Aim and attitude more fundamental

rightly, knowledge of the conditions must be combined with a deeper theoretical insight; but the civic aim operates selectively to limit the choice of materials and analysis to those contemporary issues that appeal at the time to the textbook writer, to the teacher, or to the public. Still different is the case of the teacher who finds his greatest joy in the theoretical aspects of economics, possesses a clean-cut economic philosophy (even though it may not be ultimate truth), and has faith in economics as a disciplinary subject. Such a teacher will (other things being equal) have, relatively, his greatest success with the students of greatest ability; he will get better results in teaching the principles" than in teaching historical and descriptive facts. None will deny that this type of education has an important place. Even in the more descriptive courses appeal should be made to the higher intellectual qualities of the class, leaving a lasting disciplinary result rather than a memory stored with merely ephemeral and mostly insignificant information.

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The teacher with colorless personality and without interest in, and knowledge of, the world of reality, will fail, whatever be the purpose of his teaching. The higher the teacher's aim, the farther may he fall below its attainment. A college teacher whose message is delivered on the mental level of grammar school children should, of course, score a pretty high percentage of success in giving a passing mark to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in American colleges. But is this really a success, or is it rather not evidence of a failure in the whole school curriculum, and of woful waste in our system of so-called "higher education? Are colleges for the training of merely mediocre minds?

These questions of aim and of attitude are more fundamental than is the question of the particular device of inthan method struction to be used, as lecture, textbook, etc. Yet the latter question is not without its importance. In general it appears that practice has moved and still moves in a cycle. In the American college world as a whole each particular

of in

struction

college repeats some or all of the typical phases with the growth of its economic department.

(1) First is the textbook, with recitations in small classes. (2) Next, the lecture gradually takes a larger place as the classes grow, until, supplemented by required readings, it becomes the main tool of instruction, this being the cheapest and easiest way to take care of the rapidly growing enrollment. (3) Then, when this proves unsatisfactory, the lectures are perhaps cut down to two a week, and the class is divided into quiz sections for one meeting a week under assistants or instructors, the lecture still being the main center of the scheme of teaching. (4) This still being unsatisfactory (partly because it lacks oversight of the students' daily work, and partly because the lecture is unsuited to the development of general principles that require careful and repeated study for their mastery), a textbook is made the basis of section meetings, held usually twice a week, and the lectures are reduced to one a week, given to the combined class, and so changed in character as to be merely supplementary to the class work. The lectures are given either in close connection week by week with the class work or bearing only a general relation with the term's work as a whole. This may be deemed the prevailing mode today in institutions where the introductory course has a large enrollment.1 (5) Another change completes the cycle; the lecture is dropped and the class is divided, each section, consisting of twenty to thirty students, meeting with the same teacher regularly for class work. This change was made after mature consideration in "the College" in Columbia University; is in operation in Chicago University, where the meetings are held five times a week; and has been adopted more recently still in New York University. There have been for years evidences of the growing desire to abolish the lecture from the introductory course and also to limit its use in some of the

1 This plan has at various times been followed at Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton, to cite only a few of the numerous examples.

Selection of

a textbook

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special undergraduate courses. The preceptorial plan adopted in 1905 by Princeton University is the most notable instance of the latter change.1 Even in graduate teaching in economics there has been a growing opinion and practice favorable to the "working ” course or seminar course to displace lecture courses.2 Thus the lecture seems likely to play a less prominent rôle, especially in the introductory courses, but it is not likely to be displaced entirely in the scheme of instruction.

3

Numerous American textbooks on political economy (thirty, it is said) have been published in the last quarter of a century, a fact which has now and then been deplored by the pessimistic critic. Few share this opinion, however. The textbooks have, to be sure, often served, not to unfold a consistent system of thought, but to reveal the lack of one. But they have afforded to the teachers and students, in a period of developing conceptions on the subjects, a wide choice of treatment of the principles much more exactly worked out and carefully expressed than is possible through the medium of lectures as recorded in the students' hastily written notes.

Questions, exercises, and test problems are widely used as supplementary material for classroom discussion.* 1 In this plan the sections are small (three to seven students) and the preceptor is expected to give much time to the personal supervision of the student's reading, reports, and general scholarship. The preceptorial work is rated at more than half of the entire work of the term. The one great difficulty of the preceptorial system is

its cost.

2 A strong plea is made for the "retirement of the lectures" by C. E. Persons, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XXXI, Teaching the Introductory Course in Economics," November, 1916, pages 96-98.

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3 Professor J. H. Hollander, American Economic Review, Vol. VI, No. 1, Supplement (March, 1916), page 135. See dissenting opinions in the discussion that followed.

4 Professor C. E. Persons (art. cited page 86, November, 1916) gives the titles of ten separate books or pamphlets of this kind; since which date have appeared the author's "Manual of References and Exercises," Parts I and II, to accompany Economic Principles, 1915, and Modern Economic Problems, 1916, respectively.

Separately printed collections of such material date back at least to W. G. Sumner's Problems in Political Economy (1884), which in turn acknowledged indebtedness to other personal sources and to Milnes' collection of two thousand questions and problems from English examination papers. With somewhat varying aims, further commented upon below, and in varying degrees, all teachers of economics now make use of such questions in their teaching of both general and special courses. Unquestionably there are, in the use of the problem method, possibilities for good which few teachers have fully realized.1

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The selection and arrangement of materials for supplementary readings is guided by various motives, more or less intermingling. It may be chiefly to parallel a systematic text by extracts taken largely from the older classics" of the subject (as in C. J. Bullock's Selected Readings in Economics, 1907); or to provide additional concrete material bearing mostly upon present economic problems (as in the author's Source Book in Economics, 1912); or to supplement a set of exercises and problems (as in F. M. Taylor's Some Readings in Economics, 1907); or to constitute of itself an almost independent textbook of extracts, carefully edited with original introductions to chapters (as Marshall, Wright, and Field's Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics, 1913, and W. H. Hamilton's Readings in Current Economic Problems, 1914).

Whatever be the particular tool of instruction, whether lecture, textbook with classroom discussion, problem study, or collateral readings, its use may be very different according as the teacher seeks to develop the subject positively or negatively, to present a single definite and (if he can) 1 Among those most elaborately developing this method has been Professor F. M. Taylor of the University of Michigan. See his paper on the subject and discussion in the Journal of Political Economy, Vol. VII, pages 688-703 (December, 1909). Marshall, Wright, and Field published the Outline of Economics, developed as a series of problems in 1910, which they used for a time as the main tool of instruction in the introductory course in Chicago University.

coherent body of doctrines, or a variety of opinions that have been held, among which the student is encouraged to choose. Evidently the conditions determining choice in the case of advanced courses are different from those in the introductory course. For the beginner time is required in order that economic principles may sink in, and so he is bewildered if at first he is introduced to a number of theories by different authors. Materials that supplement the general course of principles should therefore be limited to subject matter that is descriptive, concrete, and illustrative. The beginner, somewhat dazed with the variety of new facts, ideas, terminology, and problems in the field into which he has entered, needs guidance to think clearly step by step about them.1 Not until the pupil has learned to see and apprehend the simpler economic phenomena near him can he be expected to survey the broader fields and to form independent judgments concerning complex situations. He must creep before he can run. In fact, teachers are often self-deceived when they imagine that they are leaving students to judge for themselves among various opinions or to find their way inductively to their own conclusions. The recitation, in truth, becomes the simple game of "hot and cold." The teacher has in mind what he considers the right answer; the groping student tries to guess it; and as he ventures this or that inexpert or lucky opinion he is either gently chided or encouraged. At length some bright pupil wins the game by agreeing with the teacher's theretofore skilfully concealed opinion. This is called teaching by the inductive method.

Undoubtedly it is more desirable to develop in the student the ability to think independently about economic questions than it is to drill him into an acceptance of readymade opinions on contemporary practical issues. The more fundamental economic theory the more because its bearing on pecuniary and class interests is not close or obvious

1 A thoughtful discussion of some phases of this problem is given by Persons, art. cited, pages 98 ff., favoring the more positive treatment with less distracting multiplicity of detail.

1