Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/499

Rh teachers, and that in consequence many of them have no method at all.

This may be a matter of comparatively small importance to those who possess not only the necessary knowledge, but also the natural gift of personal influence and the power of inspiring those whom they teach. But for those who are not blessed with these powers it may be almost as difficult to fall into the ways of successful university instruction after the sudden transformation from student into teacher as it is for those who become teachers in schools.

Granting, then, that there should be a radical difference between the ways of school and university teaching, and that there is at present an unfortunate overlapping between the two, let me next consider how the distinction between the intellectual interest of a child and the intellectual interest of a man may guide us in adjusting our methods of teaching when students pass from school to the university.

A tenable, perhaps even a prevalent, view concerning a liberal school education is that its chief purpose is not so much to impart knowledge as to train the mind; indeed, some teachers, influenced, perhaps, in the first instance by the views of Plato, go so far as to think that no subject which is clearly of direct practical use should be taught as such at school. This view they would carry to the extent of excluding many obviously appropriate subjects from the school curriculum, whereas almost any subject may be made an intellectual training; this being a question not of subject, but of the manner in which it is taught. In any event, if the scheme of intellectual training be adequately fulfilled, the period of mental discipline should come to an end with the close of school life, and the mind should then be able to enter upon new studies and to assimilate fresh knowledge without a prolonged continuation of preparatory courses. Indeed, the professed object of entrance examinations to the university is to exclude those whose minds are not prepared to benefit by a course of university study, and to admit only those who are sufficiently equipped by previous training to do so. An entrance examination then should not be merely a test of whether a boy or girl has learned sufficient of certain subjects to continue those subjects in particular at the university; and yet it has unfortunately come to be regarded more and more as performing this function instead of being regarded as a test whether the student is generally fit to enter upon any university course. The result is that an entrance examination tends to become a test of knowledge rather than a test of general intelligence; merely one in an organized series of examinations which endeavor to ascertain the advancing proficiency in a limited number of subjects, and therefore tend really to encourage specialization. Specialization is not to be prevented by insisting on a considerable number of subjects, but rather by teaching even one subject in a wide spirit. Another result is that the entrance examination belongs properly neither to the