user is | of the time is spent on| soon caught, because | questions of syntax, | he is asked so many | references, footnotes, | questions on each | and the identification | sentence. There is a | of the of the real and | distinct relief when | mythological characters| the hour is over because | in the text. The | he is constantly at you. | teacher is animated and| "Will I take the next | effective. | course in Latin? Not | | unless I must. This is | | prescribed work. It | | can't end too soon for | | me, nor for the others | | in the class."

The student of scientific and statistical measurements in education may object to attaching any importance to these informal characterizations of college teachers by undergraduates. College teachers interested in the pedagogical aspects of their subject, and college administrators who spend time observing class instruction will concede that these young men were not at all unfortunate in their teachers. The significance of these characterizations is not that college teachers vary in teaching efficiency, but rather that inefficient college teaching is general, and that the causes of this inefficiency are such as respond readily to simple remedial measures very well known to elementary and high school teachers.

=Causes of ineffective college teaching=

It may be well to note the chief causes of ineffective college teaching before directing attention to a remedial program:

(a) Many college teachers hold to be true the time-honored fallacy that the only equipment for successful teaching is a thorough knowledge of the subject. They do not stop to square their belief with actual facts. They overlook the examples of their colleagues possessed of undisputed scholarship who are failures in the classroom. They fail to realize that there are psychological and pedagogical aspects of the teaching art which demand careful organization, skilful gradation and a happy selection of illustrations intimately related to the lives of the students.

(_b_) Closely related to this first cause of ineffective teaching is a lack of sympathetic understanding of the student's viewpoint. The scholarly teacher, deep in the intricacies and speculations of his specialty, is often impatient with the groping of the beginner. He may not realize that the student before him, apparently indifferent to the most vital aspects of his subject, has potentialities for development in it. His interest in his researches and his vision of the far-reaching human relations of his subject may blind him to the difficulties that beset the path of the beginner.

(_c_) The inferiority of college teaching in many institutions can often be traced to the absence of constructive supervision. The supervising officer in elementary and secondary schools makes systematic visits to the classrooms of young or ineffective teachers, observes their work, offers remedial suggestions, and tries to infuse a professional interest in the technique of teaching. In the college such supervision would usually stir deep resentment. The college teacher is, in matters of teaching, a law unto himself. He sees little of the actual teaching of his colleagues; they see as little of his. His contact with the head of his department, and his departmental and faculty meetings, are usually limited to discussions of college policy and of the sequence and content of courses. Methods of teaching are rarely, if ever, brought up for discussion. The results are inevitable. Weaknesses in teaching are perpetuated, while the devices and practices of an effective teacher remain unknown to his colleagues.

(_d_) A fourth factor which accounts for much of the inefficiency in college pedagogics is made the thesis of Dr. Mezes' chapter on "The Training of the College Teacher." The college teacher, unlike teachers in other grades of an educational system, is expected to teach without a knowledge of educational aims and ideals, and without a knowledge of the psychological principles which should guide him in his work. The prospective college teacher, having given evidence of scholarship alone, has intrusted to him, the noisy, expressive, and rapidly developing, youth. We set up no standards aside from character and scholarship. We do not demand evidence of teaching ability, a knowledge of applied psychology and of accepted teaching practices, skill in presentation, power of organizing material in graded sequence, or ability to frame a series of questions designed to stimulate and sustain the self-activity of the pupils. The born college teacher remains the successful teacher. The poor college teacher finds no agent which tends to raise his teaching to a higher level. The temperamentally unfit are not weeded out. But teaching is an art, and like all arts it requires conscientious professional preparation, the mastery of underlying scientific principles, and practice under supervision scrupulous in its attention to technique.

We have here outlined a few of the causes which keep college teaching on a low plane. The remedial measures are in each case too obvious to mention. It remains for college authorities to formulate a well-conceived and adjustable program of means and methods of ridding college teaching of those forces which keep it in a discouraging state. It is our purpose in the remainder of this chapter not to evolve a system of pedagogics, but rather to touch on the most vital principles in teaching which must be borne in mind if college teaching is to be rendered pedagogically comparable to elementary and secondary teaching. We shall confine ourselves to teaching practices which are applicable to all subjects in the college curriculum.

PRINCIPLES IN COLLEGE TEACHING

=A clearly conceived aim must control all teaching=

One of the very first elements in good teaching is the clear recognition of a well-defined aim that gives purpose and direction to all that is attempted in a lesson or in a period. The chief cause of poor teaching is aimless teaching, in which the sole object seems to be to fill the allotted time with talking about the facts of a given subject. We sit patiently through a recitation in English literature.