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The college teacher not the university professor

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.

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.

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

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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 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, 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.

College of the City of New York

PAUL KLAPPER

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