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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 776 



from too high a standard of criticism, and 

 to provide each author, if possible, with 

 sympathetic and intelligent readers. The 

 class at large is no fitting audience. It 

 demands, or seems to demand, too much, 

 and frightens all but the more experienced 

 or callous. Then again its mood is per- 

 haps a little disingenuous. In attempting 

 to hit its apparent taste one degenerates 

 inevitably into smartness and after-dinner 

 jesting. Individual critics chosen from 

 among the students give better service. 

 This plan may conveniently be followed if 

 it is possible to neostyle-copy the lists of 

 subjects. In that case each student ex- 

 plains briefly his proposed subjects, their 

 general scope, method of treatment and 

 point. Those who are interested in a par- 

 ticular subject signify their willingness to 

 read the work, one of them is assigned as 

 a critic, is later consulted by the author, 

 and finally takes the instructor's place in 

 giving a written criticism and correction of 

 the finished theme. 



This plan has some large theoretical ad- 

 vantages. It turns the youthful author 

 over to critics of approximately his own 

 age and experience. It relieves the teacher 

 of some drudgery, and spares him the 

 odium of fault-finding. Still, it should not 

 be followed exclusively. One's fellow stu- 

 dents are severe critics, but not usually 

 sympathetic. Some will be misled by the 

 titles, however fully explained, and find, 

 perhaps, that they have more information 

 than the author himself, or that they are 

 not interested in the subject as he feels 

 competent to treat it. Others will neglect 

 to confer with the critics. This is perhaps 

 the main danger. In the matter of instruc- 

 tion, both religious and secular, most of us 

 think shame to adopt too serious an atti- 

 tude, and even the boy who takes his 

 studies most to heart will sometimes shrink 

 from being known to do so. The whole 

 question has been well handled by Mr. E. 



G. Valentine, in a paper "On Criticism of 

 Themes by Students," in the Technology 

 Review, Vol. 4, p. 459. Mr. Valentine 

 there discusses the advantages of the plan 

 as adopted in his own institute classes at 

 the time. Whatever drawbacks may ac- 

 company them, these advantages un- 

 doubtedly exist. A considerable portion 

 of every student's work should unques- 

 tionably be read by his fellows, and, in 

 classes sufficiently small for constant super- 

 vision, perhaps the whole. Such criticism, 

 if taken seriously, soon removes the im- 

 pression that the teacher's fault-finding is 

 professional; and it takes composition 

 into the field where it belongs— the field of 

 practical dealing between man and man. 



This relation between man and man, this 

 sympathy on which all successful writing 

 is based, must in the end, of course, de- 

 pend upon the human quality of the 

 teacher himself. He must learn, in a 

 thousand ways, not to take up his position 

 where he shuts out the light. The distance 

 between an undergraduate and a man of 

 over thirty, especially when the man is 

 burdened with the moral awfulness of the 

 teaching profession, is in itself consider- 

 able. With a little lack of sympathy, a 

 little giving way to cheap sarcasm, the gap 

 may become so wide as effectually to stop 

 all communication. The student has at the 

 start no notion that his teacher is human ; 

 and if in the end the teacher himself for- 

 gets that he is so, it will be weU to dismiss 

 the class. The wise teacher, however, 

 emphasizes points of contact, as he would 

 in any other social relation. He resolves 

 to be interested, instructed or amused. 

 He looks upon the work handed him, not 

 as an exercise which may contain interest- 

 ing errors or violations of principles, but 

 as an expression of character, however im- 

 mature, and of attainments, however lim- 

 ited, such as he will not find precisely dupli- 

 cated in any other person. He maintains 



