Scholarship and Teaching.
The aim proposed by the _Ratio Studiorum_ is a great and noble one,
which tasks the undivided energy of able and experienced men. Does
the Society fit the teachers for this work? This is a most important
question. However good and excellent a system may be, it is of little
avail if the teachers know not how to apply it, or if they apply it
badly. Professor Münsterberg rightly insists on the truth that all
effective school reform must start with a reform of teachers. “Just as
it has been said that war needs three things, money, money, and again
money, so it can be said with much greater truth that education needs,
not forces and buildings, not pedagogy and demonstrations, but only
men, men, and again men,--without forbidding that some, not too many
of them, shall be women. The right kind of men is what the schools
need; they have the wrong kind. They need teachers whose interest in
the subject would banish all drudgery, and they have teachers whose
pitiable unpreparedness makes the class work either so superficial that
the pupils do not learn anything, or, if it is taken seriously, so dry
and empty that it is a vexation for children and teachers alike. To
produce anything equivalent to the teaching staff from whose guidance
I benefited in my boyhood, no one ought to be allowed to teach in a
grammar school who has not passed through a college or a good normal
school; no one ought to teach in a high school who has not worked,
after his college course, at least two years in the graduate school of
a good university; no one ought to teach in a college who has not taken
his doctor’s degree in one of the best universities; and no one ought
to teach in a graduate school who has not shown his mastery of method
by powerful scientific publications. We have instead a misery which
can be characterized by one statistical fact: only two per cent of the
school teachers possess any degree whatever.”[704]
It would certainly be an ideal state, if all teachers came up to the
Professor’s requirements, as laid down in this proposition; but one
may justly object to the importance assigned to the doctor’s degree
and the scientific publications, as necessary requisites for teaching.
Although this degree and productive scholarship are very desirable,
still we must consider it a mistake to expect from them alone or
even chiefly the men needed in our educational institutions. The
present writer, in his own school days, had some teachers who neither
possessed the doctor’s degree--of course they all had undergone the
“State examinations”--nor had published any books, and yet as teachers
were far superior to others who possessed the doctor’s degree and had
published books. Scholarship and capability for teaching are by no
means identical. Too much weight has been given of late to scholarship
in preference to practical experience, combined, as is understood, with
a sufficient knowledge of the matter to be taught. The documents of
the Society insist strongly that the teacher should thoroughly master
the subject which he is to teach. Father Ledesma wrote three hundred
years ago: “In all classes the teachers should be such that they could
teach a much higher class” [than that which is actually assigned to
them],[705] and Father Nadal said: “All the professors should be
distinguished in their respective branches, and no one can teach in
the classes of Humanities and Rhetoric (Freshman and Sophomore) who is
not a Master of Arts.”[706] In these words Father Nadal virtually lays
down as a postulate what Professor Münsterberg wants, namely, that the
professors in the college course should have the doctor’s degree. But
the Society attached still greater weight to skill in teaching than
scholarship, and we think rightly so.
Within the last two years this question of the relation of
scholarship to teaching has received more attention than before,
and some articles in leading reviews and periodicals found one of
the reasons of the decline of teaching exactly in the excess of
scholarship. It was especially the New York _Nation_ which in the
spring of 1900 brought the topic before the eyes of the public. On
March 8, 1900, the _Nation_ had an editorial on _The Decline of
Teaching_, in which we find this statement: “It is at least a curious
coincidence that the development of the modern science of pedagogy,
with its array of physiological and psychological data, should have
been accompanied by a distinct decline in the prominence of the
teacher. No one, we suppose, will question that the number of great
teachers is less now than it once was, and that the depleted ranks
are not being adequately filled up. While this dearth of teaching
power, notwithstanding the persistent efforts to overcome it, is
characteristic of all departments of education, it is especially
noticeable in the colleges and universities; perhaps in no single
respect, indeed, does the average college of the present day contrast
more sharply with the college of a generation or two ago.” On March 22,
the _Nation_ published the following correspondence. “Your editorial
upon the Decline of Teaching ought to arouse very general solicitude
throughout the profession: it gives notable emphasis to the condition
which some of us have perceived for several years, although, so far as
I am aware, stress has not hitherto been laid upon it in any public
way. Your statement of the facts implies, without directly asserting,
both the magnitude of the evil and its causes. Possibly both of
these should receive, at the proper time and place, more extended
and more exhaustive consideration.... In the upper schools--high
schools and colleges--the evil which has brought about the decline of
teaching is an entirely different one. There is no evidence that the
pseudo-pedagogy has won any hold on these men, except as subjects for
wise admonitions to elementary teachers. The evil here is that original
research has been confounded with true teaching. Original research
is an independent profession, worthy of all honor and respect, but
its processes are not in any essential or fundamental way those of
education. We can never bring back to our colleges the nobler ideals
of character and culture until we separate them from an ideal which is
purely that of a trade or profession. We should have a very analogous
confusion if our lawyers were to contend that education consisted in
mastering the process and methods of the law. In so far as our colleges
are converted into workshops where ‘the bounds of knowledge’ are
widened, their real and greater function becomes restricted, if not
forgotten.”[707] Dean Briggs of Harvard College shortly after wrote as
follows: “Another doubt about the new-fashioned education concerns the
abnormal value set on the higher degrees. That a teacher should know
his subject is obvious; but the man of intelligence and self-sacrifice
who bends his energy to teaching boys will soon get enough scholarship
for the purpose; whereas no amount of scholarship can make up for the
want of intelligence and self-sacrifice.”[708]
Many years ago Arnold had expressed the same opinion. In a letter
of inquiry for a master he wrote: “What I want is a Christian and a
gentleman--an active man, and one who has common sense and understands
boys. I do not so much care about scholarship, as he will have
immediately under him the lowest forms [classes] in the school; but
yet, on second thoughts, I do care about it very much, because his
pupils may be in the highest forms; and besides, I think that even the
elements are best taught by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the
matter. However, if one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an
interest in his work to high scholarship, for the one can be acquired
more easily than the other.”[709]
The views of prominent German educators are not less pronounced on
this subject--and yet, no nation insists more on scholarship than the
German. Says one: “We have no more educators in the true sense of the
word.”[710] The opinion of Professor Paulsen is especially worthy of
notice. We summarize what he says on this subject in his _History
of Higher Education_. It cannot be doubted that scholarship of the
teacher, as a rule, tends towards raising teaching. But it should not
be overlooked that the success of a teacher depends not only upon the
amount of his scientific knowledge, but as much on his inclination
and practical skill for teaching. Do the latter qualities increase in
proportion with the teacher’s scholarship? This is not always the case.
It should be expected that, the richer, the clearer and the deeper
the knowledge is, the stronger the inclination, and the facility of
imparting it to others. But between philological scholarship proper and
elementary instruction in Latin grammar and style, we find rather the
reverse proportion. Scholarship can become an obstacle to teaching.
_First_, it weakens the liking for it, or rather it strengthens the
aversion to it. For the “drilling” in the elements of a language is
undoubtedly one of the least attractive tasks to a man who feels in
himself an inclination to educate the souls of the young.--_Secondly_,
scholarship easily leads to introducing into class-instruction things
that are important for the teacher’s own scientific grasp of the
subject. Hence the common complaint: the more grammar and the study
of antiquities increase, and the more deeply the teachers enter into
these sciences, the less the pupils learn; or rather the more the
pupils learn of these things, the less thoroughness and facility they
acquire in reading and writing; but this last is exactly what they
need. From this it appears that it was in part disadvantageous to
replace theologians in the gymnasia by philologians and mathematicians,
a change which for a long time was wished for, undoubtedly not without
good reasons. The theologian, owing to his whole training, had a
tendency towards caring for the souls; an interest in the _whole_
man was the centre of his calling,--if indeed he was an honest
theologian,--not an interest in science, nor an interest in the student
as student. Everything leads the theologian and the true philosopher
to be an educator; the scholar, the learned specialist, may content
himself with being an instructor. Add to this that the theologian
through his studies was everywhere led to view things philosophically.
And, after all, it is philosophy and religion alone that impel a man
to communicate what he knows. He who has no philosophic views of life
and of the world, has nothing to communicate; it is only the relation
to some such ultimate object which gives learning pedagogical power
and motives.[711] Be it remembered that the man who says this is no
ecclesiastic, but a layman, one of the foremost professors of the
University of Berlin.
In his latest important work,[712] he speaks still more emphatically
on the drawbacks and dangers that menace teaching, even in the
university, from scholarship. The professor, he says, considers
himself in the first place not so much a teacher as a scholar, as the
man of science, and so scientific research appears to him nobler and
more important than instruction. Consequently, it happens very easily
that he becomes indifferent about perfecting himself as teacher,
he devotes scarcely the necessary time to preparing his lectures,
he loses interest in teaching, which is an unwelcome interruption
of his researches. It is evident that no great success is to be
expected from such teaching or lecturing. There are also dangers on
the part of the students. Not unfrequently they are introduced too
early to the specialized treatment of the sciences, before they have
acquired general information about their subject. This danger is the
greatest for the most talented and zealous students. If afterwards
they are teachers in a _gymnasium_, they feel altogether out of
place; nearly all they had to study in the university is inapplicable
in this present position, and it takes very long before the mental
equilibrium is found again. The author then points out the dangers for
science. If manifestation of scholarship is required for obtaining a
position as teacher, the unavoidable consequence will be a kind of
“pseudo-productivity” and other evils.
Of recent utterances from England the following of the Hon. George
C. Brodrick (Warden of Merton) will suffice. In an article, “Amateur
Nation,” he says: “Strange to say, the higher branches of the great
educational profession in England are strongholds of amateurism. The
masters and mistresses of elementary schools are now well trained,
and even when they teach mechanically, they teach as persons who have
grasped the difficulties of teaching, and mean business, as most
professionals do. But what of masters at the great public schools,
grammar schools, and private academies, or of the great multitude of
private tutors who keep boarding houses or ‘coach’ pupils in their own
houses? Not a twentieth of them have received any training whatever,
or have the smallest idea that anything beyond a certain amount of
scholarship and a certain power of commanding attention is required
for teaching young people.” The writer then states what he thinks is
needed: “_It is teachers of average ability instructing_ pupils of
average industry, not individually, but in classes, who specially need
training--not of necessity in training colleges, _but through close
attention at lessons given by masters of tried experience_.”[713]
This is exactly the idea of the Ratio Studiorum. The aim is to
provide teachers, who are “men of intelligence and self-sacrifice,
who _possess, besides an excellent general culture, a good knowledge
of their subject_, and who are trained through close attendance, by
masters of tried experience.” Before attempting to prove this from
the Constitutions of the Society and the Ratio Studiorum, we beg to
make one remark. The Society does not undervalue scholarship, but, on
the contrary, appreciates it highly and wishes always a considerable
number of her members to possess it to an eminent degree. This is
proved beyond doubt by the list of distinguished Jesuit writers given
in two preceding chapters (V and VII). The Society recognizes also the
value of university studies. We have quoted previously the decree of
the 23rd General Congregation of the Order (1883, _Decretum_ XXI): “It
is expedient to send select members to the universities to obtain the
degrees which empower them to teach in the public [i. e. Government]
schools.”[714] We learn that the English Jesuits in late years have
opened a Hall at Oxford (Pope’s Hall), to afford young members an
opportunity of attending the university lectures and of taking
the degrees. We learn further that a number of Jesuits from other
countries are there pursuing linguistic and scientific studies. The
same is done in Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Austria, France and other
countries. In some places, as in Austria, several Jesuit colleges are
wholly under the supervision of the government, and all the teachers
have made the prescribed studies at the universities and passed the
rigid “state examinations”. One of the professors of the Jesuit
college at Feldkirch, Austria, has been chosen as “one of the seven
prominent Latinists who are working at the great _Historical Grammar
of the Latin Language_.”[715] It is evident that in all professional
schools conducted by Jesuits, as in the Medical and Law Departments
of Georgetown University, Washington, D. C., the instructors and
professors are able professional teachers.
As far as America is concerned there existed peculiar handicaps to
the cultivation of scholarship especially in Catholic institutions.
Throughout the nineteenth century missions had to be established,
chapels and churches built, and missionaries found to care for the
spiritual wants of a rapidly increasing population.[716] This work
claimed the greatest part of the interest of the Catholic Church in
general, and a comparatively large share of the time and energy of the
members of the Society. But a teacher overburdened with work cannot
devote himself to original research. Add to this the general poverty of
the Catholic population, who had to support not only their churches,
but also their schools, and it will be easy to understand that Catholic
colleges had serious difficulties in acquiring the libraries, museums
and laboratories which are essential for higher studies, and much
more so for scholarly work. How much better situated are the secular
institutions of learning in this country! “The National Government has,
from the very beginning, made enormous grants of land and money in
aid of education in the several states. The portion of public domain
hitherto set apart by Congress for the endowment of public education
amounts to 86,138,473 acres or 134,591 English square miles. This is
an area larger than the New England States, New York, New Jersey,
Maryland, and Delaware added together, as great as the kingdom of
Prussia. The aggregate value of lands and money given for education by
the National Government is nearly $300,000,000.”[717] Besides, of the
three hundred and fifteen million dollars given by private individuals
within the last nine years for educational purposes,[718] very little
has gone to Catholic institutions.
In spite of the liberal national and private assistance granted,
the public institutions have, until a short time ago, not been
overconspicuous for scholarship, as is openly declared in a number
of recent articles on this subject, by Professor Münsterberg of
Harvard,[719] Mr. Carl Snyder,[720] and Professor Simon Newcomb of the
Naval Observatory, Washington.[721] These writers repeat the complaints
which Professor Rowland of Johns Hopkins had uttered more than
twenty-five years ago.[722] Professor Münsterberg, in the said article
of the _Atlantic Monthly_, repudiates the charge that America has no
scholarship at all; he affirms that the situation is infinitely better
than Europeans suppose it to be--in certain branches of knowledge
excellent work has been done. Nevertheless the author is compelled to
continue: “And yet I am convinced that the result stands in no proper
relation to the achievements of American culture in all the other
aspects of national life, and the best American scholars everywhere
frankly acknowledge and seriously deplore it.... American publications
cross the ocean in a ridiculously small number; in the world of letters
no Columbus has yet discovered the other side of the globe.”[723] Years
ago, Dr. McCosh had passed a similar verdict: “The scholarship of the
great body of the students is as high in America as in Europe; but they
rear in Great Britain and Germany a body of ripe scholars to whom we
have nothing equal in the New World.”[724]
Can we, then, be surprised to find that the Catholic institutions
could not yet develop productive scholarship? However, as was said
by many distinguished writers, productive scholarship is by no means
the first requisite for an efficient teacher, much more essential are
“intelligence, self-sacrifice, and close attention to lessons given by
masters of tried experience.” In the next chapter we shall show that
the training prescribed by the Ratio Studiorum for the young Jesuit is
excellently suited to furnish him with these requisites, and thus to
make of him a good teacher.[725]
FOOTNOTES:
[704] _Atlantic Monthly_, May 1900, p. 667.
[705] _Monumenta Paedagogica_, p. 156.
[706] _Ibid._, p. 104.
[707] Mr. Frederick Whitton, Michigan Military Academy.
[708] _Atlantic Monthly_, October 1900.
[709] Fitch, _Thomas and Matthew Arnold_, p. 69.
[710] Lehmann, _Erziehung und Erzieher_, Berlin, Weidmann, 1901.--_Neue
Jahrbücher_, 1901, vol. VIII, p. 237.
[711] _Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts_, pp. 628-629. (2nd ed.,
vol. II, pp. 389-391.)
[712] _Die deutschen Universitäten und das Universitäts-Studium_,
Berlin 1902, pp. 213-222.
[713] _The Nineteenth Century_, October 1900. Italics ours.--As early
as 1880 Father Pachtler had enunciated, almost literally, the same
principles, in the _Stimmen aus Maria-Laach_, vol. XIX, p. 167.
[714] Pachtler, vol. I, p. 123. See above pp. 198-199.
[715] Körting, _Handbuch der romanischen Philologie_ (Leipzig 1896), p.
247.
[716] See the remarks of the Right Rev. Th. Conaty in the _Catholic
University Bulletin_, July 1901, p. 305.
[717] _Education in the United States_. Edited by Professor Butler of
Columbia University, Albany 1900, pp. VII-VIII.
[718] See _Educational Review_, May 1902, p. 492. In 1901 the
educational gifts were not less than 73 million dollars. Mrs. Stanford
leads the list with 30½ million to the Leland Stanford Jr. University.
In 1900 the private gifts amounted to 48 million, and in 1899 to 63
million dollars.
[719] _Atlantic Monthly_, May 1901.
[720] _North American Review_, Jan. 1902.
[721] _North American Review_, February 1902.
[722] See _Popular Science Monthly_, June 1901.
[723] _Atlantic Monthly_, _l. c._, p. 615.
[724] _Life of James McCosh_, p. 204.
[725] On p. 409 it is said that a sort of “pseudo-productivity” is
likely to attend the excessive emphasis laid on scholarship. This
statement finds a striking confirmation in the latest _Report of the
Com. of Ed._ (1901, vol. I, pp. 127-128). In a brief article “Higher
Education made in Germany,” we read among other things: “To deplore
the fact that our scholarship has a strong German tinge would be
like apologizing for the loins from which we sprang. And yet it is a
question if of recent years we have not followed German methods too
exclusively and too unintelligently.” The Germans themselves often
misuse the scientific method on trivial subjects. “Scholarship suffers
from an enormous over-production of monographs in which an ambitious
method stretches a thin substance to the cracking point. There is a
craze not to prove something valuable, but to prove something.” A
few remarkable instances of such “scholarly” productions of American
graduate students are given in the same article.