College Teaching Part 26

Sad experience advises that it is unsafe for an instructor any longer to a.s.sume that college soph.o.m.ores are familiar with the Old Testament, cla.s.sic myths, or Greek and Roman history. Hence he must beware of using any recondite allusions or ill.u.s.trations which themselves need so much explanation that their bearing on the immediate problem in hand is obscured. An ill.u.s.tration, like a funny story, loses its pungency if it requires a scholium.

=Pedagogical suggestions summarized=

Fourth, adhere to what a friend calls the 16 to 1 basis--16 parts fact and 1 part theory. Fifth, eschew the professor's chair. The blackboard is the teacher's "next friend." Recent time-motion studies lead us to believe that no man can use a blackboard efficiently unless he stands!

The most celebrated teaching in history was peripatetic. Sixth, postpone the reconciling of discrepant social theorizings to the tougher-hided seniors or graduate students, and stick to the presentation of "accessible realities." Finally, an occasional friendly meeting with students, say once or twice a semester at an informal supper, will create an atmosphere of cooperative learning, will break down the traditional barriers of hostility between master and pupil, and may incidentally bring to the surface many useful hints for the framing of discussion problems.

=The course of study--(a) Determined by the maturity of the students=

To a certain extent teaching methods are determined by the age of the students. In 1910, of all the inst.i.tutions reporting, 73 stated that sociology instruction began in the junior year; 23 admitted soph.o.m.ores, 4 freshmen, 39 seniors. But the unmistakable drift is in the direction of introducing sociology earlier in the college curriculum, and even into secondary and elementary schools. Hence the cautions voiced above tend to become all the more imperative.

Moreover, while in the past it has been possible to exact history, economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, or education as prerequisite to beginning work in sociology, in view of the downward trend of sociology courses it becomes increasingly more difficult to take things for granted in the student's preparation. Until the dream of offering a semester or year of general social science to all freshmen as the introduction to work in the specialized branches of social science comes true, the sociologist must communicate to his elementary cla.s.ses a sense of the relations between his view of social phenomena and the aspects of the same phenomena which the historian, the economist, the political scientist, and the psychologist handle.

=(b) Determined by its aims=

Both the content and methods of sociological instruction are determined also in part by what its purpose is conceived to be. A study of the beginnings of teaching this subject in the United States shows that it was prompted primarily by practical ends. For example, the American Social Science a.s.sociation proposal (1878), in so far as it covered the field of sociology, included only courses on punishment and reformation of criminals, public and private charities, and prevention of vice. President White of Cornell in 1871 recommended a course of practical instruction "calculated to fit young men to discuss intelligently such important social questions as the best methods of dealing practically with pauperism, intemperance, crime of various degrees and among persons of different ages, insanity, idiocy, and the like." Columbia University early announced that a university situated in such a city, full of problems at a time when "industrial and social progress is bringing the modern community face to face with social questions of the greatest magnitude, the solution of which will demand the best scientific study and the most honest practical endeavor," must provide facilities for bringing university study into connection with practical work. In 1901 definite practical courses shared honors of first place with the elementary or general course in college announcements. The situation was practically the same ten years later. Still more recently Professor Blackmar, one of the veterans in sociology teaching, worked out rather an elaborate program of what he called a "reasonable department of sociology for colleges and universities." In spite of the fact that theoretical, biological, anthropological, and psychological aspects of the subject were emphasized, his conclusion was that "the whole aim is to ground sociology in general utility and social service. It is a preparation for social efficiency."

=(c) Determined by the social character of the community=

The principle of adaptation to environment comes into play also in the choice of teaching methods. An urban department can send its students directly into the field for first-hand observation of industry, housing, sanitation, congestion, playgrounds, immigration, etc., and may encourage "supervised field work" as fulfilling course requirements. But the country or small town department far removed from large cities must emphasize rural social study, or get its urban data second hand through print, charts, photographs, or lantern slides. A semester excursion to the city or to some state charitable inst.i.tution adds such a touch of vividness to the routine cla.s.s work.

But "slumming parties" are to be ruthlessly tabooed, particularly when featured in the newspapers. Social science is not called upon to make experimental guinea pigs of the poor simply because of their poverty and inability to protect themselves.

=The introductory course the vital point of contact between student and the department=

For many reasons the most serious problems of teaching sociology center about the elementary or introductory course. Advanced undergraduate and graduate courses usually stand or fall by the inherent appeal of their content as organized by the peculiar genius of the instructor. If the student has been able to weather the storms of his "Introduction," he will usually have gained enough momentum to carry him along even against the adverse winds of bad pedagogy in the upper academic zones. Since the whole purpose of sociology is the very practical one of giving the student mental tools with which to think straight on societal problems (what Comte called the "social point of view"), and since usually only a comparatively small number find it possible to specialize in advanced courses, the introductory course a.s.sumes what at first sight might seem a disproportionate importance.

Only one or two teachers of sociology, so far as I know, discount the value of an elementary course. The rest are persuaded of its fundamental importance, and many, therefore, consider it a breach of trust to turn over this course to green, untried instructors. Partly as a recruiting device for their advanced courses, partly from this sense of duty, they undertake instruction of beginners. But it is often impossible for the veteran to carry this elementary work: he must commit it to younger men. For that reason the remainder of this chapter will be given over to a discussion of teaching methods for such an elementary course, with younger teachers in mind.

=Teaching suggestions for the introductory course=

First, two or three general hints. It is unwise, to say the least, to attempt to cover the social universe in one course. Better a few simple concepts, abundantly ill.u.s.trated, organized clearly and systematically. Perhaps it is dangerous to suggest a few recurrent catch phrases to serve as guiding threads throughout the course, but that was the secret of the old ballad and the folk tale. Homer and the makers of fairy tales combined art and pedagogy in their use of descriptive epithets. Such a phrase as Ward's "struggle for existence is struggle for structure" might furnish the framework of a whole course. "Like-mindedness," "interest-groups," "belief-groups," and "folk-ways" are also convenient refrains.

n.o.body but a thoroughgoing pedant will drag his students through two weeks' lectures and a hundred pages of text at the beginning of the course in the effort to define sociology and chart all its affinities and relations with every other science. Twenty minutes at the first cla.s.s meeting should suffice to develop an understanding of what the scientific att.i.tude is and a tentative definition of sociology. The whole course is its real definition. At the end of the term the very best way of indicating the relation of sociology to other sciences is through suggestions about following up the leads obtained in the course by work in biology, economics, psychology, and other fields.

This correlation of the student's program gives him an intimate sense of the unity in diversity of the whole range of science.

If the student is to avoid several weeks of floundering, he should be led directly to observe societal relations in the making. This can perhaps be accomplished best through a.s.signing a series of four problems at the first cla.s.s meetings.

Problem I: To show how each student spins a web of social relationship. Let him take a sheet of paper, place a circle representing himself in the middle of it, then add dots and connecting lines for every individual or inst.i.tution he forms a contact with during the next two or three days. He will get a figure looking something like this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Problem II: To show how neighborhoods are socially bound up. Let the student take a section, say two or three blocks square, in a district he knows well, and map it,--showing all the contacts. Again he will get a web somewhat like this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

These diagrams are adapted from students' reports. If they seem absurdly simple, it is well to remember that experience reveals the student's amazing lack of ability to vizualize social relationships without some such device. These diagrams, however, should serve merely as the point of departure. Add to them charts showing the sources of milk and other food supplies of a large city, and a sense of the interdependence and reciprocity of city and country will develop. Take a Mercator's projection map of the world and draw the trade routes and immigration streams to indicate international solidarities. Such diagrams as the famous health tract "A Day in the Life of a Fly" or the story of Typhoid Mary are helpful in establishing how closely a community is bound together.

Problem III: To show the variety and kinds of social activities, i.e., activities that bring two or more people into contact. Have the student note down even the homeliest sorts of such activities, the butcher, the postman, the messenger boy; insist that he go out and look instead of guessing or reading; require him to group these activities under headings which he may work out for himself. He will usually arrive at three or four, such as getting a living, recreation, political. It may be wise to ask him to grade these activities as helpful, harmful, strengthening, or weakening, in order to accustom him to the idea that sociology must treat of good, bad, and indifferent objects.

Problem IV: To determine what the preponderant social interests and activities are as judged by the amount of time men devote to them. Let the student try a "time budget" for a fortnight. For this purpose Giddings suggests a large sheet of paper ruled for a wide left-hand margin and 32 narrow columns: the first 24 columns for hours of the day, the 25th for the word "daily," and the last seven for the seven days of the week. In the margin the student writes the names of every activity of whatever description during the waking hours. This will furnish excellent training in exact habits of observation and recording, and inductive generalization. When the summary is made at the end of the fortnight, the student will have worked for himself the habitual "planes of interest" along which social activities lie.

At this point he ought to have convinced himself that the subject matter of sociology is concrete reality, not moonshine. Moreover, he should be able to lay down certain fundamental marks of a social group, such as a common impulse to get together, common sentiments, ideas, and beliefs, reciprocal service. From the discovery of habitual planes of interest (self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, self-a.s.sertion, self-subordination, etc.) it is a simple step to show diagrammatically how each interest impels an activity, which tends to precipitate itself into a social habit or inst.i.tution.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- INNER URGE OR INTEREST | MOTOR EXPRESSION IN | RESULTANT GROUP HABIT (INSTINCT OR | ACTIVITY | OR INSt.i.tUTION DISPOSITION) | | -----------------------+----------------------+---------------------- HUNGER; WILL-TO-LIVE | The food-quest | Economic technique Self-Maintenance | | property, invention, | | material arts of life -----------------------+----------------------+---------------------- s.e.x : | Procreation and | The family, ancestor Self-Perpetuation | parenthood | worship, courts of | | domestic relations, | | patriarchal government, | | etc.

=To make sociology real make it egocentric=

The way is now clear for the two next steps, the concepts of causation and development. Here again why not follow the egocentric plan of starting with what the student knows? Ask him to write a brief but careful autobiography answering the questions--How have I come to be what I am? What influences personal or otherwise have played upon me?[34] The student is almost certain to lay hold of the principle of determining or controlling forces, and of evolution or change; he may even be able to a.n.a.lyze rather clearly the different types of control which have cooperated in his development.

From this start it is easy to develop the genetic concept of social life. The individual grows from simple to complex. Why not the race?

Here introduce a comparison between the social group known to the student, a r.e.t.a.r.ded group (such as MacClintock's or Vincent's study of the Kentucky Mountaineers[35]) or a frontier community, and a contemporary primitive tribe (say, the Hupa or Seri Indians, Negritos, Bontoc Igorot, Bangala, Kafirs, Yakuts, Eskimo, or Andaman Islanders).

Require a detailed comparison arranged in parallel columns on such points as size, variety of occupation, food supply, security of life, inst.i.tutions, family life, language, religion, superst.i.tions, and opportunities for culture.

These two points of departure--the student's interest in his own personality and the community influences that have molded it, and the comparative study of a primitive group--should harmonize the two chief rival views of teaching sociologists; namely, those who urge the approach to sociology through anthropology and those who find the best avenue through the concrete knowledge of the _socius_. Moreover, it lays a foundation for a discussion of the antiquity of man, his kinship with other living things, and his evolution; that is, the biological presupposition of human society. Here let me testify to the great help which Osborn's photographs[36] of reconstructions of the Pithecanthropos, Piltdown, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon types have rendered in clearing away prejudices and in vivifying the remote past.

Religious apprehensions in particular may be allayed also by referring students to articles on race, man, evolution, anthropology, etc., in such compilations as the _Catholic Encyclopedia_ and Hastings'

_Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics_. The opening chapters in Marett's little book on _Anthropology_ are so sanely and admirably written that they also clear away many prejudices and fears.

With such a concrete body of facts contrasting primitive with modern civilized social life the student will naturally inquire, How did these changes come about? At this point should come normally the answer in terms of what practically all sociologists agree upon; namely, the three great sets of determining forces or phenomena, the three "controls": (1) the physical environment (climate, topography, natural resources, etc.); (2) man's own nature (psycho-physical factors, the factors in biological evolution, the role of instinct, race, and possibly the concrete problems of immigration and eugenics); (3) social heredity (folk-ways, customs, inst.i.tutions, the arts of life, the methods of getting a living, significance of tools, distribution of wealth, standards of living, etc.) A blackboard diagram will show how these various factors converge upon any given individual.[37]

The amplification of these three points will ordinarily make up the body of an introductory course so far as cla.s.s work goes. Ethnography should furnish rich ill.u.s.trative material. But to make cla.s.s discussions really productive the student's knowledge of his own community must be drawn upon. And the best way of getting this correlation is through community surveys. The student should be required as parallel laboratory work to prepare a series of chapters on his ward or part of his ward or village, covering the three sets of determining factors. The instructor may furnish an outline of the topics to be investigated, or he may pa.s.s around copies of such brief survey outlines as Aronovici's _Knowing One's Own Community_ or Miss Byington's _What Social Workers Should Know about Their Own Communities_; he may also refer them to any one of the rapidly growing number of good urban and rural surveys as models. But he should not give too much information as to where materials for student reports may be obtained. The disciplinary value of having to hunt out facts and uncover sources is second only to the value of accurate observation and effective presentation. If the aim of a sociology course is social efficiency, experience shows no better way of getting a vivid, sober, first-hand knowledge of community conditions. And there is likewise no surer way of compelling students to subst.i.tute facts for vapid wordiness and snap judgments.

Toward the end of the course many of us have found it profitable to introduce a brief discussion of what may be called the highest term of the series; namely, the evolution of two or three typical inst.i.tutions, say law and government, education, religion, and the family. These topics will serve to clinch the earlier discussions and to crystallize a few ideas on social control and perhaps even social progress.

Normally such a course will close with a fuller definition of the meaning of sociology, its content, its value in the study of other sciences, and, if time permits, a brief historical sketch of the development of sociology as a separate science.

=The use of a text for study=

I have no certified advice to offer on the question of textbooks. But the almost universal cry of sociology teachers is that so far no really satisfactory text has been produced. Some men still use Spencer, some write their own books, some try to adapt to their particular needs such texts as are issued from time to time, some use none at all but depend upon a more or less well-correlated syllabus or set of readings. There is undoubtedly a profitable demand for a good elementary source book comparable to Thomas's _Source Book on Social Origins_ or Marshall, Wright, and Field's _Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics_. Nearly any text will need freshening up by collateral reading from such periodicals as _The Survey or The New Republic_. In order to secure effective and correlated outside reading, many teachers have found it helpful to require the students to devote the first five or ten minutes of a cla.s.s meeting once a week or even daily to a written summary of their readings and of cla.s.s discussions. Such a device keeps readings fresh and enables the teacher to emphasize the points of contact between readings and cla.s.s work.

=The social museum=

Every university should develop some sort of a social museum, to cover primitive types of men, the evolution of tools, arts of life, manners and customs, and contemporary social conditions. These can be displayed in the form of plaster casts, ethnographic specimens, photographs, lantern slides, models of housing, statistical charts, printed monographs, etc. The ma.s.sing of a series of these ill.u.s.trations sometimes produces a profound effect. For example, the corridor leading to the sociology rooms at the University of Minnesota has been lined with large photographs of tenement conditions, child labor, immigrant types, etc. The student's interest and curiosity have been heightened immensely. Once a semester, during the discussion of the economic factor in social life, we stage what is facetiously called "a display of society's dirty linen." The cla.s.sroom is decorated with a set of charts showing the distribution of wealth, wages, cost of living, growth of labor unions and other organizations of economic protest. The ma.s.s effect is a c.u.mulative challenge.

=Field work: values and limitations=

Finally, a word about "field work" as a teaching device. Field work usually means some sort of social service practice work under direction of a charitable agency, juvenile court, settlement, or playground. But beginning students are usually more of a liability than an a.s.set to such agencies; they lack the time to supervise students' work, and field work without strict supervision is a farcical waste of time. If such agencies will accept a few students who have the learner's att.i.tude rather than an inflated persuasion of their social Messiahship, field work can become a very valuable adjunct to cla.s.s work. In default of such opportunities the very best field work is an open-eyed study of one's own community, in the attempt to find out what actually is rather than to reform a hypothetical evil.[38]

ARTHUR J. TODD _University of Minnesota_

Footnotes:

[34] In order to secure frank statements, both these autobiographies and the time budgets may be handed in anonymously.

[35] _American Journal of Sociology_, 4:1-20; 7:1-28, 171-187.

[36] In his _Men of the Old Stone Age_.

[37] See such a diagram in Todd, _Theories of Social Progress_, page 240.