Chapter 6

Were there time I should like to go more into detail in regard to these various requirements and try to show the contribution of each; but I must pass on to speak of another way by means of which the University enables students to meet the legal requirements for teaching in the high schools--thru the College of Arts. A student who graduates from the College of Arts and who has had, during the progress of this course, 16 hours of Education is, upon application to the State Board of Education and the payment of a fee of $5, granted a first grade professional certificate. But this method of preparation is seen to be quite unsatisfactory when contrasted with the one just outlined. The Arts student is a relatively free lance, practically wholly so in the choice and arrangements of his professional work. In the School of Education the program is for all the professional subjects, save general psychology, to be taken after the beginning of the junior year and so immediately prior to the actual work of teaching, and too, when the student is relatively mature. But with the Arts student, it may all be taken much earlier, during relative immaturity and making a long period elapse between it and the work of teaching--quite long enough for the influence of the professional atmosphere, always valuable in such matters, to be wholly lost. The question of the professional work of the School of Education student is carefully planned to meet the ends in view. Each course has its definite contribution. The Arts student may, and often does, select courses that are not the most appropriate for high school teaching: for example, instead of a course in adolescence he may select one in child study which deals only with the child in the grades. Instead of a special methods course in the subjects he plans to teach in high school, he may select a course in methods in elementary subjects; and he may not take any course in secondary education nor have any practise teaching in the Model High School. The work may be--quite often is--ill-arranged and of little value as a professional preparation for high school teacher.

I have dwelt upon this contrast because the University and its School of Education has suffered by the laxness of this second mode of preparation. Some of the people who thus go out are not good representative products of the institution's professional activity.

Just a closing word as to this phase of the subject. You see what we are trying to do and how we are trying to do it. From the work of the young people whom we have sent you from time to time, how successful have we been? Our work as to time and content of courses and our general equipment are about the same as found in similar institutions in other states. We differ somewhat, of course, in personalities and in individual point of view but, taking everything together, we are doing the best we know how with the material that you send us as students. How does our product suit you? What criticism have you to make and what changes to suggest?

III

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE TEACHER

_An Address delivered at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, March 30, 1916, in the Exchange Lectureship existing between the University of Manitoba and the University of North Dakota. It was printed in the "American Schoolmaster," December, 1916_

Having accepted the kind invitation of the University of Manitoba to be one of the exchange lecturers from the University of North Dakota, for the current year, I made inquiry as to the nature of the different groups of people whom I should be expected to address. I did this so as to be able to select appropriate themes for discussion.

For this gathering, therefore, semi-popular in character and made up, as I was told it would be, of the more thoughtful and intelligent people of the community, University, and city, I selected as my topic for discussion, "The University and the Teacher."

To a group of educated men and women who have visions--people who are characteristically looking beyond the present and trying to plan for the development of a great democratic state and for the welfare of a free people, I know of no line of thought more appropriate or suggestive. This is true because in such a state and with such a people, the state or provincial university is the recognized leader of thought and action. And this is true since the one great function of such an institution is to take the choice youth and maidens from the various sections of the state and, thru the work of the class room day in and day out, week by week, year after year, give them knowledge, shape their opinions, mold their characters, and develop their minds, and then send them back into society as recognized leaders of the next generation.

The topic is doubly suggestive when we stop to inquire as to what makes a university or any other institution of learning--what it is that really gives it its reputation, its character, its influence. What is it, anyway? Its towering brick walls? Its libraries and its laboratories? Its athletic prowess? Its beautiful campus? Why, no, of course not. Not any one of these nor all of them combined, complete and extended and excellent as they may be, or as useful as they all are, ever yet made or ever can make a great university. A real university, or any other institution of learning, is made up of the men and the women who form its student and its teaching bodies. The character of the institution, its very life blood, is drawn from them. Their points of view, their motives, their scholarships, their visions, their aspirations, make it what it is in every instance.

You recall that ex-President Garfield's description of a university included only two factors as essential--the teacher and the student. The external equipment--buildings, libraries, laboratories--what not--is merely a tool in their hands. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not inveighing against these things; they are necessary. What I am insisting upon is that not _things_ but _teachers_ make a university. And so my topic, "The University and the Teacher," launches us at once into the midst of a great big thought. So big, indeed, it is, that it goes without saying that it cannot be adequately handled in the brief space of a single address. Only certain phases of the large topic can be touched upon at all, and they treated but briefly.

But, after all, the function of a speaker, certainly upon such an occasion as this, is not merely to give information. It is not to speak with finality upon any subject. Is it not, rather, to direct the thoughts of the listeners along worthy lines? For any good that shall result from the meeting together of speaker and audience will be the direct outcome of their thoughts and not of his words. So, after having thus spoken briefly of the university as a whole--of its place in the state, its great influence and that of its teaching body--I invite you to think with me as I touch the subject here and there briefly discussing these three sub-topics: 1. The Kind of Teachers the University should Employ; 2. The University Teacher in His Classroom; 3. The University's Attitude Toward the Preparation of Teachers. Our first discussion, then, will be of

THE KIND OF TEACHERS THE UNIVERSITY SHOULD EMPLOY

A few moments ago I said that the one great function of a State University was to provide the State with a competent leadership. That involves, however, a subsidiary function of such great importance, especially as we regard the teaching force, that an added word is needed both to prevent misunderstanding and to make clear the line of discussion of this sub-topic. The development of a competent leadership _is_ the all-embracing function of such an institution, but that can not be done save as the institution is, at the same time, thru some or all of its teachers, keeping fully abreast, or well in the lead, of the discovery of new knowledge and of new applications of knowledge in the various fields of human endeavor. And this is true because men can not be leaders in any field of action unless they possess the fullest and latest items of knowledge obtainable in that particular field, and again because real leadership can not be developed save thru the use, as educative material, of the fullest and latest.

What kind of teachers should the university employ? Clearly, teachers who can do these two things: men of open and enquiring minds, men of imagination, men who are hungry and thirsty for knowledge, men of research--men of the laboratory and the library. But that is but one side; we must also have men of vision, men of great breadth of view, men of broad human sympathies, men who can take this knowledge, old and new, and with it, as educative material, help to shape opinions, and mold characters, and fashion destinies, thus transforming crude, unstable, and immature youth into men and women of virtue, and knowledge, and courage, and sanity, and poise, into whose trust, therefore, can be placed the guiding of a great, free, developing people--men of the classroom, teachers and inspirers of youth.

The question may well be asked if I mean two _groups_ of teachers, a _research_ group and a _teaching_ group, neither one acting within the field of the other. Not necessarily and certainly not absolutely. To quite an extent the two functions should overlap since each supplements the other. The man of research should also be a teacher in order both to keep his human sympathies alive and as a spur to still further search. And every teacher should be, to some extent, a man of research so that thru his own joy in discovery he will be able to kindle a like fire in the minds of others, thus keeping the spirit of discovery alive and active in the land, and also that he may invite his students to drink at a living stream instead of a stagnant pool. The teacher who is not also a student, and continually working at it, is usually but a poor teacher. But while all this is true, it is probably true also that no person is equally successful in both fields. Some men are primarily teachers--are in their element in the classroom engaged with the problems of the student but only indifferently successful in the laboratory, while others, at home in the laboratory, are somewhat out of place and ill-at-ease in the classroom. I shall not attempt to say which of the two functions is the more important or the more useful. Both are needed and, as said before, both are needed, to some extent, in each. But, in the main, where characteristics are marked, the shoemaker should be allowed to stick to his last. It is a very wise procedure that is more and more being followed at the present time, in American universities, of recognizing such differences and making provision for research professorships that include no teaching duties whatever. The percentage of these should be small, of course.

What kind of a teacher should the university employ, then? The teacher who is eager to push the boundaries of human knowledge a little beyond the point yet reached and who also greatly desires to take knowledge as an instrument and with it develop boys and girls and equip them for leadership in the great world of action. So far as possible the two kinds of service should be performed by the same person, but yet that is immaterial--the material thing being that both kinds be performed.

What kind of teachers should the university employ? Why, teachers who not only desire to do these two things, but who also know how to do them. If one is to do research work, he should know how to do it, economically and efficiently. His preparation should have included a certain amount of reflection upon the reasons for research and of training in the manner of conducting the same. Likewise, if he is to be a teacher, he should be well grounded in the theory and art of teaching. If he is going to shape opinions, mold character, give points of view, develop human minds, then it goes without saying that his preparation should have included a very thoro study of the human mind in its various relationships, activities, and stages of development. If a teacher is expected to equip young men and women for the duties of life as leaders in the great social, economic, and political activities, he must also possess great stores of knowledge, and likewise know how to impart that knowledge so that it will become equally the possession of others.

THE UNIVERSITY TEACHER IN HIS CLASSROOM

The second of my three topics, "The University Teacher in His Classroom," is an even more intimate one than the one just treated. It is so intimate that perhaps discretion would be the better part of valor, but since I am at a considerable distance from the people and the institutions I am discussing, I feel that I can proceed with comparative safety.

There is abroad at the present time considerable hostile criticism of our higher education. Our graduates, it is said, are not able "to connect up"; "it takes them two or three years after they get out to find themselves"; "they first have to get rid of a lot of theoretical notions that have been given them before they can learn the practical things of life." President Foster of Reed College, Oregon, puts it thus: "It is possible to graduate from almost any college without an idea in one's head." Professor Wenley, Head of the Department of Philosophy in Michigan University, had about the same thought when he gave me his original definition of an American college as "A so-called institution of higher learning whose chief accomplishment is the inoculation of innocent youth against education." Or shall we put it in the words of our friend Mr. Dooley: "Nowadays when a lad goes to college, the prisidint takes him into a Turkish room, gives him a cigareet an' says: Me dear boy, what special branch iv larnin wud ye like to have studied f'r ye be our compitint perfessors?"

Such are some of the caustic remarks that we occasionally hear. Of course the situation is always exaggerated in such criticisms; but, as the old saw puts it, "Where there's so much smoke, there must be some fire." Where does the trouble lie? All sorts of guesses have been made, and some careful investigations entered into in an effort to discover the cause. The outcome of all such consideration, so far as I am able to learn, throws the responsibility upon the teacher rather than upon the institution as a whole, and upon his teaching ability rather than upon any lack of knowledge. We cannot teach, it is said. In spite of the knowledge that we possess, we do not know how to present that knowledge so that another can gain it. Nicholas Murray Butler, the brainy President of Columbia University, says, "The teaching of many very famous men [in colleges and universities] is distinctly poor; sometimes it is even worse."

These are rather interesting statements and worthy of thought. What is meant by teaching, anyway? Teaching involves a double process and two persons, both active upon the same matter. Both must be successful for either to be. Teaching is causing to learn, and when there is no learning, there can have been no teaching. "Learning is not merely the correlative idea of teaching, but is one of its constituent elements." No matter how much an instructor may know, no matter how much he may say nor what he may do, if he doesn't cause the student to put forth those mental activities that result in learning, he doesn't teach. And it is claimed that, in many cases, our university instructors do not know how to do this. He knows but he does not know how to cause another to know, is a common criticism.

I suppose it is true, tho loyalty makes me rather dislike to admit it, that with us the poorest teaching in our entire educational system is done in colleges and universities. My own observation both as a student and as a teacher all along the line leads me to say that, in the main, our best teaching is done in the elementary grades, second best in the high schools, and poorest in the higher institutions. Another puts it thus: "We have excellent teaching in the lower primary grades and in the graduate schools, but between these two extremes, we can call it teaching only by courtesy." Another, the president of a State University, is reported to have said, "I have resolved never again to turn my undergraduates over to young Ph. D.'s. It takes five years to make a commonsense teacher of a raw doctor fresh from three years of graduate work."

If these statements are true, and I am afraid that there's much of truth in them, the situation is rather serious. Still, it isn't at all surprising when one takes the whole matter into consideration. For relatively few university instructors have given any attention to the matter of teaching itself. They have studied the subject matter with which they are to deal. They have become proficient so far as knowledge is concerned. No fault can be found with them touching the matter of erudition. But they have not given any reflective thought to the art of teaching. They have not made a study of the human mind in its development in order to know how it receives knowledge as mental nourishment, and to understand the assimilative process; they have not given themselves to a systematic and scientific study of human life so as to know how to handle it in its various moods and characteristics. How differently these good people would have planned if they had expected to practise Law, or Medicine or to enter the Ministry! In every such case they would have made professional preparation for their work. Isn't it strange that any one should think that this profession--the most important--could be practised with success in its higher realms, by people who have never given its practise one moment's attention? President Butler, in giving reasons for poor college teaching, says, "Too few instructors are interested in education."

I am reminded of Socrates' shrewd parody of a supposed speech of Euthydemus who, totally ignorant of statecraft, desired election to an important position in the government of the city of Athens. It is suggestive here: "I, O man of Athens, have never learned the medical art from any one, nor have been desirous that any physician should be my instructor; for I have constantly been on my guard, not only against learning anything of the art from any one, but even against appearing to have learned anything; nevertheless confer on me this medical appointment, for I will endeavor to learn by making experiments upon you." Comment is unnecessary.

There are three kinds of knowledge that every teacher should possess, that every successful teacher does possess: first, knowledge of the subject matter with which he deals; second, knowledge of the human mind which he is trying to stimulate; and third, knowledge of the way to bring these two together in a helpful manner. Of the three, I am afraid that university instructors have, in the main, but the first. At any rate, all they know of the other two is of an empirical character and what they have picked up incidentally. There are exceptions, to be sure. Every worthy institution has them, striking exceptions, too, some of them are. A few of our older men have become good teachers thru practise and experiment, and an occasional young man now comes with professional preparation. But yet, as in so many other matters, the exceptions merely prove the rule.

Thus equipt, or rather with this serious lack of equipment, the young university instructor begins his work. If he is, to use the words of the university president just quoted, "a raw doctor fresh from three years of graduate work," he probably begins by copying the methods of procedure of his own recent instructors. He tries to set these immature boys and girls at research problems and, in classroom, tries to impart information by the lecture method.

How well I remember such an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories--_The Odyssey_. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure--trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am not quarreling with textual criticism. It would have been all right for that young doctor (he was younger than I was at that time) to deal with the facts of textual criticism, with some people, at some time, but it was all wrong for him to attempt to give those facts to us in our freshman year in the College of Arts. They were not adapted to our intellectual needs. They did not fit into our mental stomachs. We could not keep them down, or in, or something. But the pathetic fact was that the instructor did not know that they did not fit. I, being older than many in the class and thus appreciating better the barrenness of the Greek pasture in which we were trying to graze, finally managed, by a little skilful maneuver, to escape and to join another group that happened to be in the care of a real teacher who knew not only Homer but, as well, freshman boys and girls, the reasons for teaching Homer to freshmen boys and girls, and how to do it. He was acquainted with both the science and the art of teaching. Oh, how green was the pasture here, and how abundant and how nutritious the food! In all my university experience I recall nothing more delightful.

But this is ancient history? Yes, I know it is. But yet, I am sorry to say, history repeats itself. Those three great mistakes that that young doctor made in my Greek class some twenty or more years ago are being made this very year by young doctors and by old doctors and by many who are not doctors at all, in one subject or another, in well-nigh every college or university in the United States. Our instructors do not know well enough how to adapt knowledge to human needs; they have the erroneous notion that the chief function of an educational institution is to impart information; and, too, many of them are afflicted with the lecture craze.

Touching these three mistakes, let me say, briefly: first, as to the adaptation of knowledge: the word _education_ is derived from the Latin _educo_, _educare_, and means _to nourish_, and nourishment, physical, mental, or moral, is never secured save as the food is adapted to the organism. And just as much care as our scientific dietitians give to our dining-room service, our university instructors should give to the mental and moral pabulum that they serve to their students, especially the lower classes if not the entire body of undergraduates. They should know this knowledge as mental nourishment; they should know the condition of the mind, and they should know how to select and prepare this food for digestion and assimilation.