College Teaching Part 1

College Teaching.

by Paul Klapper.

PREFACE

The student of general problems of education or of elementary education finds an extensive literature of varying worth. In the last decade our secondary schools have undergone radical reorganization and have a.s.sumed new functions. A rich literature on every phase of the high school is rapidly developing to keep pace with the needs and the progress of secondary education. The literature on college education in general and college pedagogy in particular is surprisingly undeveloped. This dearth is not caused by the absence of problem, for indeed there is room for much improvement in the organization, the administration, and the pedagogy of the college. Investigators of these problems have been considerably discouraged by the facts they have gathered. This volume is conceived in the hope of stimulating an interest in the quality of college teaching and initiating a scientific study of college pedagogy. The field is almost virgin, and the need for constructive programs is acute. We therefore ask for our effort the indulgence that is usually accorded a pioneer.

In this age of specialization of study it is evident that no college teacher, however wide his experience and extensive his education, can speak with authority on the teaching of all the subjects in the college curriculum, or even of all the major ones. For this reason this volume is the product of a cooperating authorship. The editor devotes himself to the study of general methods of teaching that apply to almost all subjects and to most teaching situations. In addition, he coordinates the work of the other contributors. He realizes that there exists among college professors an active hostility to the study of pedagogy. The professors feel that one who knows his subject can teach it. The contributors have been purposely selected in order to dispel this hostility. They are, one and all, men of undisputed scholarship who have realized the need of a mode of presentation that will make their knowledge alive.

Books of multiple authorship often possess too wide a diversity of viewpoints. The reader comes away with no underlying thought and no controlling principles. To overcome this defect, so common in books of this type, a tentative outline was formulated, setting forth a desirable mode of treating, in the confines of one chapter, the teaching of any subject in the college curriculum. This outline was submitted to all contributors for critical a.n.a.lysis and constructive criticism. The original plan was later modified in accordance with the suggestions of the contributors. This final outline, which follows, was then sent to the contributors with the full understanding that each writer was free to make such modifications as his specialty demanded and his judgment dictated. This outline is followed in most of the chapters and gives the book that unifying element necessary in any book and vital in a work of so large a cooperating authorship.

The editor begs to acknowledge his indebtedness to the many contributors who have given generously of their time and their labor with no hope of compensation beyond the ultimate appreciation of those college teachers who are eager to learn from the experience of others so that they may the better serve their students.

TENTATIVE OUTLINE FOR THE TEACHING OF ---- IN THE COLLEGE

I. Aim of Subject _X_ in the College Curriculum:

Is it taught for disciplinary values? What are they?

Is it taught for cultural reasons?

Is it taught to give necessary information?

Is it taught to prepare for professional studies?

Is the aim single or eclectic? Do the aims vary for different groups of students? Does this apply to all the courses in your specialty? How does the aim govern the methods of teaching?

II. Place of the Subject in the College Curriculum:

In what year or years should it be taught?

What part of the college course--in terms of time or credits--should be allotted to it?

What is the practice in other colleges?

What course or courses in this subject should be part of the general curriculum or be prescribed for students in art, in science, in modern languages, or in the preprofessional or professional groups?

III. Organization of the Subject in the College Course:

Desired sequence of courses in this subject.

What is the basis of this sequence? Gradation of successive difficulties or logical sequence of facts?

Should these courses be elective or prescribed? All prescribed?

For all groups of students?

In what years should the elective work be offered?

IV. Discussion of Methods of Teaching this Subject:

Place and relative worth of lecture method, laboratory work, recitations, research, case method, field work, a.s.signment from a single text or reference reading, etc.

Discussion of such problems as the following:

Shall the first course in chemistry be a general and extensive course summing up the scope of chemistry, its function in organic and inorganic nature, with no laboratory work other than the experimentation by the instructor?

Should students in the social sciences study the subject deductively from a book or should the book be postponed and the instructor present a series of problems from the social life of the student so that the a.n.a.lysis of these may lead the student to formulate many of the generalizations that are given early in a textbook course?

Should college mathematics be presented as a series of subjects, e.g., algebra (advanced), solid geometry, trigonometry, a.n.a.lytical geometry, calculus, etc.? Would it be better to present the subject as a single and unified whole in two or three semesters?

Should a student study his mathematics as it is developed in his book,--viz., as an intellectual product of a matured mind familiar with the subject,--or should the subject grow gradually in a more or less unorganized form from a series of mechanical, engineering, building, nautical, surveying, and structural problems that can be found in the life and environment of the student?

V. Moot Questions in the Teaching of this Subject.

VI. How judge whether the subject has been of worth to the student?

How test whether the aims of this subject have been realized?

How test how much the student has carried away? What means, methods, and indices exist aside from the traditional examination?

VII. Bibliography on the Pedagogy of this Subject as Far as It Applies to College Teaching. The aim of the bibliography should be to give worth-while contributions that present elaborations of what is here presented or points of view and modes of procedure that differ from those here set forth.

PAUL KLAPPER _The College of the City of New York_

INTRODUCTION

It is characteristic of the American people to have profound faith in the power of education. Since Colonial days the American college has played a large part in American life and has trained an overwhelming proportion of the leaders of American opinion. There was a time when the American college was a relatively simple inst.i.tution of a uniform type, but that time has pa.s.sed. The term "college" is now used in a variety of significations, a number of which are very new and very modern indeed. Some of these uses of the term are quite indefensible, as when one speaks of a college of engineering, or of law, or of medicine, or of journalism, or of architecture. Such use of the word merely confuses and makes impossible clear thinking as to educational inst.i.tutions and educational aims.

The term "college" can be properly used only of an inst.i.tution which offers training in the liberal arts and sciences to youth who have completed a standard secondary school course of study. The purpose of college teaching is to lay the foundation for intelligent and effective specialization later on, to open the mind to new interpretations and new understandings both of man and of nature, and to give instruction in those standards of judgment and appreciation, the possession and application of which are the marks of the truly educated and cultivated man. The size of a college is a matter of small importance, except that under modern conditions a large college and one in immediate contact with the life of a university is almost certain to command larger intellectual resources than is an inst.i.tution of a different type. The important thing about a college is its spirit, its clearness of aim, its steadiness of purpose, and the opportunity which it affords for direct personal contact between teacher and student. Given these, the question of size is unimportant.

There was a time when it was felt, probably correctly, that a satisfactory college training could be had by requiring all students to follow a single prescribed course of study. At that time, college students were drawn almost exclusively from families and homes of a single type or kind. Their purposes in after-life were similar, and their range of intellectual sympathy, while intense, was rather narrow. The last fifty years have changed all this. College students are now drawn from families and homes of every conceivable type and kind. Their purposes in after-life are very different, while new subjects of study have been multiplied many fold. The old and useful tradition of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, together with a little history and literature, as the chief elements in a college course of study, had to give way when first the natural sciences, and then the social sciences, claimed attention and when even these older subjects of study were themselves subdivided into many parts.

These changes forced a change in the old-fashioned program of college study, and led to the various subst.i.tutes for it that now exist.

Whether a college prefers the elective system of study, or the group system, or some other method of combining instruction that is regarded as fundamental with other instruction that is regarded as less so, the fact is that all these are simply different kinds of attempt to meet a new condition which is the natural result of intellectual and economic changes. Just now the college is in a state of transition. It is not at all clear precisely what its status will be a generation hence, or how far present tendencies may continue to increase, or how far they may be counteracted by a swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. Therefore this is a time to describe rather than to dogmatize, and it is description which is the characteristic mark of the important series of papers which const.i.tute the several chapters in the present volume.

A careful reading of these papers is commended not only to the great army of college teachers and college students, but to that still greater army of those who, whether as alumni or as parents or as citizens, are deeply concerned with the preservation of the influence and character of the American college for its effect upon our national standards of thought and action.