Januabt 8, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



51 



to record his thoughts for the benefit of 

 others, if he is so minded; a chance for re- 

 search work, or, perhaps, a chance to follow 

 some hobby or to travel. In short, these 

 vacation days bring with them a necessary 

 relief from the exhaustion attendant upon a 

 constant effort to adapt oneself to the needs 

 of those about him, which, as we shall see, 

 is a necessary part of a teacher's life, and 

 they afford him an opportunity for free- 

 dom of choice in his pursuits which is often 

 prized quite as much in connection with his 

 avocation as with his vocation. But this 

 freedom of choice is not confined to vaca- 

 tion days. It constitutes one of the great 

 attractions of the teacher's life. Not only 

 may he choose freely within his specialty 

 in selecting a congenial subject for investi- 

 gation, thought or exposition, but he may 

 even change his specialty and qualify as an 

 expert in a new field without loss of pres- 

 tige, and often without financial incon- 

 venience. With the recognition of the fact 

 that a teacher accomplishes most when 

 allowed to inject his individuality into his 

 methods of instruction, wise administrators 

 will try to exercise control over the indi- 

 vidual only so far as is absolutely necessary 

 to preserve general unity of purpose and 

 policy in a given institution, holding each 

 teacher responsible for results in his own 

 classes. With this freedom to select his 

 own methods, it is hardly possible that the 

 work of a thoughtful teacher should become 

 irksome because of repetition, especially 

 when it is remembered that his pupils pre- 

 sent an infinite variety of types, each type 

 with its own personal equation to be 

 studied. The fact that wholly ideal con- 

 ditions as to "academic freedom" — what- 

 ever that may mean — have not yet been 

 reached is, I think, not a reason for de- 

 pression on the part of the teacher, and is 

 still less a cause for hesitation on the part 

 of one desiring to enter the profession. 



There is to-day surely at least as great 

 freedom as in any other profession with 

 equal obligations; and the outlook for the 

 future is hopeful. 



Some young men are, I believe, deterred 

 from considering teaching as a profession 

 because they regard the teacher as an essen- 

 tially unpractical man— a man who is, to be 

 sure, generally respected for what he is 

 supposed to know, and is accorded social 

 recognition, but who, nevertheless, may, in 

 clothing himself for his daily tasks find 

 difficulty in distinguishing his right shoe 

 from his left, or may appear on the most 

 formal social occasion without some essen- 

 tial article of wearing apparel, because of 

 mental preoccupation. Such men exist, 

 but they are typical of a limited number of 

 teachers only. They are, as a rule, investi- 

 gators and intense specialists who should 

 gather around themselves a group of ad- 

 vanced students sufficiently mature to 

 largely forget personal peculiarities in the 

 enthusiasm which they have for the work 

 in hand. The rank and file of teachers are 

 not such as these, and it is weU that this 

 is so. 



It is recognized that every earnest teacher 

 should either carry on some research work 

 of his own, or be able to be in contact with 

 those who are conducting such work, in 

 order to keep himself acquainted with the 

 progress of his science, and here, again, he 

 may choose between an abstract problem in 

 science and one with utilitarian bearings. 

 He should not, in my opinion, lose caste to 

 any degree if he chooses the latter, pro- 

 vided the problem is worthy of the time 

 and energy which its solution demands. 

 Every teacher should thus be something of 

 an investigator, but not every gifted in- 

 vestigator should, in my opinion, be en- 

 trusted with the care of undergraduate in- 

 struction. By this I mean that the teacher, 

 as is pointed out in Professor George H. 



