Paul Klapper

“ The teacher of history as the teacher of the evolution of civilization
The pioneer investigator who patiently delves into sources and brings to light new material deserves high praise, but far rarer is the gift of the man who sees history in its true perspective, who can construct the right relationships and can then reproduce the past in compelling literary form. A historian without literary charm is like an architect who cares only for the utility and nothing for the grace and beauty of his building. ”

“ I wonder if they do not feel—perhaps unconsciously—that words indicate the man, that the power to write well shows intellect, and measures, if not its profundity, at least the stage of its development. We fasten on the defects of the letters written by undergraduates, on their faltering speeches, on their confused examination papers, as something significant, ominous, worthy even of comment in the press. And we are, I believe, perfectly right. Speech and writing, if you get them in fair samples, indicate the extent and the value of a college education far better than a degree. ”

“ If the college study of literature is to encourage this indolent receptive temper, and relax the intellectual fiber of the student, then we might better drop it from the curriculum. The student must somehow learn that the book that is worth while will tax his thought, his imagination, his sympathies. He cannot be content merely to leave the door of his mind lazily open to it. Every teacher knows the difficulty in any attempt to inspire or direct such a pupil. ”

“ We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses. We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task; we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as it is in life—for what is teaching if not the process of repeating life's experiences? ”

“ Can one change the nature with which he was born? Is violence justified in the name of social reform? If what is right in one age or place is wrong in another, is it fair to object when moral laws are broken? If a practice like prostitution is common, what makes it wrong?
These do not sound like the questions likely to receive a welcome hearing in the classroom; but it is precisely upon the interest in such topics as these that the course in ethics should build; for its subject is right living, a matter in which the student may indeed be assumed to feel a genuine concern. ”

“ It seems incredible that a college should employ literature and the fine arts except with the fixed intention of bringing them to bear upon the mind of youth according to the purpose of those who made them what they are in the spiritual development of humanity. Even from the most rigid theoretical and technical drill the cultural aim must not be excluded if the college would be true to itself; how much more urgent is the duty of providing courses in which the larger vision of art, with the resultant spiritual quickening, is the prime intention! ”

“ We have depended too much on our science as a mere observational science,—when as a matter of fact its chief glory is really its opportunity and its incentives to coherent thinking and careful testing of conclusions.
It is inexact enough, if we are entirely honest, to force us to hold our conclusions with an open mind ready to admit new evidence. It is entirely the fault of the teacher if the pupil gets a dogmatic, too-sure habit of mind as the result of his biological studies. ”

“ The size of a college is a matter of small importance, except that under modern conditions a large college and one in immediate contact with the life of a university is almost certain to command larger intellectual resources than is an institution of a different type. The important thing about a college is its spirit, its clearness of aim, its steadiness of purpose, and the opportunity which it affords for direct personal contact between teacher and student. ”

“ A survey of this history shows that all the phenomena of musical development, even those apparently transient and superficial, testify to a necessity of human nature, an unappeasable thirst for self-expression. In view of the relationship of musical art to the individual and the collective need, it is plain that musical history and musical appreciation must be taught together as a supplementary phase of one great theme. And, furthermore, this phase is one that is not only necessary in a complete scheme of musical culture, but is also one that is conveyed in a language which all can understand. ”

“ The knowing process is a life process. Even when knowledge pertains to non-living objects, therefore, it is one-half biological; our most worth-while knowledge—that of ourselves and other organisms—is wholly so. Because all our knowledge is colored by the life process, of which the knowing process is derivative, the study of life underlies every science and its applications, every art and its practice, every philosophy and its interpretations. Biology must be taught in sympathy with the whole joint enterprise of living and of learning. ”

“ Geology embraces all the great evolutions
Let us agree, then, at the outset, that a true study of the career of the earth is not adequately compassed by a mere tracing of its inorganic history or an elucidation of its physical structure and mineral content, but that it embraces as well all the great evolutions fostered within the earth's mantles in the course of its career.
Greatest among these fostered evolutions, from the homocentric point of view, are the living, the sentient, and the thinking kingdoms that have grown up with the later phases of the physical evolution. ”

“ Economics at its highest level is the search for truth. It has its place in any system of higher education as has pure natural science, apart from any immediate or so far as we may know, any possible, utilitarian application. It is a disinterested philosophy of the industrial world. Though it may not demonstrably be a means to other useful things, it is itself a worthy end. It helps to enrich the community with the immaterial goods of the spirit, and it yields the psychic income of dignity and joy in the individual and national life. ”

“ That is the reason why philosophical instruction given in a small college and by one man is, in some respects, often more satisfactory than in the large university with its numberless specialists, in which the beginning student frequently does not see the forest for the trees. It is not essential that the teacher present a thoroughly worked-out and definitive system of thought, but it is important that he constantly keep in mind the interrelatedness of the various parts of his subject and the notion of unity which binds them together,—at least as an ideal. ”

“ Only by carrying the method consciously into our life's problems, as a part of the exercise in the course in biology, can we break up the disposition to regard the method as good merely in the biological laboratory. We must generate, by practice and precept, the ideal of making universal our dependence upon our best instrument of determining truth. A personal habit in the laboratory must become a general ideal for life, if we hope to substitute the scientific method for prejudice [Pg 94] in human living. There is no department of learning so well capable of doing this thing as biology. ”

“ Books, pamphlets, and papers multiplied on this lack of training for practical writing in college composition courses. The world of education discovered, what the newspapers had found by experience, that the style of expression successful in literature did not bring results in man's daily task of reaching his fellow man on the homely and direct issues of daily life. In literature, genius is seeking to express itself. In the newspaper and in business, the writer is trying—and only trying—to express and interpret his subject so as to reach the other and contemporary man. ”

“ The honest student, and every teacher should belong to this class or he has no claim to the name, is well aware that most of his deficiency in explaining a topic is in direct ratio to his own lack of comprehension of it. In physics, as in every other walk of life, we suffer from lack of thoroughness, from a kind of superficiality that is characteristically human but especially American. We have yet to know of any one who really ranks as a scholar in his subject from whom students do not derive inspiration and enthusiasm. ”

“ In the second place, the scientific method standing alone, because of its very excellence as a method, is liable to produce a kind of over-sure dogmatism about conclusions, unless it be accompanied by the scientific attitude or spirit of open-mindedness. The scientific spirit does not necessarily flow from the scientific method at all, unless the teacher is careful in his use of it in teaching. We make a mistake if, in our just enthusiasm to impress the scientific method upon the student, we fail to teach that it can give, at best, only an approximation to truth. ”

“ And to the older objectors, who urge that literary study can ever give that severe intellectual discipline afforded by the older, narrower college course, we reply that it is not merely the intellectual powers that need culture and discipline. The ideal college training will surely not neglect the imagination and emotions, the faculties which so largely determine the conduct of life. And at no period in the educational process is the need of wide moral training so urgent as in those years when the young man is forming independent judgments and his tastes are taking their final set. ”

“ Many of those who have discussed specialization seem to assume that the only, or at least the chief, purpose of an engineering education is to give technical information, and that specialization is synonymous with superficiality. From this point of view the aim of a college education is to give a student information useful in his future work, and the inevitable result is that the student has neither the intellectual power nor the technical knowledge to enable him to render efficient service in any position in which he will work whole-heartedly. ”

“ In a word, the professional student of science not only finds that the subject matter of physics has many fundamental points of contact with his own chosen field, but also recognizes that the less complex nature of its material allows the method of study to stand out in bolder relief. Training in the method and a passion for the method are vital to a successful and an ardent career.
Should the teaching of college physics change its aim for different classes of students? ”

“ It is one thing to assemble an automobile; it is another thing to run it. The technique of writing is not nearly as interesting as the subject and the thought of writing; just as the method of riding a horse is not nearly as interesting as the ride itself. And yet when you consider it as a means to an end, as a subtle, elastic, and infinitely useful craft, the method of writing is not uninteresting even to those who have to learn and not to teach it. The technique of composition has to do with words. We are most of us inapt with words ”

“ Since the decline in the study of Greek and Latin, this is a factor to be seriously considered. It is the fashion today to berate the past, to speak of the dead hand of tradition, and to flatter ourselves with the delusion of self-sufficiency. To be sure, the aim of education is never to pile up information but to "fit your mind for any sort of exertion, to make it keen and flexible." ”

“ Nowhere does academic tediousness work a more dire mischief than in the teaching of ethics. It is bad to have students forever shun the best books because of poor instruction in literature; the damage is worse when it is the subject of moral obligation which they associate with only the duller hours of their college life. Not that the aim of a course in ethics is to afford a number of entertaining periods. ”

“ They hold that to appreciate any literature one must study it as literature,—i.e., as English literature should be studied by English students, French literature by French students,—and that literary study of this sort properly begins where translation and exegesis leave off. And finally, they maintain that the effort to give students a lively knowledge of ancient life or ancient history through the ancient texts is precisely like the effort to illustrate ancient life by ancient works of art; e.g., to give a student an idea of an ancient soldier by showing him an ancient picture of a soldier. ”

“ He sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by the institution or by the instructor. It is obvious that such instruction is stultifying to the teacher and can never develop in the student a liberal and cultured outlook upon life. ”

“ In the study of heat, sound, and light we may strive merely to understand the nature of the external stimuli that come to us through touch, hearing and sight; but in mechanics, where we examine critically the simplest ideas of motion and inertia, we acquire the method of analysis which when applied to the mysteries of molecular physics and electricity carries us along avenues that lead to the most profound secrets of nature. Utilitarian aspects dwindle in our perspective as we face the problem of the structure, origin, and evolution of matter—as we question the independence of space and time. ”

“ The Do-Nothings propose a solution which is engaging, logical—and insufficient. They are the philosophers and the æsthetes among teachers, who see, what the Formalists miss, that he who thinks well will in the long run write as he should. Their special horror is of the compulsory theme, extracted from unwilling and idealess minds. Their remedy for all ills of speech and pen is: teach, not writing and speaking, but thinking; give, not rules and principles, but materials for thought. And above all, do not force college students to study composition. ”

“ In more than one city-room today college men are challenging the right of the graduates of a school of journalism to look on themselves as better fitted for the newspaper office than those who are graduates of a good college. If the training of the school has done no more than graft some copy-writing and some copy-editing on the usual curriculum, they are right. If the coming journalist has got his training in classes, half of whose number had no professional interest in the course offered, the claim for the college course may be found to be well based. Men teach each other in the classroom. ”

“ The aim of the college course in composition today is not the making of literature, but writing; not the production of imaginative masterpieces, but the orderly arrangement of thought in words. Through no foresight of our own, but thanks to the pressure of our immigrants upon us, we have ceased teaching "eloquence" and "rhetoric," and have taken upon ourselves the humbler task of helping the thinking mind to find words and a form of expression as quickly and as easily as possible. The old teacher of rhetoric aspired to make Burkes, Popes, or De Quinceys. ”

“ In the principle of motivation lies the most successful solution of the problem of interest in teaching. We have too long persisted in the "sugarcoating" conception of interest. We have regarded it as a process of "making agreeable." Interest has therefore been looked upon as a fictitious element introduced into teaching merely to inveigle the mind of the student into a consideration of what we are offering it. Our modern psychology teaches a truer conception of interest: a feeling accompanying self-expression. Interest has been defined as a feeling of worth in experience. ”

“ The numerous practical applications which the teacher of organic chemistry has at his command will always serve to make this subject one of the deepest interest, if not the most fascinating portion of the entire subject of chemistry. No student should leave the course in organic chemistry without feeling the beautiful unity and logical relationship which obtains in the case of the compounds of carbon, the experimental study of which has cast so much light upon the chemical processes in living plants and animals, processes upon which life itself depends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chief aim of the engineering college should be to develop the intellectual power that will enable the student not only to acquire quickly the details of practice, but will also enable him ultimately to establish precedents and determine the practice of his times. Incidentally the engineering college should seek to expand the horizon and widen the sympathy of its students. In college classes there will be those who are either unable or unwilling to attain the highest educational ideals, and who will become only the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the engineering profession ”

“ Me judice—he goes to college primarily to learn how to interpret facts, and to arrive through this experience at their practical as well as their theoretic value: as respects himself, as respects others, and in an ever widening circle as regards humanity in general. The first object, thus, of a college course is to humanize the individual, to emancipate him intellectually and emotionally from his prejudices and conventions by giving him a wider horizon, a sounder judgment, a firmer and yet a more tolerant point of view. ”

“ In reality, of course, it is the opportunity of the American colleges. Let the motives be what they may, the simple fact that so many American parents wish to give their children more education than they themselves were blessed with is a condition so favorable for those who believe that in the long run only intelligence can keep our civilization on the path of real progress, that one expects to hear congratulations instead of wails from the college campuses. ”