APPENDIX A 109 



The specialist is dominated by his speciality. All his serious think- 

 ing is colored by it. His teaching is geared to it. It is only with 

 Christian effort that he can bring himself to admit that other subject 

 fields are important. He becomes suffused with innumerable details 

 of knowledge, each of which is important to him. As he learns more 

 and more about his subject, his students become relatively more igno- 

 rant, and he strives harder and harder to impart his vast store of 

 knowledge to them. One of the greatest pleasures of his life is to 

 find students who can lap up his subject matter and yell for more. 

 These he takes to his bosom and proceeds to make research specialists 

 of them. 



Eventually, if the specialist, and perhaps his graduate assistants, 

 are any good, they make a contribution to the world's knowledge. The 

 professor writes a book and is acclaimed. His proteges follow in his 

 footsteps. Thus is learning advanced. 



As far as the subject department is concerned, the unwritten law 

 is "sort 'em out." The search is for the potential researcher. Where 

 does this leave our prospective public school teacher, the fellow who is 

 there to distill the essence from the subject as it relates to general edu- 

 cation, to modern human problems ? The answer is that he seldom gets 

 what he needs ; and, if he sticks, he is inoculated with specialization ; 

 if he shows promise, he is urged to stay out of public school teaching 

 and turn to reseach. 



It is a simple statement of almost universal procedure, observable 

 by anyone, and psychologically predictable, that teachers teach what 

 they were taught, as they were taught it. It may be argued that 

 methods courses modify this procedure. They do in detail. But the 

 specialist in methods of teaching a certain subject is himself a prod- 

 uct of the same system. Modification will apply to grade levels and 

 content selection for them, but the specialist's approach to subject 

 matter remains. 



The textbooks used in public schools have, in the past, been pro- 

 duced by college specialists; and even if a public school teacher is 

 the author, he is a specialist's product. 



What is to be done? No one in his right mind would suggest that 

 specialization should be discontinued in favor of general education 

 only. Nor would anyone who knows the present situation in the pub- 

 lic schools agree that it is good. The present liberal arts curriculum 

 of the colleges is bad for prospective school teachers. When it is 

 shifted down into the high schools it is bad for them, and its bad- 

 ness leaks into the junior high schools, and even into the intermediate 

 grades. ( 



It is the business of the mature democratic citizen (are there not 

 such in the colleges themselves?) to cry out against a system which 

 is not producing well-rounded young citizens who can see the world as 

 an organic whole and have a fair conception of the principles by which 

 its problems must be solved. He must protest an education which 

 sends students running out this lane and then that lane in the forest 



