132 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1440 



year of undergraduate study. Furthermore, a 

 real facility in reading rrench and German, 

 and, still more important, a trained capacity to 

 write good English should be included among 

 the results of undergraduate study. No stu- 

 dent, of whatever college he may be a graduate, 

 should be admitted to the Clark Graduate 

 School of Geography if he falls seriously short 

 dn any of these undergraduate requirements. 

 He may be admitted of course to the graduate 

 department of the university, if he holds a 

 bachelor's degree from any reputable collegiate 

 institution; but so long as he has serious defi- 

 ciencies in the undergraduate preparation for 

 the graduate study of geography, he ought not 

 to be admitted to the Clark Graduate School of 

 Geography, or to any other such graduate 

 school. For in just so far as a member of a 

 professional graduate school uses his time there 

 on undergraduate studies, he lowers the stand- 

 ing of the school; and any one who looks on 

 the high standing of his school with pride 

 should be jealous of all influences which tend 

 to lower it. 



The seriousness of this danger of unprepar- 

 edness and the importance of establishing safe- 

 guards against it ought to be manifest to any 

 one who is familiar with the demoralizing influ- 

 ence exerted on a graduate student's work for a 

 higher degree by the necessity of making up 

 undergraduate deficiencies at the same time. 

 Work for a higher degree should occupy a stu- 

 dent's whole attention. If in his graduate years 

 he is giving part of his time to undergraduate 

 subjects, which he ought to have studied earlier, 

 he is not only distracted thereby from his 

 proper graduate work, but the graduate work 

 which ^e does will be weakened by reason of 

 not being based on a completed foundation. In 

 a word, the student members of a professional 

 graduate school ought to be well trained for 

 the work that they have to do there; as such 

 they would constitute a select body of which 

 any institution must be proud. 



The Dipfkrencb between Studying and 

 being taught 



You may now understand better than be- 

 fore what was meant by my earlier insistence 

 that teaching should not be a prime duty of 

 the research professors in a true Graduate 



School of Geography; for the fact that they 

 are not to teach does not imply that they are 

 to have no students. Of course they are to have 

 students, properly qualified graduate students; 

 and the students are to study; but the pro- 

 fessors are not to teach in the ordinary sense of 

 the word. The students having reached that 

 stage of their education when they have learned 

 how to study and when they really wish to 

 study, are to study chiefly by themselves on 

 their special subjects. The professors are to 

 propose problems for them, to advise and to 

 guide them in the study of the problems, to 

 hold conferences with them, but not to teach 

 them. And with the conception of a body of 

 professors devoted chiefly to research in the 

 several departments of a single science and of 

 a body of students devoted chiefly to study in 

 different subdivisions of the same science, you 

 may imagine the atmosphere by which a Gradu- 

 ate School should be enveloped. It is one of 

 the most delightful, most inspiring atmos- 

 pheres in which human beings caa live. 

 The Preparation of Teachers of 

 Geographt 

 A practical question may however rise in 

 your minds. If the requirements of a Graduate 

 School of Geography are so high, is it likely 

 that any students will wish to enter it? I can 

 give several very confident answers to that 

 question. In the first place, a candidate for 

 the position of teacher in a secondary school 

 ought not to be encouraged to enter it. He 

 acquired during his undergraduate college years 

 as much knowledge of the subjects which he is 

 to teach as he will need; and moreover, inas- 

 much as a school teacher should be more inter- 

 ested in the boys and girls that he teaches than 

 in the subjects which the boys and girls are to 

 be taught, it is not necessary for him to carry 

 preparatory studies to the point of becoming 

 engrossed in research. In the second place, a 

 candidate for the position of professor of geog- 

 raphy in a college should without question be 

 encouraged to enter such a Graduate School of 

 Geography as I have outlined, and to stay there 

 long enough to earn a master's degi'ee at least 

 and a doctor's degree if possible. College pro- 

 fessors ought to be learned persons; and as a 

 preparatory step toward becoming learned they 



