College Teaching Part 34

=Methods of instruction=

The place and relative worth of the various methods of instruction in the province of philosophy will, of course, depend, among other things, upon the character of the particular subject taught and the size and quality of the cla.s.s. In nearly all the introductory philosophical branches in which the cla.s.ses are large the lecture method will prove a valuable auxiliary. In no case, however, should this method be employed exclusively; and in formal logic, it should be used rather sparingly. Ample opportunity should always be given in smaller groups for raising questions and discussing important issues with a view to clearing up obscure points, overcoming difficulties, developing the student's powers of thought, and enabling him to exercise his powers of expression. It is also essential that the student be trained in the difficult art of reading philosophical works. It is wise as a rule to refer him to a good textbook, which should be carefully studied, to pa.s.sages or chapters in other standard manuals, and in historical study to the writings of the great masters.

And frequent opportunity to express himself in the written word must be afforded him; to this end written reports giving the thought of an author in the student's own language, occasional critical essays, and written examinations appealing not only to his memory but to his intelligence should be required during the term. Such exercises keep the student's interest alive, increase his stock of knowledge, develop maturity and independence of thought, and create a sense of growing intellectual power. The written tests encourage members of the cla.s.s to review the work gone over and to discuss with one another important phases of it; in the effort to organize their knowledge they obtain a much better grasp of the subject than would have been possible without such an intensive re-appraisal of the material.

=Logic to be related to the intellectual life of the student=

In the course on formal logic a large part of the time should be spent in examining and criticizing examples of the processes of thought studied (definitions, arguments, methods employed in reaching knowledge) and in applying the principles of correct thinking in written discourses. It is a pity that we have no comprehensive work containing the ill.u.s.trative material needed for the purpose. As it is, the teacher will do well to select his examples from scientific works, speeches, and the textbooks used in other cla.s.ses. As every one knows, nothing is so likely to deaden the interest and to make the study of logic seem trivial as the use of the puerile examples found in many of the older treatises. With the proper material this subject can be made one of the most interesting and profitable courses in the curriculum,--in spite of what its modern detractors may say.

=Students to be familiarized with sources and original writings of the leading philosophers=

In the history of philosophy the lectures and textbook should be supplemented by the reading of the writings of the great philosophers.

Wherever it is possible, the learner should be sent to the sources themselves. It will do him good to finger the books and to find the references; and by and by he may be tempted to read beyond the required a.s.signment--a thing greatly to be encouraged, and out of the question so long as he limits himself to some one's selections from the writings of the philosophers.

In the advanced courses the research method may be introduced; special problems may be a.s.signed to the student who has acquired a knowledge of the fundamentals, to be worked out under the guidance of the instructor.

=Lecture method should arouse dynamic interest and a desire to master the problems of philosophy=

In the lecture intended for beginners the teacher should seek to arouse in his hearers an interest in the subject and the desire to plunge more deeply into it. He should not bewilder the student with too many details and digressions but present the broad outlines of the field, placing before him the essentials and leaving him to fill in the minutiae by a study of the books of reference. Each lecture ought to const.i.tute an organic whole, as it were, in which the different parts are held together by a central idea; and its connection with the subject matter of the preceding lectures should be kept before the hearer's mind. All this requires careful and conscientious preparation on the part of the teacher, who must understand the intellectual quality of his cla.s.s and avoid "shooting over their heads" as well as going to the other extreme of aiming below the level of their mental capacities. Lecturing that is more than mere entertainment is an art which young instructors sometimes look upon as an easy acquisition and which older heads, after long years of experience, often despair of ever mastering. The lecture aims to do what books seldom accomplish--to infuse life and spirit into the subject; and this ideal a living personality may hope to realize where a dead book fails.

=How to secure active partic.i.p.ation by students through lecture method=

In order, however, that the philosophical lecture may not fail of its purpose, the hearer must be more than a mere listener; he must bring with him an alert mind that grasps meanings and can follow thought-sequences. And he cannot keep his attention fixed upon the discourse and understand the relations of its parts unless other senses cooperate with the sense of hearing and unless the motor centers are called into play also. He should carefully cultivate the art of taking notes, an accomplishment in which the average student is sadly lacking and to acquire which he needs the a.s.sistance of the instructor, which he seldom receives. An examination of the student's notebook frequently reveals such a woeful lack of discrimination on the writer's part that one is led to doubt the wisdom of following this method at all; wholly unimportant things are set down in faithful detail and essential ones wholly ignored. The hour spent in the lecture room, however, can and should be made a fruitful means of instruction, one that will awaken processes of thought and leave its mark. But in order to get the best result, the student should be urged to study his notes and the books to which he has been referred while the matters discussed in the lecture are still fresh in his mind; he will be able to clear up points he did not fully grasp, see connections that have escaped him, understand the force of arguments which he missed; and he will a.s.sume a more independent and critical att.i.tude toward what he has heard than was possible on the spur of the moment, when he was driven on and could not stop and reflect. At home, in the quiet of his study, he can organize the material, see the parts of the discourse in their relations to each other, and re-create the whole as it lived and moved in the mind of the teacher. In doing this work he is called on to exercise his thinking and takes an important step forward. It is for this reason that I am somewhat skeptical of the value of the syllabus prepared by the teacher for the use of cla.s.ses in philosophy,--it does for the student what he should do for himself. Whatever value the syllabus may have in other fields of study, its use in the philosophical branches ought to be discouraged.

The great weakness of the lecture method lies in its tendency to relieve the hearer of the necessity of doing his own thinking, to leave him pa.s.sive, to feed him with predigested food; and this defect is augmented by providing him with "helps" which rob him of the benefit and pleasure of putting the pieces of the puzzle-picture together himself.

However, even at its best, the lecture method, unless supplemented in the ways already indicated, runs the danger of making the student an intellectual sponge, a mere absorber of knowledge, or a kind of receptacle for professors to shoot ideas into. As was said before, the student must cultivate the art of reading books and of expressing his thoughts by means of the spoken and written word. At the early stages and in some fields of philosophical study, however, the reading of many books may confuse the beginner and leave his mind in a state of bewilderment. It is indispensable that he acquire the working concepts and the terminology of the subject, and to this end it is generally wise to limit his reading until he has gained sufficient skill in handling his tools, as it were. In the elementary courses many members of the cla.s.s will be unable to do more than follow the lectures and study the textbook; the more gifted ones, however, should be encouraged to extend the range of their reading under the guidance of the instructor.

=Organization of undergraduate courses in philosophy=

An answer to the question concerning the desired sequence of courses in philosophy will depend upon many considerations,--upon one's conception of philosophy and of the various subjects generally embraced under it, upon one's notion of the aims of philosophical instruction, upon one's estimate of the difficulties encountered by the student in the study of the different branches of it, and so on.

There is wide divergence of opinion among thinkers on all these points. Philosophy is variously conceived as metaphysics, as theory of knowledge, as the science of mind (_Geisteswissenschaft_), as the science of values (_Werttheorie_), or as all of these together. Logic is conceived by some thinkers as dependent upon psychology, by others as the presupposition of _all_ the sciences, including psychology.

Ethics is regarded both as a branch of psychology, or as dependent upon psychology, and as an independent study having nothing whatever to do with psychology. Psychology itself is treated both as a natural science, its connection with philosophy being explained as a historical survival, and as the fundamental study upon which all the other subjects of the philosophical department must rest. Where there is such a lack of agreement, it will not be easy to map out a sequential course of study that will satisfy everybody. Even when philosophy is defined in the old historic sense as an attempt to reach a theory of the world and of life, men may differ as to the exact order in which the basal studies should be pursued. By many the history of philosophy is considered the best introduction to the entire field, while others would place it at the end of the series of fundamentals (psychology, logic, ethics), holding that a student who has studied these will be best equipped for a study that includes the history of their development. As a matter of fact, given students of mature mind and the necessary general preparation, either order may be justified. The average undercla.s.sman is, however, too immature to plunge at once into the study of the history of philosophy, and the present writer would recommend that it be preceded by courses in general psychology, logic and ethics. The average soph.o.m.ore will have little difficulty in following courses in psychology and logic; and it is immaterial which of these he takes up first. The course in the theory of ethics should come in the junior or senior year and after the student has gained some knowledge of psychology (preferably from a book like Stout's _Manual of Psychology_). And it would be an advantage if the course in ethics could be preceded by a study of the development of moral ideas, of the kind, let us say, presented in Hobhouse's _Morals in Evolution_. For reasons already stated, the entire course in philosophy should be inaugurated by the Introduction to Philosophy. Advanced courses in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge should come at the end and follow the history of philosophy.

The ideal sequence would, therefore, be in the view of the present writer: Introduction to Philosophy, Psychology or Logic, the Development of Moral Ideas, Theory of Ethics, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Theory of Knowledge. It must be admitted, however, that a rigorous insistence upon this scheme in the American college, in which freedom of election is the rule, would impair the usefulness of the department of philosophy. Few students will be willing to take all these subjects, and there is no reason why an intelligent junior or senior should not be admitted to a course in ethics or the history of philosophy without having first studied the other branches. A person possessing sufficient maturity of mind to pursue these studies will be greatly benefited by them even when he comes to them without previous preparation; and it would be a pity to deprive him of the opportunity to become acquainted with a field in which some of the ablest thinkers have exercised their powers. At all events, he should not leave college without having had a course in the history of philosophy, which will open up a new world to him and may perhaps stimulate him to read the best books in the other branches later on.

It would not be possible, of course, to prescribe all the fundamental philosophical courses, even if it were desirable,--few faculties would go so far,--but it would be wise to require every candidate for the bachelor's degree to give at least six hours of his time (three hours a term, on the two-term basis) to one or two of the elementary courses, preferably in the soph.o.m.ore year. Ethics and the history of philosophy could then be chosen as electives and be followed by the more advanced and specialized courses.

=Moot questions: controversy between philosopher and psychologist=

We have already touched upon some of the debatable questions in the sphere of philosophical education. The dispute concerning the place of psychology in the scheme of philosophical instruction has its cause in differences of view concerning the aims, nature, and methods of that subject. Philosophers ask for an introductory course in psychology which shall serve as a propaedeutic to the philosophical studies, while teachers of education wish to have it treated in a way to throw light upon educational methods and theory. "Some biologists treat mental phenomena as mere correlates of physiological processes....

Others, including a number of psychologists also, regard psychological phenomena as fully explicable in terms of behavior, and as const.i.tuting therefore a phase of biological science." The Committee of the American Psychological a.s.sociation on the Academic Status of Psychology recommends "that the a.s.sociation adopt the principle that the undergraduate psychological curriculum in every college or university, great or small, should be planned from the standpoint of psychology and in accordance with psychological ideals, rather than to fit the needs and meet the demands of some other branch of learning."[45] This declaration of principle might lead to peace between the philosophers and the psychologists if there were agreement concerning the "psychological ideals" in accordance with which the subject is to be studied. The desideratum of the philosophers is a psychology which will give the student an understanding of the various phases of mental life; but they do not believe that this can be reached by an exclusive use of the natural-scientific method. The objection of some psychologists, that the philosophers wish to inject metaphysics into the study of mental processes, is met by the rejoinder that the natural-scientific psychology is itself based upon an unconscious metaphysics, and a false one at that. What the philosophers desire is psychological courses which will do full justice to the facts of the mental life and not falsify them to meet the demands of a scientific theory or method--courses of the kind given in European universities by men whose reputation as psychologists is beyond suspicion.

=Divergent views as to nature of introductory course in philosophy=

We have likewise alluded, in this chapter, to the controversy over the need and nature of an introductory course in philosophy. Of those who favor such a philosophical propaedeutic some recommend the History of Philosophy, others an Introduction to Philosophy of the type described in the preceding pages. Some teachers regard as the ideal course a study of the evolving att.i.tudes of the individual toward the world, after the manner of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit; some the Philosophy of History; some _Kulturgeschichte_, that is, the study of "the evolution of science, morality, art, religion, and political life,--in short, the history of inst.i.tutions"; some the study of the great literatures; and some would seek the approach to the subject through the religious interest.[46] It is plain that the History of Philosophy will receive help from all these sources; and a wise teacher will make frequent use of them. Nor can the course in the Introduction to Philosophy afford to ignore them; it will do well to lay particular stress upon the philosophical att.i.tudes, the embryonic philosophies which are to be found in the great literatures, in the great religions, in science, and in the common sense of mankind.

Wherever the human mind is at work, there philosophical conceptions,--world-views, crude or developed,--play their part; and they form the background of the lives of peoples as well as of individuals. In the systems of the great thinkers they are formulated and made more or less consistent; but everywhere they are the result of the mind's yearning to understand the meaning of life in its manifold expressions. When the student comes to see that philosophy is simply an attempt to do what mankind has always been doing and will always continue to do, in a rough way, that it is "only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently,"--to continue the process of thinking to the bitter end,--his att.i.tude toward it will be one of intelligent interest and respect. But not one of these subjects taken by itself will serve the purpose of an introductory course.

=The "case method" in the teaching of philosophy=

Another moot question is concerned with the use of the "case method,"

employed in law instruction, in ethics. The case method seeks to know what the moral law is by studying the moral judgments of society; or, more definitely, to quote the words of Professor c.o.xe,[47] one of its champions: "to discover, if possible, a law running through the judgments _which society has made through its duly appointed officials_." "Historical cases, properly attested, alone give us the means of objective judgment." There can be no doubt that this method will prove serviceable, if judiciously applied; but its exclusive use either as a method of study or as a method of instruction,--even in an introductory course in ethics,--is not to be recommended.[48] The student will not gain an adequate conception of morality from a study of the varying and often contradictory "historical cases," much less from a study of the judgments which society has made "through its duly appointed officials." The legal "case" literature of our country does indeed furnish valuable and interesting material for ethical study, but it would require a riper mind than that of a beginner to discover and to evaluate the moral principles which lie embodied in it.

=Testing the results of instruction=

The problem of testing the effectiveness of one's teaching presents few difficulties in cla.s.ses which are small and in which individual instruction is possible. Wherever teacher and student come in close personal contact and opportunity is afforded for full and frequent discussions as well as for written exercises, it is a comparatively easy matter to judge the mental caliber of the members of the cla.s.s and to determine the extent of their progress. In the case of the large cla.s.ses, however, which crowd into the lecture halls of the modern university, the task is not so simple. Here every effort should be made to divide such concourses of students into numerous sections, small enough to enable the instructor to become acquainted with those under his charge and to watch their development. The professor who gives the lectures should take one or more of these sections himself in order that he may understand the minds to which he is addressing himself, and govern himself accordingly. The tests should consist of discussions, essays, and written and oral examinations; by means of these it is not impossible to determine whether the aims of the subject have been realized in the instruction or not. But the tasks set should be of such a character as to test the student's power of thought, his ability to understand what he has read and heard with all its implications, his ability to a.s.sume a critical att.i.tude toward what he has a.s.similated, and his ability to try his intellectual wings in independent flights. A person who devotes himself faithfully to his work during the entire term, who puts his mind upon it, takes an active part in the discussions, and is encouraged to express himself frequently by means of the written word, will surely give some indication of the progress he has made, even in a written examination--it being a fair a.s.sumption that one who knows will somehow succeed in revealing his knowledge. Care must be taken, of course, that the test is not a mere appeal to the memory; it is only when the examination makes demands upon the student's intelligence that it can be considered a fair measure of the value of philosophical instruction. It must not be forgotten, however, that the examination may reveal not only the weakness of the learner but the weakness of the teacher. It is possible for a student, even in philosophy, to make a fine showing in a written examination by repeating the words of the master which he does not understand, without having derived any real benefit from the course. The teacher may set an examination which will hide the deficiencies of the instruction, and the temptation to do this in large cla.s.ses which he knows have not been properly taught is great.

FRANK THILLY _Cornell University_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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---- _Ueber Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Philosophie im gelehrten Unterricht, Central-Organ fur die Interessen des Realschulwesens_, Vol. XIV, 1, page 4.

---- _Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts_, Conclusion.

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