College Teaching Part 24

=Time to be given to economics in a college curriculum=

Teachers of economics today are doubtless attempting the impossible in compressing the present "general course" into three hours for two semesters. No other department of a university attempts to treat in such a brief time so broad a subject, including both principles and applications. Such a course was quite long enough in the days when all economic instruction was given by gray-haired theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, and linguists, dogmatically expounding the _pons asinorum_ of economics, and quizzing from a dusty textbook of foreign authorship.

But now the growing and vigorous tribe of specialized economic teachers is bursting with information and ill.u.s.trations. Moreover, the range of economic topics and of economic interests has expanded wonderfully.

The resulting overcrowded condition of the general course is possibly the main cause of the difficulties increasingly felt by teachers in handling that course satisfactorily. As a part of a general college curriculum "general economics" cannot be satisfactorily treated in less than three hours a week for two years. The additional time should not be spent in narrow specialization but rather in getting a broader understanding of the subject through economic history and geography, through observation and description of actual conditions, through a greater use of problems and examples, and through more detailed, less superficial study of the fundamental principles. As a part of sixteen years of the whole educational scheme from primary grade to college diploma such a course would claim but 2-1/2 per cent of the student's whole time, while the subjects of English, mathematics, and foreign linguistics each gets about 20 per cent, in the case even of students who do not specialize in one of these branches.

Of the replies[20] from nearly three hundred colleges to the question whether economics was required for graduation, about 55 per cent were in the affirmative. Unfortunately the question was ambiguous, and the replies apparently were understood to mean generally that it was required in one or more curricula, not of all graduates (though in some cases the question was probably taken in the other sense). It is noteworthy that more frequently economics is required in the smaller colleges having but one curriculum, that of liberal studies. In the larger inst.i.tutions economics is usually not required of students in the humanities, although of late it has increasingly been made a part of the technical college curricula, especially in engineering and agriculture.[21] So we are in a fair way to arrive at the situation where no student except in those "liberal" arts courses can get a college diploma without studying economics; only in a modern course in the humanities may the study of human society be left out.

The economists have not been active in urging their subject as a requirement. The call for increasing requirements in economics has come from the public and from the alumni. The steady increase in the number of students electing economic courses without corresponding additions to the teaching forces has made the overworked professors of the subject thankful when nothing more was done to increase by faculty requirements the burden of their cla.s.s work. It is charged and it is admitted in some inst.i.tutions that the standards of marking are purposely made more severe in the economics courses than in courses in most other subjects. The purpose avowed is "to cut out the dead timber," so that only the better students will be eligible for enrollment in the advanced economics courses. An unfortunate result is to discourage some excellent students, ambitious for high marks or honors, from electing courses in economics because thereby their average grades would be reduced. In many cases, for this reason, good students take the subject optionally (without credit), though doing full work in it.

=Organization of the subject in the college curriculum=

We have already, in discussing the place of economics, necessarily touched upon the organization of the courses. In most colleges this organization is very simple. The whole economic curriculum consists of the "general" course, or at most of that plus one or more somewhat specialized courses given the next year. The most usual year of advanced work consists of one semester each of money and banking and of public finance. A not unusual plan, well suited to the situation in a small college where economics takes the full time of one teacher, is to give the general course in the soph.o.m.ore year, and to offer a two-year cycle of advanced work, the two courses being given in alternate years, the cla.s.s consisting of juniors and seniors. In this plan the additional courses may be in transportation, in labor problems, in trusts and corporations, and frequently of late, in accounting. Ordinarily the "general" course itself involves a logical sequence, the first term dealing with fundamental concepts and theories, and the second term covering in a rapid survey a pretty wide range of special problems. The majority of the students take only the general course. Those who go on to more advanced courses retrace the next year some of the ground of the second semester's work, but this is probably for few of them a loss of time. Indeed, in such a subject as economics this opportunity to let first teachings "sink in," and strange concepts become familiar, is for most students of great value.

Yet the plan was adopted and is followed as a compromise, using one course as a ready-made fit for the differing needs of two groups of students. We have seen above (page 221) that preceding the general, or systematic, course, there is in a number of colleges a simpler one. In some cases[22] the experiment has been undertaken of studying first for a time certain broad inst.i.tutional features of our existing society, such as property, the wage system, compet.i.tion, and the amount and distribution of wealth. The need of such a course is said to be especially great in the women's colleges. If so, it is truly urgent, for most young men come to college with very meager experience in economic lines. Few, if any, teachers would deny that such an introductory course preceding the principles is distinctly of advantage.[23] Some would favor it even at the price of shortening materially the more general course. But most teachers would agree that together the introductory course and the general course should take two full years (three hours a week, twelve college credit hours, as usually reckoned), an amount of time which cannot be given by the "floater" electing economics. And to accommodate both those who have had the introductory course and those who have not, the general course would have to be given in two divisions and in two ways. Again we come to the thought, suggested above, that probably we are attempting too much in too brief a time in the general course today. A longer time for the study would permit of a sequence that would be more logically defensible. It would begin with historical and descriptive studies, both because they are fundamentally necessary and because, being of more concrete nature, they may be given in a form easier for the beginner to get. In this period a good deal of the terminology can be gradually familiarized. Then should come the more elementary a.n.a.lytical studies and fundamental principles, followed by a discussion of a number of practical problems. In conclusion should come a more systematic survey of general principles, of which most students now get but a superficial idea. The work in the specialized elective courses would then be built upon much firmer foundation than is the case at present.

=Methods of teaching=

The main methods that have been developed and tested in the teaching of undergraduate cla.s.ses in economics may be designated as the lecture method, the textbook method, the problem method. Any one of these may be used well-nigh exclusively, or, as is more usual, two or more may be combined in varying proportions; e.g., lectures with "supplementary" (or "collateral") readings, with or without an occasional meeting in a quiz section. Along with these main methods often are used such supplementary methods as topical reports requiring individual library work; laboratory exercises, as in statistics, accounting, etc.; individual field work to study some industrial problem; and visits, as a cla.s.s, and with guidance, to factories and industrial enterprises.

The choice of these particular methods of teaching is, however, largely conditioned by the teacher's antecedent choice between the deductive or the inductive forms of presentation. This is an old controversy ever recurring. But it should be observed that the question here is not whether induction or deduction is a greater aid in arriving at new truth, but it is whether the inductive or the deductive process is the better for the imparting of instruction to beginners. In teaching mathematics, the most deductive of the sciences, use may be made of such inductive aids as object lessons, physical models, and practical problems; and _per contra_, in the natural sciences, where induction is the chief instrument of research, elementary instruction is largely given in a deductive manner by the statement of general propositions, the workings of which are then exemplified. The decision of the question which is the better of these two pedagogic methods in a particular case, depends (_a_) partly on the average maturity and experience of the cla.s.s; (_b_) partly on the mental quality of the students; and (_c_) partly on the interest and qualifications of the teacher.

(_a_) The choice of the best method of teaching is of course dependent on the same factors that have been shown above to affect the nature and sequence of the courses. The simpler method leading to more limited results is more suitable for the less mature cla.s.ses; but the scientific stage in the treatment of any subject is not reached until general principles are discussed. If one is content with a vocational result in economic teaching, stopping short of the theoretical, philosophic outlook, more can be accomplished in a short time by the concrete method. But such teaching would seem to belong in a trade school rather than in a college of higher studies, and in any case should be given by a vocational teacher rather than by a specialist in social, or political, economy.

=Various methods evaluated=

(_b_) Every college cla.s.s presents a gradation of minds capable (whether from nature or training) of attaining different states of comprehension. Of students in the lower half of the cla.s.ses in American colleges, it may be said broadly that they never can or will develop the capacity of thinking abstractly and that the concrete method of teaching would give better results in their cases. Therefore the teacher attempts to compromise, to adopt a method that fits the "mode," the middle third of the cla.s.s, wasting much of the time of the brighter (or of the more earnest) students, and letting those in the lowest third trail along as best they can. This difficulty may be met with some success where there are several sections of a cla.s.s by grouping the men in accordance with their previous scholarship records. This grouping is beneficial alike to those lower and to those higher than the average in scholarship.

(_c_) Quite as important in this connection as this subjective quality of the students, is the characteristic quality of the teacher. A particular teacher will succeed better or worse with any particular method according as it fits his aim and is in accord with his endowment and training. If he is himself of the "hard-headed"

unimaginative or unphilosophic type, he will of course deem effort wasted that goes beyond concrete facts. He will give little place to the larger aspects and principles of "political" economy, but will deal exhaustively with the details of commercial economy. If the teacher is civic-minded and sympathetic, he will be impelled to trace economic forces, in their actions and interactions, far beyond the particular enterprise, to show how the welfare of others is affected.

To do this rightly, knowledge of the conditions must be combined with a deeper theoretical insight; but the civic aim operates selectively to limit the choice of materials and a.n.a.lysis to those contemporary issues that appeal at the time to the textbook writer, to the teacher, or to the public. Still different is the case of the teacher who finds his greatest joy in the theoretical aspects of economics, possesses a clean-cut economic philosophy (even though it may not be ultimate truth), and has faith in economics as a disciplinary subject. Such a teacher will (other things being equal) have, relatively, his greatest success with the students of greatest ability; he will get better results in teaching the "principles" than in teaching historical and descriptive facts. None will deny that this type of education has an important place. Even in the more descriptive courses appeal should be made to the higher intellectual qualities of the cla.s.s, leaving a lasting disciplinary result rather than a memory stored with merely ephemeral and mostly insignificant information.

The teacher with colorless personality and without interest in, and knowledge of, the world of reality, will fail, whatever be the purpose of his teaching. The higher the teacher's aim, the farther may he fall below its attainment. A college teacher whose message is delivered on the mental level of grammar school children should, of course, score a pretty high percentage of success in giving a pa.s.sing mark to soph.o.m.ores, juniors, and seniors in American colleges. But is this really a success, or is it rather not evidence of a failure in the whole school curriculum, and of woful waste in our system of so-called "higher" education? Are colleges for the training of merely mediocre minds?

=Aim and att.i.tude more fundamental than method of instruction=

These questions of aim and of att.i.tude are more fundamental than is the question of the particular device of instruction to be used, as lecture, textbook, etc. Yet the latter question is not without its importance. In general it appears that practice has moved and still moves in a cycle. In the American college world as a whole each particular college repeats some or all of the typical phases with the growth of its economic department.

(1) First is the textbook, with recitations in small cla.s.ses. (2) Next, the lecture gradually takes a larger place as the cla.s.ses grow, until, supplemented by required readings, it becomes the main tool of instruction, this being the cheapest and easiest way to take care of the rapidly growing enrollment. (3) Then, when this proves unsatisfactory, the lectures are perhaps cut down to two a week, and the cla.s.s is divided into quiz sections for one meeting a week under a.s.sistants or instructors, the lecture still being the main center of the scheme of teaching. (4) This still being unsatisfactory (partly because it lacks oversight of the students' daily work, and partly because the lecture is unsuited to the development of general principles that require careful and repeated study for their mastery), a textbook is made the basis of section meetings, held usually twice a week, and the lectures are reduced to one a week, given to the combined cla.s.s, and so changed in character as to be merely supplementary to the cla.s.s work. The lectures are given either in close connection week by week with the cla.s.s work or bearing only a general relation with the term's work as a whole. This may be deemed the prevailing mode today in inst.i.tutions where the introductory course has a large enrollment.[24] (5) Another change completes the cycle; the lecture is dropped and the cla.s.s is divided, each section, consisting of twenty to thirty students, meeting with the same teacher regularly for cla.s.s work. This change was made after mature consideration in "the College" in Columbia University; is in operation in Chicago University, where the meetings are held five times a week; and has been adopted more recently still in New York University. There have been for years evidences of the growing desire to abolish the lecture from the introductory course and also to limit its use in some of the special undergraduate courses. The preceptorial plan adopted in 1905 by Princeton University is the most notable instance of the latter change.[25] Even in graduate teaching in economics there has been a growing opinion and practice favorable to the "working" course or "seminar" course to displace lecture courses.[26] Thus the lecture seems likely to play a less prominent role, especially in the introductory courses, but it is not likely to be displaced entirely in the scheme of instruction.

=Selection of a textbook=

Numerous American textbooks on political economy (thirty, it is said) have been published in the last quarter of a century, a fact which has now and then been deplored by the pessimistic critic.[27] Few share this opinion, however. The textbooks have, to be sure, often served, not to unfold a consistent system of thought, but to reveal the lack of one. But they have afforded to the teachers and students, in a period of developing conceptions on the subjects, a wide choice of treatment of the principles much more exactly worked out and carefully expressed than is possible through the medium of lectures as recorded in the students' hastily written notes.

Questions, exercises, and test problems are widely used as supplementary material for cla.s.sroom discussion.[28] Separately printed collections of such material date back at least to W. G. Sumner's _Problems in Political Economy_ (1884), which in turn acknowledged indebtedness to other personal sources and to Milnes' collection of two thousand questions and problems from English examination papers. With somewhat varying aims, further commented upon below, and in varying degrees, all teachers of economics now make use of such questions in their teaching of both general and special courses. Unquestionably there are, in the use of the problem method, possibilities for good which few teachers have fully realized.[29]

The selection and arrangement of materials for supplementary readings is guided by various motives, more or less intermingling. It may be chiefly to parallel a systematic text by extracts taken largely from the older "cla.s.sics" of the subject (as in C. J. Bullock's _Selected Readings in Economics_, 1907); or to provide additional concrete material bearing mostly upon present economic problems (as in the author's _Source Book in Economics_, 1912); or to supplement a set of exercises and problems (as in F. M. Taylor's _Some Readings in Economics_, 1907); or to const.i.tute of itself an almost independent textbook of extracts, carefully edited with original introductions to chapters (as Marshall, Wright, and Field's _Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics_, 1913, and W. H. Hamilton's _Readings in Current Economic Problems_, 1914).

Whatever be the particular tool of instruction, whether lecture, textbook with cla.s.sroom discussion, problem study, or collateral readings, its use may be very different according as the teacher seeks to develop the subject positively or negatively, to present a single definite and (if he can) coherent body of doctrines, or a variety of opinions that have been held, among which the student is encouraged to choose. Evidently the conditions determining choice in the case of advanced courses are different from those in the introductory course.

For the beginner time is required in order that economic principles may sink in, and so he is bewildered if at first he is introduced to a number of theories by different authors. Materials that supplement the general course of principles should therefore be limited to subject matter that is descriptive, concrete, and ill.u.s.trative. The beginner, somewhat dazed with the variety of new facts, ideas, terminology, and problems in the field into which he has entered, needs guidance to think clearly step by step about them.[30] Not until the pupil has learned to see and apprehend the simpler economic phenomena near him can he be expected to survey the broader fields and to form independent judgments concerning complex situations. He must creep before he can run. In fact, teachers are often self-deceived when they imagine that they are leaving students to judge for themselves among various opinions or to find their way inductively to their own conclusions. The recitation, in truth, becomes the simple game of "hot and cold." The teacher has in mind what he considers the right answer; the groping student tries to guess it; and as he ventures this or that inexpert or lucky opinion he is either gently chided or encouraged.

At length some bright pupil wins the game by agreeing with the teacher's theretofore skilfully concealed opinion. This is called teaching by the inductive method.

Undoubtedly it is more desirable to develop in the student the ability to think independently about economic questions than it is to drill him into an acceptance of ready-made opinions on contemporary practical issues. The more fundamental economic theory--the more because its bearing on pecuniary and cla.s.s interests is not close or obvious--is an admirable organ for the development of the student's power of reasoning. But to give the student this training it is not necessary to keep him in the dark as to what he is to learn. The Socratic method is still unexcelled in the discussion of a text and of lectures in which propositions are clearly laid down and explained.

The theorem in geometry is first stated, and then the student is conducted step by step through the reasoning leading to that conclusion. Should not the student of economics have presented to him in a similar way the idea or principle, and then be required to follow the reasoning upon which it is based? Then, through questions and problems,--the more the better, if time permits of their thorough discussion and solution,--the student may be exercised in the interpretation of the principles, and by ill.u.s.trations drawn from history and contemporary conditions may be shown the various applications of the principle to practical problems. To get and hold the student's _interest_, to fascinate him with the subject, is equal in importance to the method, for without interest good results are impossible.[31]

=Tests or teaching results=

It must be confessed that no exact objective measure of the efficiency of teaching methods in economics has been found. At best we have certain imperfect indices, among which are the formal examination, the student's own opinion at the close of the course, and the student's revised opinion after leaving college.

The primary purpose of the traditional examination is not to test the relative merits of the different methods of teaching, but to test the relative merits of the various students in a cla.s.s, whatever be the method of teaching. Every teacher knows that high or low average marks in an entire cla.s.s are evidences rather of the standard that he is setting than it is of the merits of his teaching methods,--though in some cases he is able to compare the results obtained after using two different methods of exposition for the same subject. But, as was indicated above, such a difference may result from his own temperament and may point only to the method that he can best use, not to the best absolutely considered. Moreover, the teacher may make the average marks high or low merely by varying the form and content of the examination papers or the strictness of his markings.

Each ideal and method of teaching has its corresponding type of examination. Descriptive and concrete courses lend themselves naturally to memory tests; theoretical courses lend themselves to problems and reasoning. A high type of question is one whose proper answer necessitates knowledge of the facts acquired in the course together with an interpretation of the principles and their application to new problems. Memory tests serve to mark off "the sheep from the goats" as regards attention and faithful work; reasoning tests serve to give a motive for disciplinary study and to measure its results. It may perhaps seem easier to test the results of the student's work in memory subjects; but even as to that we know that there are various types of memory and how much less significant are marks obtained by "the cramming process" than are equally good marks obtained as a result of regular attention to daily tasks.

The students' revised and matured judgment of the value of their various college studies generally differ, often greatly, from their judgments while taking or just after completing the courses. Yet even years afterward can man judge rightly in his own case just what has been the relative usefulness to him of the different elements of his complex college training, or of the different methods employed?[32]

But the evidence that comes from the most successful alumni to the college teacher in economics is increasingly to the effect that the college work they have come to value most is that which "teaches the student to think." Our judgments in this matter are influenced by the larger educational philosophy that we hold. Each will have his standard of spiritual values.

=Moot questions in economics affecting the teaching of the subject=

The moot questions in the teaching of the subject have, perhaps, been sufficiently indicated, but we may here add a word as to the bearings which certain moot questions in the theory of the subject may have on the methods of teaching. The fundamental theory of economics has, since the days of Adam Smith, been undergoing a process of continuous transition, but the broader concepts never have been more in dispute than in the last quarter century in America. The possibility of such diversity of opinion in the fundamentals among the leading exponents of the subject argues strongly that economics is still a philosophy--a general att.i.tude of mind and system of opinion--rather than a positive science. At best it is a "becoming science" which never can cease entirely to have a speculative, or philosophic character. This is not the place to go into details of matters in controversy. Suffice it to say that in rivalry to the older school--which is variously designated Ricardian, Orthodox, English, or cla.s.sical--newer ideas have been developed, dating from the work of the Austrian economists, of Jevons, and of J. B. Clark in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The older school had sought the explanation of value and the theory of distribution in objective factors,--partly in the chemical qualities of the soil, partly in labor, partly in the costs (or outlays) of the employing cla.s.s. The psychological factor in value had been almost eliminated from this older treatment of value and price, or at best was imperfectly recognized under the name of "utility." The newer school made the psychological element primary in the positive treatment of economic principles, and launched a negative criticism against the older terms and ideas that effectively exposed their unsoundness considered separately and their inconsistency as a system of economic thought. Both the negative criticisms and the proposed amendments taken one by one gained wide acceptance among economists.

But when it came to embodying them in a general theory of economics, many economists have balked.[33] Most of the American texts in economics and much of our teaching show disastrous effects of this confusion and irresolution. The newer concepts, guardedly admitted to have some validity, appear again and again in the troubled discussions of recent textbook writers, which usually end with a rejection, "on the whole," of the logical implications of these newer concepts. Many teachers thus have lost their grip on any coordinating theory of distribution. They no longer have any general economic philosophy. The old Ricardian c.o.c.k-sureness had its pedagogic merits. Without faith, teaching perishes. The complaints of growing difficulty in the teaching of the introductory course seem to have come particularly from teachers that are in this unhappy state of mind. They declare that it is impossible longer to interest students successfully in a general theoretical course, and they are experimenting with all kinds of subst.i.tutes--de-nicotinized tobacco and Kaffee Hag--from which poisonous theory has been extracted. At the same time, economics "with a punch in it," economics "with a back bone," is being taught by strong young teachers of the new faith more successfully, perhaps, than economics has ever been taught in the past. This greater question of the teacher's conception of economics dominates all the minor questions of method. Economics cannot be taught as an integrated course in principles by teachers without theoretical training and conceptions; in such hands its treatment is best limited to the descriptive phases of concrete special problems,--valuable, indeed, as a background and basis, but never rising to the plane upon which alone economics is fully worth the student's while as a college subject.

FRANK ALBERT FETTER _Princeton University_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The literature on the teaching of economics in the secondary schools, its need and its proper scope and method, is somewhat extensive.

Another goodly group of articles discusses the teaching of economic history and of other social sciences related to economics, either in high schools or colleges. A somewhat smaller group pertains to graduate instruction in the universities. The following brief list of t.i.tles, arranged chronologically, is most pertinent to our present purpose:

"The Relation of the Teaching of Economic History to the Teaching of Political Economy" (pages 88-101), and "Methods of Teaching Economics"

(pages 105-111), _A. E. A. Economic Studies_, Vol. 3, 1898.

Proceedings of a conference on the teaching of elementary economics, _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 17, December, 1909.

TAYLOR, F. M. "Methods of Teaching Elementary Economics," _Journal of Political Economy_. Vol. 17, December, 1909, page 688.

WOLFE, A. B. "Aim and Content of a College Course in Elementary Economics," _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 17, December, 1909, page 673.

Symposium by Carver, Clark, Seager, Seligman, Nearing, _et al._, _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 18, 1910.

Report of the Committee on the Teaching of Economics, _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 19, 1911, pages 760-789.

ROBINSON, L. N. "The Seminar in the Colleges," _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 21, 1913, page 643.

WOLFE, A. B. "The Aim and Content of the Undergraduate Economics Curriculum," _Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. 21, 1913, page 1.

PERSONS, CHARLES E. "Teaching the Introductory Course in Economics,"

_Quarterly Journal of Economics_, November, 1916.