S90 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



bring the latter into sight. Though the purpose of college may still 

 be beclouded, and though there is still much fighting in the dark 

 over the curriculum, at least two things are pretty sure: first, within 

 fairly wide limits, it makes little difference what the undergraduate is 

 taught in his first two years, provided he is really taught;^ and, sec- 

 ondly, teaching is not a trick that any man can pick up for himself. 

 These two facts leave us with only one thing to do — train graduate 

 students to be college teachers. 



Our normal schools and teachers' colleges have proved this possible. 

 They are turning out excellent high-school teachers, and, if that can be 

 done, then at least good teachers for the first two undergraduate years 

 are makable. The difference between high school and college is 

 narrowing. The National Association of State Universities, in its 

 efforts to create a Standard American College, aims to " differentiate 

 its parts in such a way that the first two years shall be looked upon as 

 a continuation of and a supplement to the work of secondary instruc- 

 tion, as given in the high school." Let us restrict our problem, then, 

 to the making of a freshman and spohomore faculty. If we can furnish 

 this much, the rest will be easy. 



There are many reasons why the normal school should not be called 

 upon to do this for us; but the chief one is that the institution offers 

 no opportunity for genuine apprenticeship. And without apprentice- 

 ship, training is greatly hampered, as the normal schools themselves 

 have learned in the case of the high-school teacher. To the college, 

 then, falls the training. The larger universities must offer it in a 

 graduate school, and somewhat after the following manner. 



1. A three-year course, of which one year shall be given over to 

 pedagogy and two to actual teaching, shall lead to a doctorate. I trust 

 the pedagogy needs no explanation. The two practise years, however, 

 may. They find their defense in the axiom that the only way to learn 

 how to teach is to teach. And they find their excuse in the fact that 

 the young teacher is a necessary evil. An ideal college, to be sure, would 

 have, say, a professor ordinary for every freshman class of fifteen; but 

 not even Mr. Rockefeller is willing to finance such an institution. And 

 not all the money in the world could make all college instructors finished 

 scholars. So surely as teachers must be born and bred, just so surely 

 must the undergraduate always suffer more or less from immature 

 instruction. But he will suffer least if led by young men who are 

 engrossed, not in writing a thesis, but in their class work. 



The course of training I suggest should lead to a Ph.D. in order to 

 attach the same dignity to the expert teacher that now attaches to the 

 skilled investigator. This means, of course, a sharp break with tradi- 



' Not that Choctaw is just as good as chemistry, but the lower levels of all 

 grand divisions of knowledge lie in about the same plane. 



