College Teaching Part 6

Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon lost on the highways and byways of cla.s.sification; to him the subject becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers, and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of the semester?

=Ill.u.s.trations of maxim. Begin at the point of contact=

The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point of contact can best be understood and appreciated by ill.u.s.trations of actual teaching conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages.

Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact, that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student that were noted before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are a.n.a.lyzed; the contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage.

Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions of the cla.s.s. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the formulation of a definition of economics. Now the cla.s.s sums up all that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to verification; it fosters a critical att.i.tude toward printed text.

The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced algebra, trigonometry, a.n.a.lytical geometry, and calculus, looks back with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulae, equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which seemed to be composed of a series of difficult, unrelated, and unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the ma.s.s of data was soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions.

What is the meaning of it all? What is its relation to life? There is no doubt that much of this mathematics has its application to life's needs, and that these successive subjects of mathematics are thoroughly interdependent. But nothing in the mode of instruction leads the student to see either the application or the interrelation of all this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a single course called mathematics rather than these successive subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical principle were taught through a situation in building, engineering, or mechanics so that the student would at all times see the intimate relation between mathematical law and physical forces? Would not the disciplinary values of mathematics be intensified for the student by teaching it in a way that presents a quant.i.tative interpretation of the daily phenomena in his experience?

Teachers of philosophy and psychology too often fall into a formalism that robs their subject of all its vitalizing influences. Many a student enters his course in logic with high hopes. At last he is to learn the laws of thought which will render him keen in detection of fallacies and potent in the presentation of argument. How bitter is his disappointment when he finds his course dissipated in definitions and cla.s.sifications. His logic gives itself to the discussion of such patent fallacies as, "A good teacher knows his subject; Williams knows his subject, therefore he is a good teacher." Day after day he proves the error in every form of stupidity or the truth of what is axiomatic. He tires of "Gold is a metal" and "Socrates is mortal." Few courses in logic have the courage to break away from the traditional formalism and to begin each new principle or fundamental concept of logic by a.n.a.lyzing editorials, arguments, contentions in newspapers, magazines, campaign literature, or the actual textbooks. Few students complete their course in logic with a keener insight into thought and with a maturer or more aggressive mental att.i.tude.

=Beginning at the point of contact relates the subject to the life of the student=

It was pointed out in a previous ill.u.s.tration that the college student "taking philosophy" is seldom made to feel that the subject he studies is related to the problems that arise in his own life. Too frequently introductory courses in philosophy are historical and extensive in scope, striving to develop mastery of facts rather than to give new viewpoints. The student learns names of philosophers, and attempts to memorize the philosophic system developed by each thinker. Such a course imposes a heavy burden on retentive power, for no little effort is required to remember the distinctive philosophical systems advocated by the respective writers. To the students these philosophers represent a group of peculiar people differing one from the other in their degrees of "queerness." One system is as far removed as another from the life that the student experiences; no system helps him to find himself. An introductory course in philosophy should begin with the problems of philosophy; it should have its origin in the reflective and speculative problems of the student himself. As the course progresses, the student should feel a growing sense of power, an increasing ability to formulate more clearly, to himself at least, the questions of religion and ethics that arise in the life of a normal thinking person. So, too, courses in ethics and psychology lose the vital touch unless they begin in the life of the student and apply their lessons to his social and intellectual environment.

It must be pointed out, however, that the social sciences lend themselves more readily to this intimate treatment than do languages, or the physical sciences, but at all points possible in the study of a subject, the experience of the student must be introduced as a means of giving the subject real meaning. In teaching composition and rhetoric ill.u.s.trations of the canons of good form need not be restricted to the past. Current magazines and newspapers are not devoid of effective ill.u.s.trations. When the older literary forms are used exclusively as models of language, the student ends his course with the erroneous notion that contemporary writing is cheap and sensational and devoid of artistic craftsmanship.

Courses in physics and chemistry frequently devote themselves to a development of principles rather than to the applications of the studies to every sphere of life. Introductory college courses in zoology spend the year in the minutiae of the lowest animal forms and rarely reach any animal higher in the scale than the crayfish. We still find students in botany learning the various margins of leaves, the system of venation, the scientific cla.s.sifications, but at the end of the course, unable to recognize ordinary leaves and just as blind to nature as they were before. Zoology and botany do not always--as they should--give a new view of life, a new att.i.tude towards living phenomena, a new contact with nature.

Careful inquiry among college students will reveal an amazing ignorance of common chemical and physical phenomena after full-year courses in chemistry and physics. We find a student giving two semesters to work in each of these subjects. He spends most of his time learning the chemical elements, their characteristics and the modes of testing for them. The major portion of the time is spent in the laboratory, where he must discover for himself the elementary practices of the subject and test the validity of well-established truths. At the end of his second semester he has not developed sufficient laboratory technique for significant work in chemistry; he is ignorant of the chemical explanation of the most common phenomena in life.

=Pedagogical vs. logical organization=

There is much to be said for the position taken by the "older teachers," who may not possess the scholarship of the "younger investigators" but who argue for a general course in which laboratory work shall be reduced, technique minimized, and attention focused on giving an extensive view of chemical forces. The simple chemical facts in digestion, metabolism, industry, war, medicine, etc., would be presented in such a way as to make life a more intelligent process and to give an insight into the method of science. In the courses that follow the introductory one, there would be a marked change in aim; the student would be taught the laboratory technique and would be given a more intensive study of the important aspects of chemistry.

Similar changes in the introductory courses in physics are urged by these same teachers.

Beginning at the point of contact may frequently interfere with the logical arrangement of the course of study; it may wrench many a topic out of its accustomed place in the textbook; it will demand that the applications, which come last in most logically arranged courses, be given first and that definitions and principles which come first be given last. This logical arrangement, it was pointed out, is usually the expression of the matured mind that is thoroughly conversant with every aspect of a subject; it may mean little, however, to the beginner--so little that he does not even slightly appreciate its significance. The loss in logical sequence entailed by beginning at the point of contact is often more than compensated for by the advantages which are derived from a psychological presentation.

=Proper organization as a factor in effective teaching=

A well-organized lesson possesses teaching merits which may counteract almost all the usual weaknesses found in poor teaching. Good organization determines clearness of comprehension, ease of retention, and ability of recall; it makes for economy of time and mental energy; it simplifies the processes of mental a.s.similation; it teaches the student, indirectly but effectively, to think sequentially. We have all suffered too keenly, as auditors and readers, the inconveniences of poor organization, not to realize the worth of proper organization of knowledge in teaching.

Organization of knowledge has become a pedagogical slogan, but its increase in popularity has not been accompanied by increased clearness of comprehension of its meaning. What, then, is meant by proper organization? It must ever be borne in mind that proper organization is a relative condition, the limits of which are determined by the capacities of the students and the nature of the subject matter. What is effective organization of facts in elementary history may be very ineffective organization for students of high school or college grade.

Making due allowance for relative conditions, good organization may be said to consist of five essential characteristics.

_Logical sequence_ is the first of these. It is apparent that the more rational the sequence of facts, the more effective is the organization of knowledge. Data organized on a basis of cause and effect, similarity, contrast or any other logical relationship will help to secure the teaching advantages we have mentioned. A search for this simple principle in most textbooks on American or English history or literature reveals its complete absence. A detailed ma.s.s of historical information grouped into administrations or reigns is merely a mechanical organization in which time, the accidental element, and not the development of social movements, the logic of human history, is the determining factor. In too many courses in literature the student learns names of writers, biographical data, and literary characteristics of the masters, but fails to see the development of the movement of which the writer was a part. Events of history placed in their social movements, writers in literature placed in the school in which they belong, give the student the logical ties which bind the knowledge to him. So, too, one often a.n.a.lyzes the sequence of chapters in an advanced algebra or a trigonometry and fails to discover the governing rationale. It must be remembered, however, that the nature of the subject will often reduce the logical element in its organization. Instances in language teaching may be cited as ill.u.s.trations of teaching situations where a mechanical organization is often the only one possible because of the arbitrary character of the subject matter.

=Meaning of organization of subject matter=

_Relativity_ of importance is the second factor of good organization.

A cursory study of a well-organized chapter or merely pa.s.sing attention to a well-organized lecture reveals at once a distinct difference in the emphasis on the various parts or elements of the subject. The proportional allotment of time or s.p.a.ce, the number of ill.u.s.trations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the force of language--these are all means of bringing out the relative importance of const.i.tuent topics or principles. In retrospect, a well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map; each part stands out in distinctive color according to its significance.

It is frequently argued by teachers that students of college age should be required to distinguish the relativity of importance of the parts of a lesson or the topics in a subject; that the instructor who points out the changing importance of each succeeding part of a lesson is enervating the student by doing for him what he ought to do for himself. This is true in part, but it must be realized that the instructor who through questions and directed discussions leads students to formulate for themselves the relative importance of data is not only carrying out the suggestion made in the preceding paragraph but is also developing in his students a power they too frequently lack. Those who have studied the notes that students take in their cla.s.ses have seen how frequently facts are torn from their moorings; how wrong principles are derived from ill.u.s.trations; how a catch-phrase becomes a basic principle; how simple truths and axioms are distorted in the frenzy of note taking. Through questions if possible, through emphasis on ill.u.s.trations and explanations, where no other means is available, students must be made to see that all facts of a subject are not of the same hue, that some are faint of tint, others in shadow, and still others in high colors. Without this relativity of importance, facts are grouped; with it, they are intelligently organized.

_An underlying tendency_ can be discerned in well-organized knowledge.

Not only are facts arranged in logical sequence and emphasized according to importance, but there is in addition a central principle or an underlying purpose giving unifying force to them all. We can ill.u.s.trate the need of this third characteristic of good organization by referring to a college course in American history which gives much time to the period from 1815 to 1860. The events of these forty-five years are not taught in administrations but are summed up in six national tendencies; viz., the questions of state sovereignty, slavery, territorial acquisition, tariff, industrial and transportational progress, and foreign policy. Each of these movements is treated as intensively as time permits. At the end of the study of the entire period, the student is left with these six topics but without a unifying principle; to him, these are six unrelated currents of events. In each of these problems the North and the South displayed distinctive att.i.tudes, acted from distinctive motives, expressed distinctive needs and preferences, but these were never brought out either through well-formulated questions or through explanation. As a result, the cla.s.s never realize fully that those years, 1815-1860, marked the period of growing sectional differences, misunderstandings, and animosities. Had this underlying tendency been brought out clearly at various points in the course, the students would have carried away a permanent impression of what is most vital in this period of American development.

_Gradation_ of subject matter is another characteristic of good organization. Careful gradation is not so vital in subjects of social content as it is in mathematics, foreign languages, and exact sciences. The most important single factor in removing difficulties that beset a student is gradation. Teaching problems often arise because the instructor or the textbook presents more than one difficulty at a time. Teachers who lack intellectual sympathy or who are so lost in the advanced stages of their specialty that they can no longer image the successive steps of difficulty, one by one, that present themselves to a mind inexperienced in their respective fields, are frequently guilty of this pedagogical error. Malgradation of subject matter is the direct cause of serious loss of time and energy and of needless discouragement not only to students but to instructors as well.

_Ability of the student to summarize_ easily is a test of good organization. At the end of a loosely organized chapter or lesson the student experiences no little difficulty in setting forth the underlying principles and their supporting data. It does not help much to have the textbook or the instructor state the summary either at the end of the lesson in question or at the beginning of the succeeding one. The summary of a lesson, given by the cla.s.s, is a test of the effectiveness of instruction. Summaries given by teachers or textbooks have little or no pedagogical justification. Only in cases where the summary introduces a new point of view or unifying principles, or when it sets forth basic principles in particularly forceful language--only then is the statement by teacher or textbook justifiable.

=Thoroughness=

Teachers are advised to be thorough in their instruction. They in turn urge their students to strive for thoroughness in study. We praise or impugn the scholarship of our colleagues because it possesses or lacks thoroughness. Here we have a quality of knowledge universally extolled. But what is meant by thoroughness? How can teachers or students know that they are attaining that degree of comprehension known as thoroughness? We are told that thoroughness is a relative condition, always changing with accompanying circ.u.mstances. Even an unattainable ideal can be defined,--why not thoroughness? We must, therefore, attempt to determine the meaning of thoroughness as used in teaching and study.

=Negative interpretation of thoroughness=

It may be helpful to formulate the common or lay interpretation of thoroughness. The term "thoroughness" is erroneously used in a quant.i.tative sense to describe scholastic attainment. We are told of a colleague's thoroughness in history; he knows all names, dates, places, facts in the development of mankind; his knowledge of his specialty is encyclopedic; "there is no need of looking things up when he is around." A professor of English literature boasted of the thoroughness with which he teaches _Hamlet_: "Every word of value and every change in the form of versification are marked; every allusion is taken up, every peculiar grammatical construction is brought to the attention of the cla.s.s." Here we have ill.u.s.trations of an erroneous conception of thoroughness which gives it an extensive meaning and regards it as the acc.u.mulation of a ma.s.s of data.

=Positive interpretation of thoroughness=

Yet the master of chronological detail in history may have no historical imagination, no historical perspective, no historical judgment. He may possess the facts, but a period in history still remains for him a stretch of time limited by two dates, rather than a succession of years in which all mankind seems to be moving in the same direction, possessed of the same viewpoints, the same hopes and aspirations. The professor of English literature does not see that in teaching _Hamlet_ he forsook his specialty, literature, for philology and mythology; that he turned his back on art and took up language structure. Thoroughness is not completeness, because the possession of the details of a subject does not necessarily bring with it a true comprehension of it. Add all the details, and the sum total is nothing more than the group of details. Thoroughness is a degree of comprehension resulting from the acquisition of new points of view.

The teacher of history who sees underlying forces in the facts of the past, who understands that true inwardness of any movement which shows him its relation to all phases of life, but who nevertheless may not have ready command of all the specific details, is more thorough in his scholarship. He has the things that count; the facts that are forgotten can easily be found. The cla.s.s that studies the dramatic structure of _Hamlet_, that sees Shakespeare's power of character portrayal, that takes up only such grammatical and language points as give clearer comprehension or lead to greater appreciation of diction, is thorough although it does not possess all the facts. It is thorough because what is significant and dynamic in _Hamlet_ is made focal. The postgraduate student a.s.siduously searching for data for his doctorate thesis is often guided by the erroneous conception of thoroughness; he wants facts that have never seen the light. The more he gets of these, the nearer he approaches his goal. He avoids conclusions; he is counseled by his professors against giving too much of his book to the expression of his views. a.n.a.lyze the chapters of a doctorate thesis and note the number of pages given to facts and those to conclusions and interpretations. The proportion is astonishing. The student's power to find facts is clearly shown; his power to use facts is not revealed by his thesis. The richer the thesis is in detail, in references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. We have failed to realize that this excessive zeal in gathering and collating a large number of not commonly known facts may make the thesis more c.u.mbersome, more complete, but not necessarily more thorough. However, the plea for a new standard in judging doctorate theses is meeting with gratifying encouragement.

What, then, are the teaching practices that make for greater thoroughness, that increase the qualitative and intensive character of knowledge? We shall discuss some of these in the succeeding paragraphs.

=How can thoroughness be produced?=

The _acquisition of new points of view_ makes for increased thoroughness of comprehension. The cla.s.s that understands the causes of the American Revolution from the American point of view knows of the navigation laws, the quartering of soldiers in American homes, the Stamp Act, the Boston Ma.s.sacre,--the usual provocations that strained patience to the breaking point. The college teacher of American history who spends time on the riots in New York in which a greater number of colonists was killed than in Boston, who teaches in detail the various acts forbidding the manufacture of hats and of iron ware, or the protests against English practices in the colonies made by British merchants, etc., is adding more facts, but he may only be intensifying the erroneous conclusion that the students have formed in earlier and less complete courses. The topic, "Causes of the American Revolution," grows in thoroughness, not through the addition of these facts but through the presentation of new interpretations of the practices of the English. When we explain that the English believed in virtual and not actual representation, the students see a new meaning in "taxation without representation." When the students learn that the English government decided on a new economic and industrial policy which planned to have the mother country specialize in manufacture and transportation and the colonies in production of raw materials, the students see reason, though not necessarily justice, in the acts prohibiting Americans from various forms of manufacture and transportational activities. These new facts modify in the minds of students the point of view so often given in elementary courses, that the War for Independence was caused by sheer British meanness and injustice, by her policy of reckless repression.

It is not always possible to give new points of view to all knowledge in all subjects. There are cases in which there is only one point of view or where students may not be ready for a new interpretation because of their limited mastery of a new field of knowledge. Under these conditions an added point of view is a source of confusion rather than an aid to clearer comprehension. Some subjects, like the social sciences, naturally allow for richer interpretations. Others, like the languages and the physical sciences, present only very limited opportunities; in the biological sciences the possibilities, though not as rich as in the social sciences, are numerous and productive of good results.

_Comparison_ is a second means of producing thoroughness of comprehension. Good teaching abounds in comparisons which are introduced at the end of every important topic rather than reserved for examination questions. Comparisons used liberally at every logical pause in the development of a subject always give an added viewpoint, review early subject matter incidentally, stir thought, and make for better organization. How much more clearly are the causes of the War of 1812 understood after they are compared with those that brought on the Revolutionary War! How much more definite are the causes of the American Revolution when compared with those that brought on the French Revolution! A writer, a school, or a movement in English literature may be understood when studied by itself; but how is comprehension deepened when each is compared with another writer or school or movement! Comparison of perception and conception or appreciation and a.s.sociation in psychology, makes each activity stand out clearer in the mind of the student. Compare the laws of rent, wage, profit, and interest in economics, and not only each is better understood but the basic laws of distribution are readily derived by the student. Similarly, comparisons in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the entire range of collegiate subjects give increased comprehension, useful though incidental reviews, and greater unification of knowledge, as well as added points of view.

_Correlation_ as a means of producing thoroughness is closely allied to comparison. Correlation relates kindred topics of different subjects, while comparison points out relations in the same subject.

The instructor who correlates the history of education with the political and economic history that the student learned in another course is unifying related experience, reducing the field of knowledge, introducing logical organization, and adding new interpretations to facts already acquired. Similarly, teaching must be enriched by correlating physics and mathematics, chemistry and physics, literature and music, history of literature and general history, until instruction has taken advantage of every vital relation among subjects. With the growth of specialized subjects there is an unfortunate tendency toward isolation until the untrained mind looks upon the curriculum as a series of unrelated experiences, each rivaling the other in its claim to importance.

The advantage of correlation will remain lost in college teaching as long as each instructor regards himself as a specialized investigator concerned with teaching his subject rather than his students. How many college teachers know what subjects their students have already taken, or knowing the names of these subjects, have a general knowledge of their content? The college professor of the preceding generation was a cultured gentleman whose general scholarship transcended the limits of his specialty. He understood and knew the curriculum as a whole.

Because of changes in every phase of our civilization, his successor has a deeper but a narrower knowledge. He knows little of the work of his students outside of his own subject. He does not relate and correlate the ever growing field of knowledge; he merely adds--by the introduction of his own ma.s.s of facts--to the isolation which characterizes the parts of college curricula. This tendency must be counteracted, not by interfering with the scholastic interests of any instructor, but by occasional conferences of instructors of allied subjects in order to agree on common meeting grounds, on points of correlation, on useful repet.i.tions, and on the elimination of needless duplications. Such pedagogical conferences are rare because college teachers are not alive to the need of reform in methods of college teaching.

Thoroughness results from _increase in the number of applications_ of knowledge. The introduction of the functional view into teaching brings with it a realization of the vital needs of increased ways of applying the experience we present to students. As the laws of physics, mathematics, biology, composition, economics, etc., are applied to a number of specific instances, the generalization grows in meaning and in force. Specific cases vary, and, varying, give new color and new meaning to the laws that are applied to explain them.

How much a law in chemistry means after it is applied to specific instances in industry, human and animal physiology, plant life, or engineering! The equation learned in descriptive geometry may be understood, but it never means so much as when it is applied to specific problems in engineering. Applications give added insight into knowledge and therefore make for greater thoroughness of comprehension.

=Teaching as a process of arousing self-activity=

Locke's Blank Paper Theory, enunciated centuries ago, has been repeatedly and triumphantly refuted even by tyros in psychology, but in educational practices it continues to hold sway. College teaching too frequently proceeds on the a.s.sumption that the mind is an aching void anxiously awaiting the generous contributions of knowledge to be made by the teacher. College examinations usually test for multiplicity of facts acquired, rather than for power developed.

College teaching usually does not perceive that the mind is a reacting machine containing a vast amount of pent-up potential energy which is ready to react upon any presentation; that development takes place only as this self-activity expresses itself; that education is evolutionary rather than involutionary. Teaching is, therefore, a process of arousing, sustaining, and directing the self-activity of pupils. The more persistently and successfully this activity is aroused, the more systematically it is directed to intelligent ends, the more skillful is the teaching. Teachers do not impart knowledge, for that is impossible; they _occasion_ knowledge. Only as the teacher succeeds through questions, directions, diagrams, and all known devices, in arousing the self-activity of the student, is he producing the conditions under which knowledge is acquired by the pupil.

=Evaluation of common methods of teaching=

The methods commonly used in college teaching are as follows:

1. Lecture method, with or without quiz sections.

2. Development method, with or without textbook.