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 Teaching as a process of arousing 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. Locke's Blank Paper Theory, enunciated centuries ago, has been repeatedly and triumphantly refuted even by tyros self-activity 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 selfactivity 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. The methods commonly used in college teaching are Evaluation 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. of common methods of teaching method The lecture method has been the target for much criti- Lecture cism for many centuries. Socrates inveighed against its evaluated 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 |