now seeks to make clear to the student the dramatist's method of
character portrayal. A third hour may be spent on certain portions of
this act in which attention is given to significant facts of language,
choice of words, or poetic form. When a guiding aim controls, all
questions, suggestions, explanations, and illustrations tend to create
in the mind of the pupil a rich and unified impression. Where no
distinct aim gives direction to the work, the student is confused by a
variety of facts--isolated facts--that are displaced by another group
of disjointed bits of information. Aimless teaching leads to mental
wandering on the part of the student; teaching governed by a definite
aim leads to mental development and to the acquisition of new
viewpoints and new power.
=The educational aim vs. the instructional aim=
We must distinguish clearly between the general or educational aim and
the specific or instructional aim. The former sums up the hope of an
entire course or an entire subject. In the teaching of literature we
hope to develop a vital interest in reading, a discriminating taste,
an enlivened imagination and a quickened perception which enable the
student to visualize the situations and to acquire the thought on the
printed page. The instructional aim, however, is much more specific;
it posits a task that can be accomplished in a very limited time; it
seeks to give an insight into Shakespeare's mastery of words, or into
his power of character portrayal, or into his methods of enhancing
dramatic interest. Each of these two types of aims has its
unmistakable influence on methods of teaching.
=The variety of aims that may govern teaching=
What aim should we select to guide us in formulating principles of
collegiate teaching? The question is almost basic, for the selection
of a proper aim gives color and direction to all our teaching. In
brief, the aim may be one of the following:
(_a_) _The informational aim._ A given course in chemistry or physics
may be designed to sum up for the student the vital facts necessary
for an intelligent comprehension of common phenomena. With such an
aim, it is obvious that only so much laboratory work will be assigned
as will give the student a general knowledge of the tools and methods
of laboratory work; that the major portion of the work will be divided
into occasional lectures, regular book assignments, and extensive
applications of knowledge gained to surrounding chemical and physical
phenomena. A language course may seek to give pupils a stock of words
designed to develop power to read the language in a very short time.
Obviously, grammatical work and translations into the mother tongue
will now be minimized, and those devices which give the eye the power
to find thought in new symbols will be emphasized. There is no
standard for determining the relative importance of this informational
or utilitarian aim when compared to other aims. The significant thing
is, not so much to discover its relative importance, but, having
adopted it, to devise methods which clearly tend to bring the students
to an effective realization of it.
(_b_) _The disciplinary aim._ On the other hand, the controlling aim
in any subject may be to develop the power to reason about natural
phenomena, the power to observe, and the power to discriminate between
vital and inconsequential details. If this be the aim, the assignment
of subject matter must be reduced, the phenomena studied must be
submitted in the forms of problems, first-hand observations must be
made, and students must be led to see the errors in their observations
and their reasoning. The course which is extensive in subject matter
and which relies on the lecture method sacrifices mental discipline
for information. From the teaching point of view, the result of the
time-honored quarrel between the disciplinists and the utilitarians is
not so important as the adoption of a definite aim, and the
formulation of consistent methods of teaching in order to attain that
aim. Ineffective teaching is not caused by the selection of the one
aim or of the other, but by systems of instruction devoid of any aim
at all.
(_c_) _The appreciative or aesthetic aim._ It is obvious that a subject
may be taught for the power it develops for aesthetic appreciation of
the arts of life. We have here a legitimate aim of coordinate
importance with the two preceding ones; and if we adopt it, the vital
thing in teaching is to allow this appreciative aim to mold all
instructional effort. It is obvious that a college course in aesthetics
must be inspirational, must seek to develop a real appreciation of the
beauty of line, of color and of sound. Such a course must, therefore,
encourage contact with the products of art, rather than promote the
study of texts on the history of any of the arts. So, too, courses in
music or in literature which do not send the student away with an
intense desire to hear, to see, to feel the masterpieces of music or
literature must be judged dismal failures. The formalization of an art
course given to the general student, kills the live material and
leaves the student himself cold.
(_d_) _The aim to teach technique._ An effective college course may
select for its aim the development of the technique of a given
subject. It is obvious that a science course governed by this aim will
emphasize the laboratory method at the expense of information; that a
course in the social sciences will seek to cover less ground but will
develop in the student the power to find facts and use them to
formulate an intelligent conclusion; that a course in biology will
minimize names, classifications and structures, but will emphasize
field and laboratory work and the modes of utilizing the data thus
discovered. We must repeat the statement made before, that no one can
set himself up as the final arbiter of the claims of these contending
aims. They are all vitally necessary for a thorough understanding of
life's problems. The significant conclusion for teaching is that one
or more of these aims must be consciously chosen and that content and
method must be determined by them absolutely. Teaching for the sake of
teaching consumes time and makes drafts on energy, but it leaves the
student no richer in power and with no truer understanding.
=Should the aim be modified for varying groups of students?=
It is obvious that no general law can be formulated for the adjustment
of aims to the needs of students. Teachers have usually found it
necessary to change the aim, the content, and the method of a course
according to the needs of different classes of students. In one of our
colleges science students are required to take two years of Latin. The
course offered these young men gives the ordinary drill in grammar,
translation, and analysis of Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil, as well as
practice in prose composition in which nondescript and disjointed
English sentences, grammatically correct, are turned into incorrect
Latin. This description, without any changes whatever, applies also to
the course given in the introductory years in Latin to students
specializing in the arts. Even a superficial analysis reveals a
different set of needs in the two classes of students which can be
served only by a corresponding difference in content and mode of
teaching. A student who takes French or German because he wants enough
mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals
about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which
appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational
phases of these languages.
There are courses that are foundational and that must therefore be
governed by an eclectic aim. In the first course in college physics it
is obvious that we must teach the necessary facts of the subject as
well as its method. These aspects of the work must be emphasized with
equal force for all students; no differentiation need be made for
future medical or engineering students or for prospective teachers of
the subject in secondary schools. Generally speaking, initial courses
in a department are governed by an eclectic aim, but in the advanced
courses there must be constant adjustment to the needs of various
groups. An eclectic aim can be as effective an instrument in enhancing
the quality of teaching as a single, clear-cut aim, provided there is
a clear recognition of the relative importance of the ends set up, and
provided a definite plan is evolved to attain them.
The aim or aims of a subject or a lesson, once formulated, must always
be kept before the students as well as before the teacher. Every pupil
must know the ends to be attained in the course he is taking, and as
work progresses he must experience a growing realization that the
class is moving toward these ends. The subject matter of the course,
the method of instruction, the assigned task, now glow with interest
which springs from work clearly motivated. The average student plods
through his semester from a sense of duty or obedience rather than
from a conviction of the worth of both subject matter and method.
=Value of clearly defined aims=
Not only must the general aim be indicated to the student, but he must
also be made acquainted with the specific aim. Where students have
been acquainted with the specific task that must be accomplished in a
given period, concentration and cooperation with the instructor are
easier; the students can, at stages in the lesson, anticipate
succeeding steps; their answers have greater relevancy, their thought
is more sequential and flows more readily along the path planned by
the instructor. A specific aim for each lesson makes for economy, for
it is a standard of relevancy for both student and teacher. The
student whose answer or observation is irrelevant is asked to recall
the aim of the lesson and to judge the pertinence of his contribution.
The instructor given to wandering far afield finds that a clearly
fixed aim is an aid in keeping him in the prescribed path. Too many
college hours, especially in the social sciences, find the instructor
beginning with his subject but ending anywhere in the field of human
knowledge. These wanderings are entertaining enough, but they
dissipate the energies of the students and produce a mental flabbiness
already too well developed in the average college student.
=Motivation in college teaching=
A second factor which contributes much toward the effectiveness of
college teaching is the principle of motivation. So long as most of
the college course is prescribed, course by course, students will be
found pursuing certain studies without an intelligent understanding of
their social or mental worth. Ask the student "doing" prescribed logic
to explain the value of the course. In friendly or intimate discussion
with him, elicit his conception of the utilitarian or disciplinary
worth of the prescribed Latin or mathematics in the arts course. He
sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in
many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft
this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has
learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction
in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and
voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by the
institution or by the instructor. It is obvious that such instruction
is stultifying to the teacher and can never develop in the student a
liberal and cultured outlook upon life.
The principle of motivation in teaching seeks to justify to the
student the experience that is presented as part of his college
course. It is obvious that this motivation need not always be
explained in terms of utilitarian values. A student of college age can
be made to realize the mental, the cultural, or the inspirational
values that justify the prescription of certain courses. The college
instructor who tries to motivate courses in the appreciation of music
or painting finds no great difficulty in leading his students to an
enthusiastic conviction of their inspirational value. It is well
worth taking the student into our confidence in these matters of aim
and value. We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who
makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses.
We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness
and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We
constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task;
we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in
our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as
it is in life--for what is teaching if not the process of repeating
life's experiences?
In the principle of motivation lies the most successful solution of
the problem of interest in teaching. We have too long persisted in the
"sugarcoating" conception of interest. We have regarded it as a
process of "making agreeable." Interest has therefore been looked upon
as a fictitious element introduced into teaching merely to inveigle
the mind of the student into a consideration of what we are offering
it. Our modern psychology teaches a truer conception of interest: a
feeling accompanying self-expression. Interest has been defined as a
feeling of worth in experience. Where this feeling of worth is
aroused, the individual expresses his activity to attain the end that
he perceives. Every act, every effort, to attain this end is
accompanied by a distinctive feeling known as interest. When a class
is quiet and gives itself to the teacher, it is obedient and polite,
but not necessarily interested. The class that looks tolerantly at the
stereopticon views that the instructor presents, or listens to the
reading of the professor of English, is amused but not necessarily
interested. But when the students ask questions about the pictures or
ask the professor of English for further references, then have we
evidence of real interest. Interest is, therefore, an active attitude
toward life's experience. Rational motivation is almost a guarantee of
this active attitude of interest.
Intelligent motivation in teaching has far-reaching values for both
student and teacher. It stirs interest and guarantees attention and
thus tends to keep aroused the activity of the students. It
establishes an end toward which all effort of teacher and student must
bend. It enables the student to follow a line of thought more
intelligently, and occasionally to anticipate conclusions. For the
teacher it serves as a standard, in terms of which he reorganizes his
subject matter, judges the value of each topic, and omits socially
useless matter which has too long been retained in the course in the
fond hope that it will in some way develop the mind.
=Beginning at the point of contact=
The instructor who strives to motivate the subject matter he teaches
usually begins with that phase of the subject which is most intimately
related to the student's life and environment. Every subject worth
teaching crosses the student's life at some point. The contacts
between pupil and subject afford the most natural and the most
effective starting points in the teaching of any subject.
The subject matter in a college course is too frequently so organized
that it presents points of discrepancy between itself and the student.
To the college student life is not classified and systematized to a
nicety. Experiences occur in more or less accidental but natural
sequence. Scientific classification is the product of a mature mind
possessing mastery of a given portion of the field of knowledge. To
thrust the student, who is just finding his way in a new course, into
a thoroughly scientific classification of a subject, is to present in
the introduction what should come in the conclusion.
Many a student taking his introductory course in psychology begins
with a definition of the subject, its relation to all social and
physical sciences, and its classification. All these are aspects of
the subject which the mind conversant with it sees clearly and
understands thoroughly, but which the inexperienced student accepts
merely because the facts are printed in his textbook. The youthful
mind is concerned with the present and with the immediate environment.
Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the
student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The
student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon
lost on the highways and byways of classification; to him the subject
becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the
introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers,
and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers
and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital
modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of
the semester?
=Illustrations of maxim. Begin at the point of contact=
The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point of contact can
best be understood and appreciated by illustrations of actual teaching
conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that
economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and
production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of
economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but
that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All
this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings
and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as
he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The
succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the
economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a
definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of
computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages.
Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact,
that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student
that were noted before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding
psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage
disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are analyzed; the
contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the
adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual
economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own
definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage.
Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks
are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions
of the class. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series
of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the
formulation of a definition of economics. Now the class sums up all
that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold
and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an
intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought
in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the
student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to
verification; it fosters a critical attitude toward printed text.
The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced
algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus, looks back
with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to
have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a
water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulae,
equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the
author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding
theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which
seemed to be composed of a series of difficult, unrelated, and
unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the mass of data was
soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions.
What is the meaning of it all? What is its relation to life? There is
no doubt that much of this mathematics has its application to life's
needs, and that these successive subjects of mathematics are
thoroughly interdependent. But nothing in the mode of instruction
leads the student to see either the application or the interrelation
of all this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a
single course called mathematics rather than these successive
subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical
principle were taught through a situation in building, engineering, or
mechanics so that the student would at all times see the intimate
relation between mathematical law and physical forces? Would not the
disciplinary values of mathematics be intensified for the student by
teaching it in a way that presents a quantitative interpretation of
the daily phenomena in his experience?
Teachers of philosophy and psychology too often fall into a formalism
that robs their subject of all its vitalizing influences. Many a
student enters his course in logic with high hopes. At last he is to
learn the laws of thought which will render him keen in detection of
fallacies and potent in the presentation of argument. How bitter is
his disappointment when he finds his course dissipated in definitions
and classifications. His logic gives itself to the discussion of such
patent fallacies as, "A good teacher knows his subject; Williams knows
his subject, therefore he is a good teacher." Day after day he proves
the error in every form of stupidity or the truth of what is
axiomatic. He tires of "Gold is a metal" and "Socrates is mortal." Few
courses in logic have the courage to break away from the traditional
formalism and to begin each new principle or fundamental concept of
logic by analyzing editorials, arguments, contentions in newspapers,
magazines, campaign literature, or the actual textbooks. Few students
complete their course in logic with a keener insight into thought and
with a maturer or more aggressive mental attitude.
=Beginning at the point of contact relates the subject to the life of
the student=
It was pointed out in a previous illustration that the college student
"taking philosophy" is seldom made to feel that the subject he studies
is related to the problems that arise in his own life. Too frequently
introductory courses in philosophy are historical and extensive in
scope, striving to develop mastery of facts rather than to give new
viewpoints. The student learns names of philosophers, and attempts to
memorize the philosophic system developed by each thinker. Such a
course imposes a heavy burden on retentive power, for no little effort
is required to remember the distinctive philosophical systems
advocated by the respective writers. To the students these
philosophers represent a group of peculiar people differing one from
the other in their degrees of "queerness." One system is as far
removed as another from the life that the student experiences; no
system helps him to find himself. An introductory course in philosophy
should begin with the problems of philosophy; it should have its
origin in the reflective and speculative problems of the student
himself. As the course progresses, the student should feel a growing
sense of power, an increasing ability to formulate more clearly, to
himself at least, the questions of religion and ethics that arise in
the life of a normal thinking person. So, too, courses in ethics and
psychology lose the vital touch unless they begin in the life of the
student and apply their lessons to his social and intellectual
environment.
It must be pointed out, however, that the social sciences lend
themselves more readily to this intimate treatment than do languages,
or the physical sciences, but at all points possible in the study of a
subject, the experience of the student must be introduced as a means
of giving the subject real meaning. In teaching composition and
rhetoric illustrations of the canons of good form need not be
restricted to the past. Current magazines and newspapers are not
devoid of effective illustrations. When the older literary forms are
used exclusively as models of language, the student ends his course
with the erroneous notion that contemporary writing is cheap and
sensational and devoid of artistic craftsmanship.
Courses in physics and chemistry frequently devote themselves to a
development of principles rather than to the applications of the
studies to every sphere of life. Introductory college courses in
zoology spend the year in the minutiae of the lowest animal forms and
rarely reach any animal higher in the scale than the crayfish. We
still find students in botany learning the various margins of leaves,
the system of venation, the scientific classifications, but at the end
of the course, unable to recognize ordinary leaves and just as blind
to nature as they were before. Zoology and botany do not always--as
they should--give a new view of life, a new attitude towards living
phenomena, a new contact with nature.
Careful inquiry among college students will reveal an amazing
ignorance of common chemical and physical phenomena after full-year
courses in chemistry and physics. We find a student giving two
semesters to work in each of these subjects. He spends most of his
time learning the chemical elements, their characteristics and the
modes of testing for them. The major portion of the time is spent in
the laboratory, where he must discover for himself the elementary
practices of the subject and test the validity of well-established
truths. At the end of his second semester he has not developed
sufficient laboratory technique for significant work in chemistry; he
is ignorant of the chemical explanation of the most common phenomena
in life.
=Pedagogical vs. logical organization=
There is much to be said for the position taken by the "older
teachers," who may not possess the scholarship of the "younger
investigators" but who argue for a general course in which laboratory
work shall be reduced, technique minimized, and attention focused on
giving an extensive view of chemical forces. The simple chemical facts
in digestion, metabolism, industry, war, medicine, etc., would be
presented in such a way as to make life a more intelligent process and
to give an insight into the method of science. In the courses that
follow the introductory one, there would be a marked change in aim;
the student would be taught the laboratory technique and would be
given a more intensive study of the important aspects of chemistry.
Similar changes in the introductory courses in physics are urged by
these same teachers.
Beginning at the point of contact may frequently interfere with the
logical arrangement of the course of study; it may wrench many a topic
out of its accustomed place in the textbook; it will demand that the
applications, which come last in most logically arranged courses, be
given first and that definitions and principles which come first be
given last. This logical arrangement, it was pointed out, is usually
the expression of the matured mind that is thoroughly conversant with
every aspect of a subject; it may mean little, however, to the
beginner--so little that he does not even slightly appreciate its
significance. The loss in logical sequence entailed by beginning at
the point of contact is often more than compensated for by the
advantages which are derived from a psychological presentation.
=Proper organization as a factor in effective teaching=
A well-organized lesson possesses teaching merits which may counteract
almost all the usual weaknesses found in poor teaching. Good
organization determines clearness of comprehension, ease of retention,
and ability of recall; it makes for economy of time and mental energy;
it simplifies the processes of mental assimilation; it teaches the
student, indirectly but effectively, to think sequentially. We have
all suffered too keenly, as auditors and readers, the inconveniences
of poor organization, not to realize the worth of proper organization
of knowledge in teaching.
Organization of knowledge has become a pedagogical slogan, but its
increase in popularity has not been accompanied by increased clearness
of comprehension of its meaning. What, then, is meant by proper
organization? It must ever be borne in mind that proper organization
is a relative condition, the limits of which are determined by the
capacities of the students and the nature of the subject matter. What
is effective organization of facts in elementary history may be very
ineffective organization for students of high school or college grade.
Making due allowance for relative conditions, good organization may be
said to consist of five essential characteristics.
_Logical sequence_ is the first of these. It is apparent that the more
rational the sequence of facts, the more effective is the organization
of knowledge. Data organized on a basis of cause and effect,
similarity, contrast or any other logical relationship will help to
secure the teaching advantages we have mentioned. A search for this
simple principle in most textbooks on American or English history or
literature reveals its complete absence. A detailed mass of historical
information grouped into administrations or reigns is merely a
mechanical organization in which time, the accidental element, and
not the development of social movements, the logic of human history,
is the determining factor. In too many courses in literature the
student learns names of writers, biographical data, and literary
characteristics of the masters, but fails to see the development of
the movement of which the writer was a part. Events of history placed
in their social movements, writers in literature placed in the school
in which they belong, give the student the logical ties which bind the
knowledge to him. So, too, one often analyzes the sequence of chapters
in an advanced algebra or a trigonometry and fails to discover the
governing rationale. It must be remembered, however, that the nature
of the subject will often reduce the logical element in its
organization. Instances in language teaching may be cited as
illustrations of teaching situations where a mechanical organization
is often the only one possible because of the arbitrary character of
the subject matter.
=Meaning of organization of subject matter=
_Relativity_ of importance is the second factor of good organization.
A cursory study of a well-organized chapter or merely passing
attention to a well-organized lecture reveals at once a distinct
difference in the emphasis on the various parts or elements of the
subject. The proportional allotment of time or space, the number of
illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the
force of language--these are all means of bringing out the relative
importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a
well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map;
each part stands out in distinctive color according to its
significance.
It is frequently argued by teachers that students of college age
should be required to distinguish the relativity of importance of the
parts of a lesson or the topics in a subject; that the instructor who
points out the changing importance of each succeeding part of a lesson
is enervating the student by doing for him what he ought to do for
himself. This is true in part, but it must be realized that the
instructor who through questions and directed discussions leads
students to formulate for themselves the relative importance of data
is not only carrying out the suggestion made in the preceding
paragraph but is also developing in his students a power they too
frequently lack. Those who have studied the notes that students take
in their classes have seen how frequently facts are torn from their
moorings; how wrong principles are derived from illustrations; how a
catch-phrase becomes a basic principle; how simple truths and axioms
are distorted in the frenzy of note taking. Through questions if
possible, through emphasis on illustrations and explanations, where no
other means is available, students must be made to see that all facts
of a subject are not of the same hue, that some are faint of tint,
others in shadow, and still others in high colors. Without this
relativity of importance, facts are grouped; with it, they are
intelligently organized.
_An underlying tendency_ can be discerned in well-organized knowledge.
Not only are facts arranged in logical sequence and emphasized
according to importance, but there is in addition a central principle
or an underlying purpose giving unifying force to them all. We can
illustrate the need of this third characteristic of good organization
by referring to a college course in American history which gives much
time to the period from 1815 to 1860. The events of these forty-five
years are not taught in administrations but are summed up in six
national tendencies; viz., the questions of state sovereignty,
slavery, territorial acquisition, tariff, industrial and
transportational progress, and foreign policy. Each of these movements
is treated as intensively as time permits. At the end of the study of
the entire period, the student is left with these six topics but
without a unifying principle; to him, these are six unrelated currents
of events. In each of these problems the North and the South displayed
distinctive attitudes, acted from distinctive motives, expressed
distinctive needs and preferences, but these were never brought out
either through well-formulated questions or through explanation. As a
result, the class never realize fully that those years, 1815-1860,
marked the period of growing sectional differences, misunderstandings,
and animosities. Had this underlying tendency been brought out clearly
at various points in the course, the students would have carried away
a permanent impression of what is most vital in this period of
American development.
_Gradation_ of subject matter is another characteristic of good
organization. Careful gradation is not so vital in subjects of social
content as it is in mathematics, foreign languages, and exact
sciences. The most important single factor in removing difficulties
that beset a student is gradation. Teaching problems often arise
because the instructor or the textbook presents more than one
difficulty at a time. Teachers who lack intellectual sympathy or who
are so lost in the advanced stages of their specialty that they can no
longer image the successive steps of difficulty, one by one, that
present themselves to a mind inexperienced in their respective fields,
are frequently guilty of this pedagogical error. Malgradation of
subject matter is the direct cause of serious loss of time and energy
and of needless discouragement not only to students but to instructors
as well.
_Ability of the student to summarize_ easily is a test of good
organization. At the end of a loosely organized chapter or lesson the
student experiences no little difficulty in setting forth the
underlying principles and their supporting data. It does not help much
to have the textbook or the instructor state the summary either at the
end of the lesson in question or at the beginning of the succeeding
one. The summary of a lesson, given by the class, is a test of the
effectiveness of instruction. Summaries given by teachers or textbooks
have little or no pedagogical justification. Only in cases where the
summary introduces a new point of view or unifying principles, or when
it sets forth basic principles in particularly forceful language--only
then is the statement by teacher or textbook justifiable.
=Thoroughness=
Teachers are advised to be thorough in their instruction. They in turn
urge their students to strive for thoroughness in study. We praise or
impugn the scholarship of our colleagues because it possesses or lacks
thoroughness. Here we have a quality of knowledge universally
extolled. But what is meant by thoroughness? How can teachers or
students know that they are attaining that degree of comprehension
known as thoroughness? We are told that thoroughness is a relative
condition, always changing with accompanying circumstances. Even an
unattainable ideal can be defined,--why not thoroughness? We must,
therefore, attempt to determine the meaning of thoroughness as used in
teaching and study.
=Negative interpretation of thoroughness=
It may be helpful to formulate the common or lay interpretation of
thoroughness. The term "thoroughness" is erroneously used in a
quantitative sense to describe scholastic attainment. We are told of a
colleague's thoroughness in history; he knows all names, dates,
places, facts in the development of mankind; his knowledge of his
specialty is encyclopedic; "there is no need of looking things up when
he is around." A professor of English literature boasted of the
thoroughness with which he teaches _Hamlet_: "Every word of value and
every change in the form of versification are marked; every allusion
is taken up, every peculiar grammatical construction is brought to the
attention of the class." Here we have illustrations of an erroneous
conception of thoroughness which gives it an extensive meaning and
regards it as the accumulation of a mass of data.
=Positive interpretation of thoroughness=
Yet the master of chronological detail in history may have no
historical imagination, no historical perspective, no historical
judgment. He may possess the facts, but a period in history still
remains for him a stretch of time limited by two dates, rather than a
succession of years in which all mankind seems to be moving in the
same direction, possessed of the same viewpoints, the same hopes and
aspirations. The professor of English literature does not see that in
teaching _Hamlet_ he forsook his specialty, literature, for philology
and mythology; that he turned his back on art and took up language
structure. Thoroughness is not completeness, because the possession of
the details of a subject does not necessarily bring with it a true
comprehension of it. Add all the details, and the sum total is nothing
more than the group of details. Thoroughness is a degree of
comprehension resulting from the acquisition of new points of view.
The teacher of history who sees underlying forces in the facts of the
past, who understands that true inwardness of any movement which shows
him its relation to all phases of life, but who nevertheless may not
have ready command of all the specific details, is more thorough in
his scholarship. He has the things that count; the facts that are
forgotten can easily be found. The class that studies the dramatic
structure of _Hamlet_, that sees Shakespeare's power of character
portrayal, that takes up only such grammatical and language points as
give clearer comprehension or lead to greater appreciation of diction,
is thorough although it does not possess all the facts. It is thorough
because what is significant and dynamic in _Hamlet_ is made focal. The
postgraduate student assiduously searching for data for his doctorate
thesis is often guided by the erroneous conception of thoroughness; he
wants facts that have never seen the light. The more he gets of these,
the nearer he approaches his goal. He avoids conclusions; he is
counseled by his professors against giving too much of his book to the
expression of his views. Analyze the chapters of a doctorate thesis
and note the number of pages given to facts and those to conclusions
and interpretations. The proportion is astonishing. The student's
power to find facts is clearly shown; his power to use facts is not
revealed by his thesis. The richer the thesis is in detail, in
references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more
thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. We have failed to
realize that this excessive zeal in gathering and collating a large
number of not commonly known facts may make the thesis more
cumbersome, more complete, but not necessarily more thorough. However,
the plea for a new standard in judging doctorate theses is meeting
with gratifying encouragement.
What, then, are the teaching practices that make for greater
thoroughness, that increase the qualitative and intensive character of
knowledge? We shall discuss some of these in the succeeding
paragraphs.
=How can thoroughness be produced?=
The _acquisition of new points of view_ makes for increased
thoroughness of comprehension. The class that understands the causes
of the American Revolution from the American point of view knows of
the navigation laws, the quartering of soldiers in American homes, the
Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre,--the usual provocations that strained
patience to the breaking point. The college teacher of American
history who spends time on the riots in New York in which a greater
number of colonists was killed than in Boston, who teaches in detail
the various acts forbidding the manufacture of hats and of iron ware,
or the protests against English practices in the colonies made by
British merchants, etc., is adding more facts, but he may only be
intensifying the erroneous conclusion that the students have formed in
earlier and less complete courses. The topic, "Causes of the American
Revolution," grows in thoroughness, not through the addition of these
facts but through the presentation of new interpretations of the
practices of the English. When we explain that the English believed in
virtual and not actual representation, the students see a new meaning
in "taxation without representation." When the students learn that the
English government decided on a new economic and industrial policy
which planned to have the mother country specialize in manufacture and
transportation and the colonies in production of raw materials, the
students see reason, though not necessarily justice, in the acts
prohibiting Americans from various forms of manufacture and
transportational activities. These new facts modify in the minds of
students the point of view so often given in elementary courses, that
the War for Independence was caused by sheer British meanness and
injustice, by her policy of reckless repression.
It is not always possible to give new points of view to all knowledge
in all subjects. There are cases in which there is only one point of
view or where students may not be ready for a new interpretation
because of their limited mastery of a new field of knowledge. Under
these conditions an added point of view is a source of confusion
rather than an aid to clearer comprehension. Some subjects, like the
social sciences, naturally allow for richer interpretations. Others,
like the languages and the physical sciences, present only very
limited opportunities; in the biological sciences the possibilities,
though not as rich as in the social sciences, are numerous and
productive of good results.
_Comparison_ is a second means of producing thoroughness of
comprehension. Good teaching abounds in comparisons which are
introduced at the end of every important topic rather than reserved
for examination questions. Comparisons used liberally at every logical
pause in the development of a subject always give an added viewpoint,
review early subject matter incidentally, stir thought, and make for
better organization. How much more clearly are the causes of the War
of 1812 understood after they are compared with those that brought on
the Revolutionary War! How much more definite are the causes of the
American Revolution when compared with those that brought on the
French Revolution! A writer, a school, or a movement in English
literature may be understood when studied by itself; but how is
comprehension deepened when each is compared with another writer or
school or movement! Comparison of perception and conception or
appreciation and association in psychology, makes each activity stand
out clearer in the mind of the student. Compare the laws of rent,
wage, profit, and interest in economics, and not only each is better
understood but the basic laws of distribution are readily derived by
the student. Similarly, comparisons in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, and the entire range of collegiate subjects give increased
comprehension, useful though incidental reviews, and greater
unification of knowledge, as well as added points of view.
_Correlation_ as a means of producing thoroughness is closely allied
to comparison. Correlation relates kindred topics of different
subjects, while comparison points out relations in the same subject.
The instructor who correlates the history of education with the
political and economic history that the student learned in another
course is unifying related experience, reducing the field of
knowledge, introducing logical organization, and adding new
interpretations to facts already acquired. Similarly, teaching must be
enriched by correlating physics and mathematics, chemistry and
physics, literature and music, history of literature and general
history, until instruction has taken advantage of every vital relation
among subjects. With the growth of specialized subjects there is an
unfortunate tendency toward isolation until the untrained mind looks
upon the curriculum as a series of unrelated experiences, each
rivaling the other in its claim to importance.
The advantage of correlation will remain lost in college teaching as
long as each instructor regards himself as a specialized investigator
concerned with teaching his subject rather than his students. How many
college teachers know what subjects their students have already taken,
or knowing the names of these subjects, have a general knowledge of
their content? The college professor of the preceding generation was a
cultured gentleman whose general scholarship transcended the limits of
his specialty. He understood and knew the curriculum as a whole.
Because of changes in every phase of our civilization, his successor
has a deeper but a narrower knowledge. He knows little of the work of
his students outside of his own subject. He does not relate and
correlate the ever growing field of knowledge; he merely adds--by the
introduction of his own mass of facts--to the isolation which
characterizes the parts of college curricula. This tendency must be
counteracted, not by interfering with the scholastic interests of any
instructor, but by occasional conferences of instructors of allied
subjects in order to agree on common meeting grounds, on points of
correlation, on useful repetitions, and on the elimination of needless
duplications. Such pedagogical conferences are rare because college
teachers are not alive to the need of reform in methods of college
teaching.
Thoroughness results from _increase in the number of applications_ of
knowledge. The introduction of the functional view into teaching
brings with it a realization of the vital needs of increased ways of
applying the experience we present to students. As the laws of
physics, mathematics, biology, composition, economics, etc., are
applied to a number of specific instances, the generalization grows in
meaning and in force. Specific cases vary, and, varying, give new
color and new meaning to the laws that are applied to explain them.
How much a law in chemistry means after it is applied to specific
instances in industry, human and animal physiology, plant life, or
engineering! The equation learned in descriptive geometry may be
understood, but it never means so much as when it is applied to
specific problems in engineering. Applications give added insight into
knowledge and therefore make for greater thoroughness of
comprehension.
=Teaching as a process of arousing self-activity=
Locke's Blank Paper Theory, enunciated centuries ago, has been
repeatedly and triumphantly refuted even by tyros in psychology, but
in educational practices it continues to hold sway. College teaching
too frequently proceeds on the assumption that the mind is an aching
void anxiously awaiting the generous contributions of knowledge to be
made by the teacher. College examinations usually test for
multiplicity of facts acquired, rather than for power developed.
College teaching usually does not perceive that the mind is a reacting
machine containing a vast amount of pent-up potential energy which is
ready to react upon any presentation; that development takes place
only as this self-activity expresses itself; that education is
evolutionary rather than involutionary. Teaching is, therefore, a
process of arousing, sustaining, and directing the self-activity of
pupils. The more persistently and successfully this activity is
aroused, the more systematically it is directed to intelligent ends,
the more skillful is the teaching. Teachers do not impart knowledge,
for that is impossible; they _occasion_ knowledge. Only as the teacher
succeeds through questions, directions, diagrams, and all known
devices, in arousing the self-activity of the student, is he producing
the conditions under which knowledge is acquired by the pupil.
=Evaluation of common methods of teaching=
The methods commonly used in college teaching are as follows:
1. Lecture method, with or without quiz sections.
2. Development method, with or without textbook.
3. Combination of lecture and development method.
4. Reference readings and the presentation of papers by students.
5. Laboratory work by students, together with lectures and quiz
sections.
Teachers have long debated the relative merits of these methods or
combinations of them. They fail to realize that each method is
correct, depending upon the aim to be accomplished and the governing
circumstances. No method has a monopoly of pedagogical wisdom; no
method, used exclusively, is free from inherent weakness. A teaching
method must be judged by its ability to arouse and sustain
self-activity and to attain the aim set for a specific lesson. With
this standard for judging a method of teaching, we must stop to sum up
the relative worth of common methods of college teaching.
=Lecture method evaluated=
The _lecture method_ has been the target for much criticism for many
centuries. Socrates inveighed against its use by the sophists, and
educators since have repeated the attack. The reasons are legion:
(_a_) The lecture method tends to discourage the pupil's activity. The
student feels no responsibility during the lecture; he listens
leisurely, and makes notes of the instructor's contribution. The
student's judgment is not called into play; he learns to take
knowledge on the authority of the instructor. The sense of comfort and
security experienced in a lecture hour is fatal even to aggressive and
assertive minds. Sooner or later the students succumb to the inertia
developed by the lecture system.
(_b_) A second limitation of an exclusive lecture method is its
inability to make permanent impressions. Many a student, entering the
lecture hall, has completely forgotten even the theme of the last
lecture. Knowledge is retained only when it is obtained by the
expression of self-activity. To offset this weakness notes must be
taken, but these prove to be the bane of the lecture method. Some
students, in their efforts to record a point just concluded, lose not
only the thought of what they are trying to write but also the new
thought which the instructor is now explaining; they drop both ideas
from their notes and wait for the next step in the development of the
lecture. This accounts for the many gaps in the notes kept by
students. Some instructors, dismayed by the amount of knowledge lost
by students, resort to dictation devices. Others, realizing the
pedagogical weakness of such teaching, distribute mimeographed
outlines of carefully prepared summaries of the lectures. Now the
student is relieved of the tedium of note taking, but the temptation
to let his mind wander afield is intensified. An outline, scanty of
detail, but so devised as to keep the organization and sequence of
subject matter clear in the minds of students, is, of course, helpful.
But detailed outlines distributed among the students discourage even
attentive listening.
(_c_) In teaching by lectures only there is no contact between student
and teacher. The student does not recite; he does not reveal his type
of mind, his mode of study, his grasp of subject matter. He is merely
a passive recipient. To this third weakness of the lecture method we
may add a fourth: (_d_) it tends to emphasize quantity rather than
method. The student is confronted with a great mass of facts, but he
does not acquire a mode of thought nor does he see the method by which
a given subject is developed. (_e_) The lecture method, therefore,
inculcates in students an attitude of mental subservience which is
fatal for the development of courageous and vigorous thought. And
finally (_f_) it must be urged that in lecture teaching the instructor
is not testing the accuracy of the students' conceptions nor is he
able to judge the efficacy of his own methods.
But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that with an effective
lecturer, possessed of commanding personality, the lecture gives a
point of view of a subject and an enthusiasm for it which other
devices fail to achieve. The lecture method makes for economy of time
and enables one to present his subject to his class with a
succinctness absent from many textbooks. Where much must be taught in
a limited time, where a comprehensive view of an extensive field must
be given, when certain types of responses or mental attitudes are
desired, the lecture serves well.
=Final worth of lecture method=
Experience teaches that an exclusive lecture system is not conducive
to efficient work; that lectures to regular classes ought to be
punctuated by questions whenever interest lags; that the occasional
and even the unannounced lecture is more effective; that supplementary
devices for checking up assignments and regular collateral study are
of vital importance. Where regular lectures are followed by detailed
analyses in quiz sections the best results are obtained when the
lecturer himself is the questioner. Where quiz sections are turned
over to assistants, wise procedure requires that quiz leaders attend
the lectures and decide, in conference with the lecturer, the specific
aims which must be achieved in the quiz work and the assigned readings
which must be given to students in preparation for each quiz hour.
Unless this is done, the student is frequently confused by the
divergent points of view presented by lecturer, quiz master, and
textbook.
_The development method_ has much to commend it. It stimulates
activity by its repeated questions. Few or no notes are taken. There
is constant contact with the student. At every point the mental
content of the pupils is revealed. The teacher sees the result of his
teaching by the intelligence of successive responses. The pupil is
being trained in systematic thought and in concentration. But it must
be remembered that the development method is often costly in time
because answers may be wrong or irrelevant. It may encourage
wandering; a student's reply reveals ignorance of a basic principle,
and the aim of the lesson is often forgotten in the eagerness to
patch up this misconception. Then, too, in subject matter that is
arbitrary, as in descriptive and narrative history, no development is
possible. In such cases the questions are designed to test the
student's knowledge of the text, and the lesson becomes a quiz rather
than a development.
It is plain, therefore, that a judicious combination of the lecture
and development methods will give better results than the exclusive
use of either one. The analysis of the pedagogical advantages of each
leads to the conclusion that the development method should predominate
and that the lecture method should be used sparingly and always with
some of the checking devices described.
=Place of reference reading in college teaching=
=Evaluation of development--Socratic or heuristic method=
A common method employed in advanced courses in college subjects
emphasizes _reference study and research_. The entire course is
reduced to a series of problems, each of which deals with a vital
aspect of the subject. Each student is made responsible for a topic.
The initial hours are devoted to an examination of the common sources
of information in this specific subject, the modes of using these, the
standards to be attained in writing a paper on one of the topics, and
similar matters. The remainder of the term is given over to seminar
work: each student reads his paper and holds himself in readiness to
answer all questions his classmates may ask on his topic. The aims of
such a course are obviously to develop a knowledge of sources and an
ability to use intelligently the unorganized data found by the
student. The results of these pseudo-seminar courses are far from what
was anticipated. A thorough investigation of such a course will soon
convince the teacher that the seminar method, whatever its merits in
university training, must be refined and diluted before it is applied
to college teaching. Let us see why.
Successful reference reading requires a knowledge of the field
studied, maturity of mind, discriminating judgment in the selection of
material, and ability in organization. The university student is not
only maturer and more serious but has a basis of broader knowledge
than most undergraduates. Without this equipment of mental powers and
knowledge, the student cannot judge the merits of contending views nor
harmonize seeming discrepancies. A student who has no ample foundation
of economics cannot study the subject by reference reading on the
problems of economics. To learn the meaning of value he would read the
psychological explanations of the Austrian schools and the
materialistic conceptions of the classical writers. He would then find
himself in a state of confusion, owing to what seemed to him to be a
superfluity of explanations of value. When one understands one point
of view, an added viewpoint is a source of greater clarity and a means
of deeper understanding. But when one is entirely ignorant of
fundamental concepts, two points of view presented simultaneously
become two sources of confusion. In the university only the student of
tried worth is permitted to take a seminar course. In the upper
classes in college, mediocre students are often welcomed into a
seminar course in order to help float an unpromising elective.
=Limitations of seminar method in undergraduate teaching=
The college seminar is usually unsuccessful because few students have
ability to hold the attention of their classmates for a period of
thirty minutes or more. Language limitations, lack of a knowledge of
subject matter, inability to illustrate effectively, and the skeptical
attitude of fellow students all militate against successful teaching
by a member of the class. Students presenting papers often select
unimportant details or give too many details. The rest of the class
listen languidly, take occasional notes, and ask a few perfunctory
questions to help bring the session to a close. A successful hour is
rare. The student who prepared the topic of the day undoubtedly is
benefited, but those who listen acquire little knowledge and less
power. The course ends without a comprehensive view of the entire
subject, without that knowledge which comes from the teacher's
leadership and instruction. This type of reference reading and
research has value when used as an occasional ten or fifteen minute
exercise to supplement certain aspects of class work. But as a steady
diet in a college course, the seminar usually leaves much to be
desired.
The _laboratory method_ is growing in favor today in college teaching.
It is employed in the social sciences, in sociology, in economics, in
psychology, in education, as well as in the physical and the
biological sciences. Where it is followed the aim is clearly twofold;
viz., to teach the method by which the specific subject is growing and
to develop in the students mental power and a scientific attitude
towards knowledge.
=Value of laboratory method=
Let us illustrate these two aims of the laboratory method. A
laboratory course in chemistry or biology or sociology may be designed
to teach the student the use of apparatus and equipment necessary for
work in a respective field; the method of attacking a problem; a
standard for distinguishing significant from immaterial data; methods
of gathering facts; the modes of keeping scientific records,--in a
word, the essence of the experience of successive generations of
investigators and contributors. But no successful laboratory results
can be obtained without a proper mental attitude. The student must
learn how to prevent his mental prepossessions or his desires from
coloring his observations; to allow for controls and variables; to
give most exacting care to every detail that may influence his result;
to regard every conclusion as a tentative hypothesis subject to
verification or modification in the light of further test. Unless the
student acquires a knowledge of the method of science and has achieved
these necessary modes of thought, his laboratory course has failed to
make its most significant contribution.
In courses where the aim is to teach socially necessary information or
to give a comprehensive view of the scope of a specific subject, it is
obvious that the laboratory method will lead far afield. It is for
this reason that introductory courses given in recitations, with
demonstrations by instructors, and occasional lecture and laboratory
hours, are more liberalizing in their influence upon the beginners
than courses that are primarily laboratory in character.
=Cautions in the use of the laboratory method=
Most laboratory courses would enhance their usefulness by observing a
few primary pedagogical maxims. The first of these counsels that we
establish most clearly the distinctive aim of the course. The
instructor must be sure that he has no quantitative aim to attain but
is occupied rather with the problems of teaching the method of his
specialty. Second, an earnest effort must be made to acquaint the
students with the general aim of the entire course as well as with the
specific aim of each laboratory exercise. The students must be made to
realize that they are not discovering new principles but that by
rediscovering old knowledge or testing the validity of well-established
truths they are developing not only the technique of investigational
work, but also a set of useful mental habits. Much in laboratory work
seems needless to the student who does not perceive the goal which
every task strives to attain.
A third requisite for successful laboratory work requires so careful a
gradation that every type of problem peculiar to a subject is made to
arise in the succession of exercises. It is wise at times to set a
trap for students so that they may learn through the consequences of
error. For this reason students may be permitted to leap to a
conclusion, to generalize from insufficient data, to neglect controls,
to overlook disturbing factors, etc. An improperly planned and poorly
graded laboratory course repeats exercises that involve the same
problems and omits situations that give training in attacking and
solving new problems.
Effective laboratory courses afford opportunity to students to repeat
those exercises in which they failed badly. If each exercise in the
course is designed to make a specific contribution to the development
of the student, it is obvious that merely marking the student zero for
a badly executed experiment is not meeting the situation. He must in
addition be given the opportunity to repeat the experiment in order
to derive the necessary variety of experiences from his laboratory
training. And, finally, the character of the test that concludes a
laboratory course must be considered. The test must be governed by the
same underlying aims that determine the entire course. It must seek to
reveal, not the mastery of facts, but growth in power. It must measure
what the student can do rather than what he knows. A properly
organized test serves to reinforce in the minds of students the aims
of the entire course.
=The college teacher not the university professor=
An analysis of effective teaching is necessarily incomplete that does
not give due consideration to the only human factor in the teaching
process--the teacher. We have too long repeated the old adages: "he
who knows can teach"; "a teacher is born, not made"; "experience is
the teacher of teachers." These dicta are all tried and true, but they
have the failings common to platitudes. It often happens that those
who know but lack in imagination and sympathy are by that very knowing
rendered unfit to teach. "Knowing" so well, they cannot see the
difficulties that beset the learner's path, and they have little
patience with the student's slow and measured steps in the very
beginnings of their specialty. It is true that some are born teachers,
but our educational institutions could not be maintained if classes
were turned over only to those to whom nature had given lavishly of
pedagogical power. Experience teaches even teachers, but the price
paid must be computed in terms of the welfare of the student. Teaching
is one of the arts in which the artist works only with living
material; yet college authorities still make no demand of professional
training and apprenticeship as prerequisites for admission to the
fraternity of teaching artists.
Ineffective college teaching will not improve until professional
teaching standards are set up by respected institutions. The college
teacher must be possessed of ample scholarship of a general nature. He
must have expertness in his specialty, to give him a knowledge of his
field, its problems and its methods. He must be a constant student,
so that his scholarship in his specialty will win recognition and
respect. But part of his preparation must be given over to
professional training for teaching. Without this, the prospective
teacher may not know until it is too late that his deficiencies of
personality unfit him for teaching. With it, he shortens his term of
novitiate and acquires his experience under expert guidance. The plan
of college-teacher training, given by Dr. Mezes in Chapter II, so
complete in scope, so thoroughly sound and progressive in character,
is here suggested as a type of professional preparation now sorely
needed.
=Testing the results of instruction=
The usual test of teacher and student is still the traditional
examination, with its many questions and sub-questions. We still
measure the results of instruction by fathoming the fund of
information our students carry away. But these traditional
examinations test for what is temporary and accidental. Facts known
today are forgotten tomorrow. The professor himself often comes to
class armed with notes, but he persists in setting up, as a test of
the growth of his students, their retentivity of the facts he gave
from these very notes. In the final analysis, these examinations are
not tests. The writer does not urge the abolition of examinations, but
argues rather for a reorganized examination that embodies new
standards. A real examination must test for what is permanent and
vital; it must measure the degree to which students approximate the
aims that were set up to govern the entire course; it must gauge the
mental habits, the growth in power, rather than facts. Part of an
examination in mathematics should test students' ability to attack new
problems, to plan a line of work, to think mathematically, to avoid
typical fallacies of thought. For this part of the test, books may be
opened and references consulted. In literature we may question on text
not discussed in class to ascertain the students' power of
appreciation or of literary criticism. So, too, in examinations in
social sciences, physical sciences, foreign languages, and biological
sciences, the examination must consist, in great measure, of
questions which test the acquisition of the habits of thought, of
work, of laboratory procedure--in a word, the permanent contribution
of any study. This part of an examination should be differentiated
from the more mechanical and memory questions which seek to reveal the
student's mastery of those facts of a subject which may be regarded as
socially necessary. Reduce the socially necessary data of any subject
to an absolute minimum and frame questions on it demanding no such
slovenly standard--sixty per cent--as now prevails in college
examinations. If the facts called for on an examination are really the
most vital in the subject, the passing grade should be very high. If
the questions seek to elicit insignificant or minor information, any
passing mark is too high. It is obvious, therefore, that a student
should receive two marks in most subjects,--one that rates power and
another that rates mere acquisition of facts. The passing grade in the
one would necessarily be lower than in the other. An examination is
justified only when it is so devised that it reveals not only the
students' stock of socially useful knowledge but also their growth in
mental power.
PAUL KLAPPER
_College of the City of New York_
PART TWO
THE SCIENCES
CHAPTER
IV THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGY
_T. W. Galloway_
V THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY
_Louis Kahlenberg_
VI THE TEACHING OF PHYSICS
_Harvey B. Lemon_
VII THE TEACHING OF GEOLOGY
_T. C. Chamberlin_
VIII THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS
_G. A. Miller_
IX PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE
_Thomas A. Storey_
IV
THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGY
BIOLOGY AND EDUCATION
=Biology the science basal to all knowing=
The life sciences, broadly conceived, are basal to all departments of
knowledge; and the study of biology illumines every field of human
interest. To the believer in evolution the human body, brain, senses,
intellect, sensations, impulses, habits, ideas, knowledges, ideals,
standards, attractions, sympathies, combinations, organizations,
institutions, and all other powers and possessions of every kind and
degree are merely crowning phenomena of life itself. The languages,
history, science, economic systems, philosophies, and literatures of
mankind are only special manifestations and expressions of life and a
part, therefore, of the studies by which we as living beings are
trying to appraise and appreciate the meaning of life and of the
universe of which life is the most significant product. Life is not
merely the most notable product of our universe; it is the most
persuasive key for solving the riddle of the universe, and is the only
universe product which aspires to interpret the processes by which it
has reached its own present level.
All knowledge, then, is _biological_ in the very vital sense that the
living organism is the only _knowing_ thing. The knowing process is a
life process. Even when knowledge pertains to non-living objects,
therefore, it is one-half biological; our most worth-while
knowledge--that of ourselves and other organisms--is wholly so.
Because all our knowledge is colored by the life process, of which the
knowing process is derivative, the study of life underlies every
science and its applications, every art and its practice, every
philosophy and its interpretations. Biology must be taught in sympathy
with the whole joint enterprise of living and of learning.
=Adaptation without losing adaptability the goal of life and of education=
The most outstanding phenomenon of life is the _adaptation_ of living
things to the real and significant conditions of their existence.
Furthermore, as these conditions are not static, particularly in the
case of humans, organisms must not merely be adapted, but must
continue thereafter to be _adaptable_. Now learning is only a special
case under living, and education a special case under life. Its
purposes are the purposes of life. It is an artificial and rapid
recapitulation for the individual, in method and results, of past life
itself. The purpose of education is "adaptation,--with the retention
of adaptability." It is to bring the individual into attunement,
through his own responses and growth, with all the real factors,
external and internal, in his life,--material, intellectual,
emotional, social, and spiritual,--and at the same time leave him
plastic.
Adaptation comes through the habit-forming experiences of stimulus and
response. The very process of adaptation, therefore, tends toward
fixity and to destroy adaptability. It is thus the task of education,
as it is of life, to replace the native, inexperienced and
physiological plasticity of youth with some product of experience
which shall be able to revise habits in the interest of new
situations. The adaptability of the experienced person must be
psychical and acquired. It must be in the realm of appreciation,
attitude, choice, self-direction--a realm superior to habit.
In this human task of securing adaptation and retaining adaptiveness
the life sciences have high rank. In addition to furnishing the very
conception itself that we have been trying to phrase, they give
illustrations of all the historic occasions, kinds, and modes of
adaptation; in lacking the exactness of the mathematical and physical
sciences they furnish precisely the degree of uncertainty and openness
of opportunity and of mental state which the act of living itself
demands. In other words the science of life is, if properly presented,
the most normal possible introduction to the very practical art of
living. Because of the parallel meaning of education and life in
securing progressive adaptation to the essential influential forces of
the universe, an appreciative study of biology introduces directly to
the purposes and methods of human education.
CHIEF AIMS OF BIOLOGY AS A COLLEGE SUBJECT
=Why study biology in college?=
While students differ in the details of their purposes in life, all
must learn to make the broad adjustments to the physical conditions of
life; to the problems of food and nutrition; to other organisms,
helpful and hurtful; to the internal impulses, tendencies, and
appetites; to the various necessary human contacts and relations; to
the great body of knowledge important to life, which human beings have
got together; to the prevailing philosophical interpretations of the
universe and of life; and to the pragmatic organizations, conventions,
and controls which human society has instituted. In addition to these,
some students of biology are going into various careers, each
demanding special adjustments which biology may aid notably. Such are
medicine and its related specialties, professional agricultural
courses, and biological research of all kinds.
An extended examination of college catalogs shows some consciousness
of these facts on the part of teachers of biology. The following needs
are formally recognized in the prospectuses: (1) The disciplinary and
cultural needs of the general student; (2) the needs of those
preparing for medicine or other professional courses; and (3) the
needs of the people proposing to specialize in botany and zoology.
These aims are usually mentioned in the order given here; but an
examination of the character of the courses often reveals the fact
that the actual organization of the department is determined by an
exact reversal of this order,--that most of the attention is given,
even in the beginning courses, to the task of preparing students to
take advanced work in the subject. The theory of the departments is
usually better than their practice.
In what follows these are the underlying assumptions,--which seem
without need of argument: (1) The general human needs should have the
first place in organizing the courses in biology; (2) the
introductory courses should not be constructed primarily as the first
round in the ladder of biological or professional specialization, but
for the general purposes of human life; (3) the preparation needed by
teachers of biology for secondary schools is more nearly like that
needful for the general student than that suited to the specialist in
the subject; and (4) the later courses may more and more be concerned
with the special ends of professional and vocational preparation.
GENERAL AIMS OF BIOLOGY IN EDUCATION
What are the general adaptive contributions of biology to human
nature? What are the results in the individual which biology should
aim to bring to every student? There are four classes of personal
possessions, important in human adaptation, to which biology ministers
in a conspicuous way: information and knowledge; ability and skills;
habits; and attitudes, appreciations, and ideals. These four universal
aims of education are doubtless closely related and actually
inseparable, but it is worth while to consider them apart for the sake
of clearness.
A. TYPES OF BIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE USEFUL IN THE ADAPTATION OF HUMAN
BEINGS TO THE MOST IMPORTANT CONDITIONS OF THEIR LIFE
=(1) Study of biology furnishes knowledge of adaptive value=
(1) Some knowledge of the processes by which individual plants and
animals grow and differentiate, through nutrition and activity; of the
process of development common to all organisms; and the bearing of
these facts on human life, health, and conduct.
(2) An outline knowledge of reproduction in plants and animals; the
origin, nature, meaning, and results of sex; the contribution of sex
to human life, to social organization and ideals, and its importance
in determining behavior and controls.
(3) A good knowledge of the external forces most important in
influencing life; of the nature of the influence; of the various ways
in which organisms respond and become adjusted individually and
racially to these conditions. A sense of the necessity of adaptation;
of the working of the laws of cause and effect among living things, as
everywhere else; of the fact that nature's laws cannot be safely
ignored by man any more than by the lower organisms; of the relation
between animal behavior and human behavior.
(4) Equally a true conception of the known facts about the internal
tendencies in organisms including man, which we call hereditary. The
principles underlying plant, animal, and human breeding. Any progress
in behavior, in legislation, or in public opinion in the field of
eugenics, negative or positive, must come from the spread of such
knowledge.
(5) A knowledge of the numerous ways in which plants and animals
contribute to or interfere with human welfare. This includes use for
food, clothing, and labor saving; their destruction of other plants or
animals useful or hurtful to us; their work in producing, spreading,
or aiding in the cure of disease; their aesthetic service and
inspiration; the aid they give us in learning of our own nature
through the experiments we conduct upon them; and many miscellaneous
services.
(6) A conception of the evolutionary series of plants and animals, and
of man's place in the series; a reassurance that man's high place as
an intellectual and emotional being is in no way put in peril by his
being a part of the series. Some clear knowledge of the general manner
of the development of the plant and animal kingdoms to their present
complexity should be gained. The student should have some acquaintance
with the great generalizations that have meant so much to the science
and to all human thinking, should understand how they were reached and
the main classes of facts on which they are based.
(7) The general student should be required to have such knowledge of
structure and classification as is needed to give foundation and body
to the evolutionary conceptions of plants and animals, and to the
various processes and powers mentioned above--and only so much.
(8) Some knowledge of the development of the science itself; of its
relation to the other sciences; of the men who have most contributed
to it, and their contributions; of the manner of making these
discoveries, and of the bearing of the more important of these
discoveries upon human learning, progress, and well-being.
(9) Something of the parallelism between animal psychology, behavior,
habits, instincts, and learning, and those of man,--in both the
individual and the social realm.
(10) An elementary understanding of plant and animal and human
distribution over the earth, and of the factors that have brought it
about.
B. FORMS OF SKILL WHICH WORK IN BIOLOGY SHOULD BRING TO EVERY STUDENT
=(2) Biological study gives desirable skills=
Skill or ability may be developed in respect to the following
activities: seeking and securing information, recording it,
interpreting its significance, reaching general conclusions about it,
modifying one's conduct under the guidance of these conclusions, and,
finally, of appraising the soundness of this conduct in the light of
the results of it. All of these are of basic importance in the human
task of making conscious adjustments in actual life; and the ability
to get facts and to use them is more valuable than to possess the
knowledge of facts. Other sciences develop some of these forms of
skill better than biology does; nevertheless, we shall find that
biology furnishes a remarkably balanced opportunity to develop skills
of the various kinds. It presents a great range and variety of
opportunity to develop accuracy and skill in raising questions; in
observation and the use of precise descriptive terms in recording
results of observation; in experimentation; in comparison and
classification. It is peculiarly rich in opportunities to gain skill
in discriminating between important and unimportant data,--one of the
most vital of all the steps in the process of sound reasoning. In
practice, a datum may at first sight seem trivial, when in reality it
is very significant. _Skill_ in estimating values comes only with
_experience_ in estimating values, and in applying these estimates in
practice, and in observing and correcting the results of practice.
Finally, skill in adjusting behavior to knowledge is one of the most
necessary abilities and most difficult to attain. The study of animal
behavior experimentally is at the foundation of much that we know of
human psychology and the grounds of human behavior. Even in an
elementary class it is quite possible so to study animal responses and
the results of response as to give guidance and facility to the
individual in interpreting the efficiency of his own responses, and in
adding to his own controls. As has been said, practice of some kind is
necessary to determine whether our estimate of values is good. Even
vicarious experience has educative value.
C. HABITS WHICH MAY BE STRENGTHENED BY THE WORK IN BIOLOGY
=(3) Biology may supply adaptive habits=
Habits are of course the normal outcome of repeated action. Indeed,
skills are in a sense habits from another point of view. Skill,
however, looks rather toward the output; habit, toward the mode of
functioning by the person by whom the result is attained. We may then
develop habits in respect to all the processes and activities
mentioned above under the term "skills." The teacher of biology should
have definitely in purpose the securing for the student of habits of
inquiry, of diligence, of concentration, of accuracy of observation,
of seeking and weighing evidence, of detecting the essentials in a
mass of facts, of refusing to rest satisfied until a conclusion, the
most tenable in the light of all known data, is reached, and of
reexamining conclusions whenever new evidence is offered.
Of course it is impossible to use biology to get habits of right
reasoning in students unless we _really allow them to reason_. If we
insist that their work is merely to observe, record, and hold in
memory,--as so many of us do in laboratory work,--they may form
habits of doing these things, but not necessarily any more than this.
Indeed, they may definitely form the habit of doing _only_ these
things, _failing to use the results in forming for themselves any of
the larger conclusions about organisms_. _Seeing_ and _knowing_--without
the ability and habit of _thinking_--is not an uncommon or surprising
result of our conventional laboratory work. There is only one way to
get the habit of right "following through" in reasoning; this is,
_always to do the thing_. When data are observed or are furnished it
is a pedagogical sin on the part of the teacher to allow the student
to stop at that point; and equally so to deduce the conclusion for the
student, or to allow the writer of the textbook to do so, or at any
time to induce the student to accept from another a conclusion which
he himself might reach from the data. We have depended too much on our
science as a mere observational science,--when as a matter of fact its
chief glory is really its opportunity and its incentives to coherent
thinking and careful testing of conclusions.
It is inexact enough, if we are entirely honest, to force us to hold
our conclusions with an open mind ready to admit new evidence. It is
entirely the fault of the teacher if the pupil gets a dogmatic,
too-sure habit of mind as the result of his biological studies. And
yet, as has been said, it is exact enough to enable us to reach just
the same sort of approximations to truth which are possible in our own
lives. The study of biology presents a superb opportunity to prepare
for living by forming the habits of mind and of life that facilitate
right choices in the presence of highly debatable situations. In this
it much surpasses the more "exact" sciences. We may conclude, then, by
positing the belief that the most important mental habit which human
beings can form is that of using and applying consciously the
scientific method as outlined above, not merely to biology alone, but
to all the issues of personal life as well.
D. APPRECIATIONS, ATTITUDES, AND IDEALS AS AIDED BY BIOLOGY
=(4) Attitudes of life perfected by study of the life sciences=
This group of objectives is a bit less tangible, as some think, than
those that have been mentioned; but in my own opinion they are as
important and as educable for the good of the youth by means of
biology as are knowledge, skill, and habit. In a sense these states of
mind arise as by-products of the getting of information, skills, and
habits; in turn they heighten their value. We have spoken above of the
need of skill and habit in making use of the various steps in the
scientific method in reaching conclusions in life. These are
essential, but skill and habit alone are not enough to meet the
necessities in actual life.
In the first place the habit of using the scientific method in the
scientific laboratory does not in itself give assurance that the
person will apply this method in getting at the truth in problems in
his own personal life; and yet this is the essential object of all
this scientific training. In order to get the individual to carry over
this method,--especially where feelings and prejudices are
involved,--we must inculcate in him the scientific ideal and the
scientific attitude until they become general in their influence. To
do this he ought to be induced as a regular part of his early courses
in biology to practice the scientific method upon certain practical
daily decisions exactly with the same rigor that is used in the
biological laboratory. The custom of using this method in animal study
should be transformed into an _attitude of dependence upon it_ as the
only sound method of solving one's life choices. Only by carrying the
method consciously into our life's problems, _as a part of the
exercise in the course in biology_, can we break up the disposition to
regard the method as good merely in the biological laboratory. We must
generate, by practice and precept, the _ideal_ of making universal our
dependence upon our best instrument of determining truth. A personal
habit in the laboratory must become a general ideal for life, if we
hope to substitute the scientific method for prejudice in human
living. There is no department of learning so well capable of doing
this thing as biology.
In the second place, the scientific method standing alone, because of
its very excellence as a method, is liable to produce a kind of
over-sure dogmatism about conclusions, unless it be accompanied by the
scientific attitude or spirit of open-mindedness. The scientific
spirit does not necessarily flow from the scientific method at all,
unless the teacher is careful in his use of it in teaching. We make a
mistake if, in our just enthusiasm to impress the scientific method
upon the student, we fail to teach that it can give, at best, only an
approximation to truth. The scientific attitude which holds even our
best-supported conclusions subject to revision by new evidence is the
normal corrective of the possible dogmatism that comes from
over-confidence in the scientific method as our best means of
discovering truth.
The student at the end of the first year of biology ought to have more
appreciation and enjoyment of plants and animals and their life than
at the beginning,--and increased appreciation of his own relation to
other animals; some attitude of dependence upon the scientific method
of procedure not merely in biology but in his own life; a desire,
however modest, for investigating things for himself; and an ideal of
open-minded, enthusiastic willingness to subject his own conclusions
to renewed testing at all times. All these gains should be reinforced
by later courses.
SPECIAL AIMS OF BIOLOGY IN EDUCATION
=(5) Biology a valuable tool for certain technical pursuits=
So far as I can see, the preparation of students for medicine, for
biological research, or for any advanced application of biology calls
only for the following,--in addition to the further intensification of
the emphasis suggested above:
(_a_) An increased recognition of the subject matter in organizing the
course. In the early courses the subject ought to be subordinated to
the personal elements. If one is to relate himself to the science in a
professional way, the logic of the science comes to be the dominant
objective.
(_b_) Growing out of the above there comes to be a change of emphasis
on the scientific method. The method itself is identical, but the
attitude toward it is different. In the early courses it was guided by
the _teaching_ purpose. We insist upon the method in order that the
student may appreciate how the subject has grown, may realize how all
truth must be reached, and may come habitually to apply the method to
his life problems. In the later courses it becomes the method of
research into the unknown. The student comes more and more to use it
as a tool, in whose use he himself is subordinated to his devotion to
a field of investigation.
(_c_) A greater emphasis upon such special forms of biological
knowledge as will be necessary as tools in the succeeding steps, and
the selection of subject matter with this specifically in view. This
is chiefly a matter of information, making the next steps
intellectually possible.
(_d_) More specific forms of skill, adapted to the work contemplated.
Technic becomes an object in such courses. Morphology, histology,
technic, exact experimentation, repetition, drill, extended
comparative studies, classifition, and the like become more essential
than in the elementary courses. Thoroughness and mastery are
desiderata for the sake both of subject matter and character; and in
very much greater degree than in the general course.
ORGANIZATION OF THE COURSE IN BIOLOGY
=Biology courses not to be standardized rigidly=
The writer does not feel that standardized programs in biology in
colleges are either possible or desirable. What is set down here under
this heading is merely intended as carrying out the principles
outlined above, and not as the only way to provide a suitable program.
The writer assumes that the undergraduates are handled by men of
catholic interests; and that the undergraduate courses are not
distributed and manipulated primarily as feeders for specialized
departments of research in a graduate school. This latter attitude is,
in my opinion, fatal to creditable undergraduate instruction for the
general student or for the future high school teachers of the subject.
=But they should follow a general principle:=
There are three groups or cycles of courses which may properly be
developed by the college or by the undergraduate department of the
university.
_First Group_
=(1) The _first_ group of courses should introduce to life rather than
to later biological courses=
This group contains introductory courses for all students, but
organized particularly with the idea of bringing the rich material of
biology to the service of young people with the aim of making them
effective in life, and not as a first course for making them botanists
or zoologists.
Course--_Biology 1._ General Biology
This course should introduce the student to the college method of work
in the life sciences; should give him the general knowledge and points
of view outlined above as the chief aims of Biology; should synthesize
what the student already knows about plants and animals under the
general conception of life. Ideally the botanical and zoological
portions should be fused and be given by one teacher, rather than
presented as one semester of botany and one of zoology. This, however,
is frequently impracticable. In any event the total result should
really be biology, and not a patchwork of botany and zoology. Hence
there should be a free crossing of the barriers in use of materials at
all times.
A year of biology is recommended because each pupil ought to have some
work in both fields, and we cannot expect him to take a year in each.
Course--_Biology 2._ History of Biology
This course, dealing with the relation of the development of biology
to human interests and problems, may be given separately, or as a part
of Course 1,--which should otherwise be prerequisite to it. This may
be one of the most humanizing of all the possible courses in biology.
_Second Group_
=(2) A _second_ group should be technical and introductory to
professional uses=
This group furnishes a series of courses providing a thorough
introduction to the principles and methods of botany and zoology. They
provide discipline, drill, comparison, mastery of technic as well as
increased appreciation of biology and of the scientific method. They
should prepare for advanced work in biology, and for technical
applications of it to medicine, agriculture, stock breeding, forestry,
etc.
Course--Botany 1: General
and Comparative Botany,
and the Evolution of
Plants.
Course--Botany 2: Physiology
and Ecology of
Plants.
Course--Botany 3: Plant
Cytology, Histology, and
Embryology.
Course--Zoology 1: General
and Comparative Zoology.
Course--Zoology 2: Animal,
including Human,
Physiology.
Course--Zoology 3: Microtechnic,
Histology,
Histogenesis, Embryogeny.
Course--Zoology 4: Animal
Ecology.
This outline for botany and zoology follows in the main the most
common arrangement found in the schools of the country. In the
personal judgment of the writer all undergraduate courses should
combine aspects of morphology, physiology, ecology, etc., rather than
be confined strictly to one particular phase; even histology and
embryology can be better taught when their physiological aspects are
emphasized. There is no fundamental reason, however, why there may not
be great latitude of treatment in this group. An alluring feature of
biological teaching is that a teacher who has a vital objective can
begin anywhere in our wonderful subject and get logically to any point
he wishes. These courses may be further subdivided, where facilities
allow.
_Third Group_
=(3) A _third_ group of special, but cultural, courses=
This group contains certain of the more elementary applications of
biology to human welfare. While having practical value in somewhat
specialized vocations, the courses in this group are not proposed as
professional or technical. They are definitely cultural. Every college
might well give one or more of them, in accordance with local
conditions. They ought to be eligible without the courses of the
second group. The order is not significant.
Biology 3: Economic Entomology;
Biology 4: Bird Course;
Biology 5: Tree Course;
Biology 6: Bacteriology and Fermentation;
Biology 7: Biology of Sex; Heredity and Eugenics;
Biology 8: Biology and Education;
Biology 9: Evolution and Theoretical Problems.
PLACE OF BIOLOGY IN THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM
=The first course ought to be given in such a way that it might fittingly
be required of all freshmen=
The introductory course (Biology 1) can be given in such a way that it
ought to be required of all students during the freshman or sophomore
year, preferably the freshman. In addition to the life value suggested
above, and its introductory value in later biology courses, such a
course would aid the student in psychology, sociology, geology,
ethics, philosophy, education, domestic economy, and physical culture.
Effort should be made to correlate the biological work with these
departments of instruction. The course as now given in most of our
colleges and universities does not possess enough merit to become a
required study. Perhaps all we have a right at present to ask is that
biology shall be one of a group of sciences from which all students
must elect at least one. It is preposterous, in an age of science,
that any college should not require at least a year of science.
Biology 1 should be prerequisite for botany 1 and zoology 1, and for
the special biology courses in group three.
Botany 1 and zoology 1 should be made prerequisite for the higher
courses in their respective fields; but aside from this almost any
sequence would be allowable.
A major in biology should provide at least for biology 1 and 2, botany
1, zoology 1, botany 2 and 3, or zoology, 2 and 3. Chemistry is
desirable as a preparation for the second group of courses.
METHODS OF TEACHING AS CONDITIONED BY THE AIMS OUTLINED ABOVE
=Acceptance of biology retarded by poor pedagogy=
Since the laboratory method came into use among biologists, there has
been a disposition, growing out of its very excellences, to make a
fetich of it, to refuse to recognize the necessity of other methods,
to be intolerant of any science courses not employing the laboratory,
and to affect a lofty disdain of any pedagogical discussion of the
question whatsoever. The tone in which all this is done suggests a
boast; but to the discriminating it amounts to a confession! The
result of it has been to retard the development of biology to its
rightful place as one of the most foundational and catholic of all
educational fields. The great variety of aim and of matter not merely
allow, but make imperative, the use of all possible methods; and there
is no method found fruitful in education which does not lend itself to
use in biology. The lecture method, the textbook, the recitation, the
quiz and the inverted quiz, the method of assigned readings and
reports, the method of conference and seminar, the laboratory method,
and the field method are all applicable and needed in every course,
even the most elementary.
=Prostitution of the laboratory=
Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one
essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the
laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method
is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover
unknown facts. Is it, therefore, the best way to rediscover facts?
This does not necessarily follow, though we have assumed it.
Self-discovered facts are no better nor more true than communicated
facts, and it takes more time to get them. The laboratory is the
slowest possible way of getting facts. We have tried to correct this
quantitative difficulty by extending the laboratory time, by speeding
up, by confining ourselves to static types of facts like those of
structure, and by using detailed laboratory guides for matter and
method, all of which tends to make the laboratory exercise one of
routine and the mere observation and recording of facts or a
verification of the statements in manuals. The correction of these
well-known limitations of the laboratory must come, in my opinion, by
a frank recognition of, and breaking away from, certain of our
misapprehensions about the function of the laboratory. Some of these
are:
=Real purpose and possibility of laboratory work=
1. That the chief facts of a science should be rediscovered by the
student in the laboratory. This is not true. Life is too short. The
great mass of the student's facts must come from the instructor and
from books. The laboratory has as its function in respect to facts,
some very vital things: as, making clear certain classes of facts
which the student cannot visualize without concrete demonstration;
giving vividness to facts in general; gaining of enough facts at first
hand to enable him to hold in solution the great mass of facts which
he must take second hand; to give him skill and accuracy in
observation and in recording discoveries; to give appreciation of the
way in which all the second-hand facts have been reached; to give
taste and enthusiasm for asking questions and confidence and
persistence in finding answers for them. Anything more than this is
waste of time. These results are not gained by mere quantity of work,
but only through constant and intelligent guidance of the student's
attitude in the process of dealing with facts.
2. A feeling that the laboratory or scientific method consists
primarily of observation of facts and their record. In reality these
are three great steps instead of one in this method, which the student
of biology should master: (1) the getting of facts, one device for
doing which is observation; (2) the appraisal and discrimination of
these facts to find which are important; and (3) the drawing of the
conclusions which these facts seem to warrant. There are two practical
corollaries of this truth. One is that the laboratory should be so
administered that the pupil shall appreciate the full scope of the
scientific method, its tremendous historic value to the race, and the
necessity of using _all_ the steps of it faithfully in all future
progress as well as in the sound solution of our individual problems
and the guidance of conduct. The second is that we may make errors in
our scientific conclusions and in life conclusions, through failure to
discriminate among our facts, quite as fatally as through lack of
facts. Indeed, my personal conviction is that more failures are due to
lack of discrimination than to lack of observation. The power to weigh
evidence is at least as important as the power to collect it.
3. A disposition to deny the student the right to reach conclusions in
the laboratory,--or, as we flamboyantly say, to "generalize." Now in
reality the only earthly value of _facts_ is to get _truth_,--that is,
conclusions or generalizations. To deny this privilege is taxation
without representation in respect to personality. The purpose of the
laboratory is to enable students to think, to think accurately and
with purpose, to reach their own conclusions. The getting of facts by
observation is only a minor detail. In reality, the data the student
can get from books are much more reliable than his own observations
are likely to be. Our laboratory training should add gradually to the
accuracy of his observations, but particularly it should enable him to
use his own and other persons' facts conjointly, and with proper
discrimination, in reaching conclusions. To do other than this tends
to abort the reasoning attitude and power, and teaches the pupil to
stand passive in the presence of facts and to divorce facts and
conclusions. The fear is, of course, that the students will get wrong
conclusions and acquire the habit of jumping prematurely to
generalizations. But this situation, while critical, is the very glory
of the method. What we want to do is to ask them continually,--wherever
possible,--_where_ _their facts seem to lead them_. Their conclusions
are liable to be quite wrong, to be sure. But our province as teachers
is to see that the facts ignorance of which made this conclusion wrong
are brought to their attention,--and it is not absolutely material
whether they discover these facts themselves or some one else does.
What we want to compass is practice in reaching conclusions, and the
recognition of the necessity of getting and discriminating facts in
doing so, together with a realization that there are probably many
other facts which we have not discovered that would modify our
conclusions. This keeps the mind open. In other words, the student may
thus be brought to realize the meaning of the "working hypothesis" and
the method of approximation to truth. It makes no difference if one
"jumps to a conclusion," if he jumps in the light of all his known
facts and holds his conclusion _tentatively_. It is much better to
reach wrong conclusions through inadequate facts than to have the mind
come to a standstill in the presence of facts. Instead of being a
threat, reaching a wrong conclusion gives us the opportunity to train
students in holding their conclusions open-mindedly and subject to
revision through new facts. Reaching wrong or partial conclusions and
correcting them may be made even more educative than reaching right
ones at the outset. This would not be true if the conclusion were
being sought for the sake of the science. But it is being sought
solely for the sake of the student. The distinction is important. The
inability to make it is one of the reasons why research men so often
fail as teachers.
All through life the student will be forced to draw conclusions from
two types of facts,--both of which will be incomplete: those he
himself has observed and those which came to him from other observers.
While he must always feel free to try out any and all facts for
himself, it is quite as important in practice that he be able to weigh
other persons' facts discriminatingly. We teach in the laboratory that
the pupil should not take his facts second hand, though we rather
insist that he do so with his conclusions. In reality it is often
much better to take our facts second hand; the stultifying thing is to
take our conclusions so.
=A normal complete mental reaction for every laboratory exercise=
4. The dependence upon outlines and manuals. This is one of the most
deadening devices that we have instituted to economize gray matter and
increase the quantity of laboratory records at the expense of real
initiative and thinking. It is easy for the reader to analyze for
himself the mental reaction, or lack of it, of the student in
following the usual detailed laboratory outline. _Every laboratory
exercise should be an educative situation calling for a complete
mental reaction from the pupil._ In the first place, no exercise
should be used which is not really vital and educative. This assured,
the full mental reaction of the student should be about as follows:
(1) The cursory survey of the situation.
(2) The raising by the student of such questions as seem to him
interesting or worthy of solution. (Here, of course, the teacher
can by skillful questioning lead the class to raise all necessary
problems, and increase the student's willingness to attack them.)
(3) The determination through class conference of the order and
method of attacking the problems, and the reasons therefor.
(4) The accumulation and record of discovered facts (sharply
eliminating all inferences).
(5) The arrangement (classification) and appraisal
(discrimination) of the discovered facts.
(6) Conclusions or inferences from the facts. (These should be
very sharply and critically examined by teacher and class, to see
to what extent they are really valid and supported by the facts.)
(7) Retesting of conclusions by new facts submitted by class, by
teacher, or from books, with an effort to diminish prejudice as a
factor in conclusions, and to increase the willingness to
approach our own conclusions with an open mind.
When laboratory outlines are used at all they should consist merely of
directions, and suggestions, and stimulating questions which will
start the pupils on the main quest,--the raising and solving of their
own problems.
SOME MOOT PROBLEMS[2]
=Ascending or descending order?=
1. Shall we begin with the simple, little-known, lower forms and
follow the ascending order, which is analogous at least to the
evolutionary order? Or shall we begin with the more complex but
better-known forms and go downward? It seems to the writer that the
former method has the advantage in actual interest; in its
suggestiveness of evolution, which is the most important single
impression the student will get from his course; and in the mental
satisfactions that come to pupil and teacher alike from the sense of
progress. However, our material is so rich, so interesting, and so
plastic that it makes little difference where we begin if only we have
a clear idea of what we want to accomplish.
=Morphology versus other interests=
2. What proportion of time should be given to morphology in relation
to other interests? For several reasons morphology has been
overemphasized. It lends itself to the older conception of the
laboratory as a place to observe and record facts. It offers little
temptation to reach conclusions. It calls for little use of gray
matter. This makes it an easy laboratory enterprise. It is what the
grade teachers call "busy" work, and can be multiplied indefinitely.
It can be made to smack of exactness and thoroughness.
Furthermore, morphology _is_ in reality a basal consideration. It is a
legitimate part of an introductory course,--but never for its own sake
nor to prepare for higher courses. But morphology is, however, only
the starting point for the higher mental processes by which different
forms of organisms are compared, for the correlating of structure with
activity, for appreciation of adaptations of structure both to
function and to environmental influence. It thus serves as a
foundation upon which to build conclusions about really vital matters.
Experience teaches that sensitiveness, behavior, and other activities
and powers and processes interest young people more than structure.
The student's views are essentially sound at this point.
The introductory course should, therefore, be a cycle in which the
student passes quite freely back and forth between form, powers,
activities, conditions of life, and the conclusions as to the meanings
of these. It is important only that he shall know with which
consideration he is from time to time engaged.
=Few types or many?=
3. Shall a few forms be studied thoroughly, or many forms be studied
more superficially? There is something of value in each of these
practices. It is possible to over-emphasize the idea of thoroughness
in the introductory courses. Thoroughness is purely a relative
condition anyway, since we cannot really master any type. It seems
poor pedagogy, in an elementary class particularly, to emphasize small
and difficult forms or organs because they demand more painstaking and
skill on the part of the student. My own practice in the elementary
course is to have a very few specially favorable forms studied with a
good deal of care, and a much larger number studied partially,
emphasizing those points which they illustrate very effectively.
=Distribution of time=
4. What proportion of time should be given to the various methods of
work? Manifestly the answer to this question depends upon the local
equipment and upon the character of the course itself. The suggestion
here relates primarily to the general or introductory courses. It
seems to me that a sound division of time would be: two or three hours
per week of class exercises (lectures, recitations, reports, quiz,
etc.) demanding not less than four hours of preparation in text and
library work; and four to six hours a week of "practical" work with
organisms, about two hours of which should take the form of studies in
the field wherever this is possible.
=Weakness of the research man as a teacher for the beginning course=
5. Is the "research" man the best teacher for the introductory
courses? In spite of a good deal of prejudgment on the part of college
and university administrators and of the research biologists
themselves. I am convinced he is not. While there are notable
exceptions, my own observation is that the investigator, whether the
head professor or the "teaching fellow," usually does not have the
mental attitude that makes a successful teacher, at least of
elementary classes,--and for these reasons: he begrudges the time
spent in teaching elementary classes, presents the subject as
primarily preparatory to upper courses, subordinates the human
elements to the scientific elements, and actually exploits the class
in the interest of research. The real teacher's question about an
entering class is this: "How can I best use the materials of our
science to make real men and women out of these people?" The question
of the professional investigator is likely to be: "How many of these
people are fit to become investigators, and how can I most surely find
them and interest them in the science?" This is a perfectly fine and
legitimate question; but it is not an appropriate one until the first
one has been answered. It has been assumed that the answers to the two
questions are identical. This is one of the most vicious assumptions
in higher education today, in my opinion. Furthermore, the
investigator with his interests centering at the margins of the
unknown cannot use the scientific method as a teacher, whose interest
must center in the pupil. The points of view are not merely not
identical; they are incompatible.
=Necessity of differentiation and recognition of the two functions=
Experience indicates the wisdom of having all beginning courses in
biology in colleges and universities given by teachers and not by
investigators, mature or immature. All people who propose to teach
biology in the high schools should have their early courses given from
this human point of view, that they may be the better able to come
back to it after their graduate work, in their efforts to organize
courses for pupils the greater part of whom will never have any but a
life interest in the subject. The problem of presenting the advanced
and special courses is relatively an easy one. The investigator is the
best possible teacher for advanced students in his own special field
if he is endowed with any common sense at all.
TESTS OF EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING
As yet we are notably lacking in regard to the measurement of progress
as the result of our teaching. Our usual tests--examination,
recitation, quiz, reports, laboratory notebooks--evaluate in a measure
work done, knowledge or general grasp acquired, and accuracy
developed. We need, however, measurements of skill, of habits, and of
the still more intangible attitudes and appreciations. These may be
gained in part by furnishing really educative situations and observing
the time and character of the student's reaction. Every true teacher
is in reality an experimental psychologist, and must apply directly
the methods of the psychologist.
=More vital _tests_ of results of teaching must be found=