Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/225

THE TEACHING OF SOCIOLOGY 21 1 There is still a great deal of misunderstanding about sociology. Professor Hill, of Luther College, Wahoo, Neb., said they could not yet introduce sociology because the people thought it was socialism. The same trouble exists in other places. There is also a blind opposition to sociology on the part of other departments and of older men of a rather doctrinaire training. The most opposition in the academic world comes from teachers of economics, perhaps mainly because sociology has invaded their territory. Unfortunately there is more interest in territory at the present time in some places than there is in human betterment and the means of attaining it. On the whole, the above extracts make instructive as well as interesting reading, and largely because of the light they throw upon the present-day attitude toward sociology.

Nearly all the colleges, universities, etc., are developing their work in sociology. Bates College and Haver ford are instances to the contrary. The University of Missouri furnishes an interesting and puzzling case. The department there has grown till it enrols nearly three times as many graduate students as any other department among the social sciences and more undergraduate students than either economics or political science, yet the instructing force has been disproportionately cut for some reason difficult to guess. The officials of this university have also voluntarily given up its connection with the St. Louis School of Philanthropy, which now becomes the St. Louis School of Social Economy, in affiliation with Washington University. Such shortsightedness, however, to whatever cause due, reacts more harmfully upon a college than upon the teaching of sociology itself.

Although sociology has had strong opposition in some institutions, it has had noteworthy encouragement in others. In the case of Susquehanna University it would appear to have been developed far beyond the average. This, however, is a Lutheran institution and sociology is better received on the average by Lutheran institutions than by those of any other denomination.

The reasons why sociology remains so predominantly a graduate subject in most large institutions are mainly two. In