Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/190

186 At present there seems to be a good deal of unrest among college professors. It is a little difficult to see why; for, after all, the president and the professors alike are hired men engaged for a consideration to discharge fairly definite duties. It is difficult to see why a college professor should make so much more fuss about losing his position than is commonly made by an officer in a bank or an insurance company or a corporation or in the public service. The college professor is not necessarily an expert in education or in college administration as carried on in these later days. He is apt to be a specialist, knowing something, indeed, of many subjects and a great deal about some restricted range of intellectual activity. Often he is absolutely without qualification for formulating a course of study suitable for the average boy, for advising the average student as to the studies that are best for him, or for the construction of any educational policy whatever.

The fact that A is one of the highest living authorities on clam shells needs to be supplemented by other facts before this man can expect much importance to be given to his views on the training of youth or concerning the apportionment of funds among a dozen or fifteen different departments. In most faculties, however, there are men not disqualified by personal disposition or training for work other than that in their own specialty. It is the policy of our faculty to utilize the qualifications of these men by distributing them as chairmen of active committees to which are referred questions of discipline, choice of electives, and similar important matters.

Probably we might do well to think twice about the importance to the professor or to the college of much of that which is called research work. A man can not teach well if he stops learning. Undoubtedly it is much pleasanter to work in the library or in the laboratory, and much pleasanter to work in one's own study, than it is to try to convey information to a body of rather careless young men who would prefer not to be instructed. But, after all, in the small college at least, the instruction of youth is the principal object of the professor's connection with the institution. There are not many professors whose research work is of any value whatever except to themselves. Those who are competent to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge constitute a different class and are few in number. Such should have every opportunity and every facility. Generally these men are such wretchedly poor teachers that they have no place in the college faculty. Their service to mankind must be rendered elsewhere and under different conditions. Of course the college professor must have opportunity and time for continuous self-improvement, but he mustn't be allowed to forget that his job is that of a teacher.

It is questionable also whether the faculty should have too much to say about its own membership. In our college, the president, when