594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



for the fairer division of effort and attention between them. Student- 

 teachers will relieve some members of the faculty from elementary 

 work; it will let others pass over completely into the graduate schools 

 in the course of time. After ten years, a respectable number of student- 

 teachers will be ready to fill purely collegiate professorships. 



5. While effecting this differentiation, it will also unify college life. 

 If it does nothing else, it will clarify the aim and policy of each depart- 

 ment simply by concentrating attention upon teaching problems. But 

 it may also lead to a more thorough system of faculty advisers than has 

 yet been found feasible. There is no reason why a student-teacher, at 

 least in his third year, could not profitably serve as personal counselor 

 for a few undergraduates. At present, as is generally known, the faculty 

 adviser rarely does more than talk at long intervals with his proteges, 

 and then on nothing more than the narrower questions of electing 

 courses. He has no time for intimacies, as he usually carries from 14 

 to 16 hours of lectures a week, and has from a dozen to a score of 

 students assigned to him. If, however, there could be an instructor 

 for every thirty or forty students in each of the five chief undergradu- 

 ate departments, then only six to eight students would have to be 

 assigned to a single adviser. 



6. It will help bridge the gap between high school and college. A 

 common and well-grounded complaint to-day is that college teachers 

 are not drawn from the ranks of the better high-school teachers. The 

 trouble has not been with the latter; there has simply been a tradition 

 that a college teacher must be a Ph.D. and a scientific investigator — and 

 few high-school teachers have ever entered either of these select circles. 

 Give the doctorate, though, for mastery of college teaching; and two 

 things will eventually happen. First, many student-teachers upon 

 receiving their degree, will be unable to secure college posts; and so 

 they will then turn to high-school work, against which they will not be 

 prejudiced, as your ordinary Ph.D. is to-day, and for which they will 

 naturally be preferred candidates. Secondly, student-teachers thus 

 installed will not be rooted forever to their high school, for they are 

 known to college professors; they have taught two years in college and 

 have established something of a reputation there which will help the 

 best of them into college chairs some day. It is also possible that 

 a small movement from high school to college will be set up by high- 

 school teachers leaving their work to try for the Ph.D. in the hope of 

 getting permanently into college work. During the next decade, this 

 movement might be considerable, were the student-teacher system 

 generally adopted. There are many excellent teachers in high schools 

 who could teach freshmen and sophomores infinitely better than half 

 the young doctores eruditissimi now thus engaged. And among the 

 younger of them quite a few would prefer college to high school so 

 strongly that they would be tempted to become student-teachers. 



