EXAMPLES OF TEACHING METHODS H53 



worker, I could have learned in half an hour what I could do and what 

 I could not do with the haphazard slices of a thin-section. I might then 

 have pushed on to something else. 



We teachers may well give careful and thorough instructions at the 

 outset. The instruction should be conveyed with the clearness and con- 

 ciseness and, so far as possible, with the elegance of a well expressed 

 mathematical demonstration, inculcating thereby precise habits of 

 thought. But when once we have grounded our beginners and have given 

 them a comprehensive survey of the field, we can hold them reasonably 

 and justly to more independent work. 



Having established these premises, it is of certain features of more 

 advanced instruction that I desire especially to speak. In the law the 

 student is now taught the fundamental principles, and then carried far- 

 ther in large part by the "case system" — that is, the professor assigns the 

 student a case, exactly as it would come up in practice. The student 

 consults the records and prepares his brief, which is then tried out before 

 the critical eye of the teacher and before the others of the class. In 

 medicine the student is not alone trained in the laboratory and lecture- 

 room, but attends clinics, in which he sees operations performed by the 

 most experienced and skillful surgeons or treatment given by the older 

 men, expert in diagnosis. 



Fifteen years ago, with mining students in their last year and with 

 graduate students looking forward to future work in geology, I was 

 moved to develop a little course on the lines of the "case system" of the 

 law schools and the clinics of the schools of medicine — that is, from 

 personal experience in the field and with the problems which confront 

 the civil and the mining engineers, and from many conversations and 

 discussions with friends in active practice, I marshaled in order a series 

 of "cases," enough to fill two hours a week for a term. I endeavored to 

 set the stage for each case as nearly in a way true to Life as I could, and 

 to faithfully place before the students the situation as it had confronted 

 the geologist or engineers. 



We took up folds and their bearings on many areal and mining prob- 

 lems — not alone the usual and typical cases of the text-books, but the 

 unexpected things which underground work sometimes reveals and which 

 may be very confusing. We passed to faults and raised the questions 

 how were they solved — where and by whom. What did the responsible 

 man do and how did he come out? Some of the most interesting ques- 

 tions in geology hinge on these remarkable displacements ; and while they 

 sometimes behave as the ordinary rules in the text-books prescribe, they 

 also often confront us in underground work with surprises which only 



