Academic standards

“ To ensure that the standards of education are equivalent in all public educational institutions of the same level, and that the conditions relating to the quality of the education provided are also equivalent ”

“ The slow, painful effort to draw letters like those in the copy book is not an unfamiliar exhibition in the penmanship class. A standard derived from the school work itself is a social standard; it is based on what pupils really do. One need not be satisfied with present performances, but one starts from solid ground. Furthermore, out of actual measurements will come a clear idea of the range of variation. One of the most astonishing facts which have come out in the course of the study of standards is the fact that there are very wide variations in the same grade. ”

“ The university promises to provide good instruction, to test the thoroughness of the work of all who desire the test, and to award certificates of success to all who come up to its standards; and these certificates will doubtless eventually be able to sum up into degrees, or else degrees will lose their especial value, and be abandoned. ”

“ I believe that for some time to come, our main difficulty will be to maintain the high standard of University learning, and to discourage all attempts, by lowering that general standard, to increase immediate and apparent results without corresponding security for the completeness of the work done. ”

“ We must not, however, divide the studies of the curriculum into the appreciative, those concerned with intrinsic value, and the instrumental, concerned with those which are of value or ends beyond themselves. The formation of proper standards in any subject depends upon a realization of the contribution which it makes to the immediate significance of experience, upon a direct appreciation. ”

“ If, on the other hand, present standards for rating students predict their future success with any degree of accuracy, the facts should be discovered and used everywhere to combat the prevalent undergraduate opinion. Whatever the outcome of such studies, we should have them in larger numbers, in many places, protected by every safeguard of scientific method. We may well ask, first, whether promise in the studies of one period becomes performance in the studies of a later period. ”

“ There are very few in all the history of education who have insisted as he on the important principles of the necessity for careful training, for the maintenance of high standards in examination and degree-giving, and for the endeavor to bring the large universities in intimate contact with the {144} small ones, to the benefit especially of the latter, though, as we know now, always also to the reactionary advantage of the important institutions. ”

“ I name freedom of choice between various courses of study. The old way in the more venerable colleges and universities was, to force all students through one single classical course—the same for all. This system the "new education" discards. General courses in literature, science, and arts, are presented, as well as special courses having reference to the great industries; and the student, with the advice of friends and instructors, takes that which best suits the bent of his mind. We believe that the results are already better than those of the old system. ”

“ In many investigations the method of comparison has been brought to a degree of perfection which justifies reference to it as a special method of scientific research. All the previous discussions of standardization show how a single school system profits by the effort to evaluate its own practices in the light of the experiences and results of other school systems. ”

“ It follows logically that as the standard of general education is advanced, the standards in colleges, technical schools and universities will also be advanced, and thus we find to-day that the majority of these institutions are not only constantly improving their curricula but they are seeing to it that those who go to them for instruction are qualified to pursue the prescribed line of studies. ”

“ Our schools must run on business principles and not on sentiment. We must arrange the classification and standards of our schools so that they will be each what its name indicates—not professing to do what we do not do. A good grammar school is greater than a poor high school; a good academy more desirable than a sorry college; a well-conducted college is preferable to a sham university. We must meet present-day needs and demands if we expect to get money. ”

“ We have a right to claim that science shall be put upon the same footing as any other great subject of instruction, that it shall have an equal share in the schools, an equal share in the recognized qualification for degrees, and in university honors and rewards. It must be recognized that science, as intellectual discipline, is at least as valuable, and, as knowledge, is at least as important, as literature, and that the scientific student must no longer be handicapped by a linguistic (I will not call it literary) burden, the equivalent of which is not imposed upon his classical compeer. ”

“ It is not the main function of a University to facilitate the attainment of a degree, but to uphold the standard of intellectual culture and to improve the methods by which that standard may be reached. Now the change which has so strongly recommended itself to the Senate has sprung from a conviction that both the standard and the method of study called for revision. ”

“ We must give full rein to individual talents, and we must encourage our schools to enforce the academic disciplines—to put preponderant emphasis on English, mathematics, history, literature, foreign languages and the natural sciences. ”

“ But if, as we have seen, education must bend to the same rigid discipline to which the other sciences have had to submit,—and if teaching can be improved only by following the laws which have determined the success of the other arts—the question [Pg 33] naturally arises, "What is to be done now for education?"—"Where are we to begin?"—"How are we to proceed?"—"In what manner are the principles of the science to be investigated, so that they shall most extensively promote the success of the art? ”

“ In an ideal university, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a university, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. ”

“ The old system was too much a tacit recognition of the idea that while for a course in Arts, Engineering or Medicine, regular and systematic teaching was necessary, for the attainment of proficiency in Law the mere keeping of terms, supplemented mainly by private reading, was a sufficient discipline. ”

“ This is real academic freedom, and the university has been opened to students for its exercise.
Neither teachers nor scholars should forget that the object of the university is a very high one, namely, general scientific and ethical cultivation and full knowledge of the special branch pursued. Once at least in his life, at the close of his university career, the cultivated young man should be so far advanced that his knowledge, especially in his own branch, should correspond with the average condition of scientific research. ”

“ Professionalism and practical serviceability have been gradually crowded into the background of academic interests and overlaid with quasi-utilitarian research -- such as the history of jurisprudence, comparative physiology, and the like. ”

“ One university of high standing makes it possible to enter its academic department and graduate without mathematics, science, or classics. This is an extreme that is not likely to be sanctioned by the educational world. If there is a human type with characteristics by which it is defined—characteristics which can be developed only by looking toward each field of knowledge—then a secondary and higher education which makes possible the entire omission of any important group of subjects is likely to prove a great wrong to the average student. ”

“ There should be licentiates in the technical arts by the side of bachelors and masters in the liberal arts: the university must claim to mete with its own measure, and to teach its own lesson to all sorts of men. ”

“ When this first course is completed, the studies are then separated according to the broad divisions of philology, philosophy, history, and natural science. The old division of faculties in no way corresponds to the guiding principle of university training, that it shall deal with the scientific use of the understanding. Law, e.g., is on the one side professional merely; on the other, when it has a scientific aspect, it falls under history and philosophy. Medicine, in so far as scientific, rests upon, and should be included under, natural science. ”

“ None of our graduate schools require any course in education or teaching methods, or any previous experience in teaching work for a Ph. D. degree, except, of course, in the field of education, where theory is cultivated, if not practised. May it not be found that the best method to increase the teaching efficiency of the undergraduate instruction in colleges and universities will be to provide every graduate student with definite and detailed instruction in teaching methods for his chosen subject? ”

“ Yet, in general, the educational policy, matters touching the curriculum, and all the discipline of the student body, as almost a matter of divine right, whether or not by custom or by statute, belong to the men whose craft and experience is in lines of education. ”

“ Every institution of learning should, therefore, as I think, strenuously endeavor to draw every one of its students, whatever his plan of life may be, into the influence of this study, by making it peculiarly attractive. And to this end historical instruction should be — and I trust here it is — put into the hands of men who with a thorough mastery of the subject unite a high degree of perfection in the art of teaching. ”

“ There is no need to infer either that Liberal principles are wrong or that University education is a bad thing. The Spectator goes philosophically into the matter. The Universities give—that is, we may suppose, to those who take, only a common degree—only a moderate education, an average education, a little knowledge and a little [Pg 22] culture springing from it. ”

“ Comparison through Exact Measurement
Third, standards measured and expressed in definite terms can be compared and can be made the basis of studies which are quite impossible so long as standards are not expressed in common terms. For example, when the speed of handwriting in a certain school is deliberately changed, what is the effect produced on quality? Heretofore it has been almost impossible to answer such a question. Every school reform has been enthusiastically hailed by its friends as accomplishing much. ”

“ It seems plain that our scientific courses of study need to be remodeled. We should demand more for admission, and make them equivalent to the courses in classics. Before receiving a degree, a student should know some one science fairly well, understand the bearings of the others, have a good training in mathematics, literature, and logic, and be able to read easy French and German prose at sight. ”

“ As these are compulsory by law, supported by rates and taxes, and administered by the state and public bodies, and, above all, teach mainly the mere rudiments, there may be reasons for an organized system of examination which do not apply to the higher education. Here the examiners are clearly superior in learning to the teachers; the curriculum itself is more or less mechanical and capable of mechanical tests; and a certain uniformity may be inevitable, and a certain standard of efficiency must be tested. ”

“ The word University implies a seat of universal knowledge, and it is reasonable to assume that Universities should act as fountains of new theoretical knowledge, as well as perform the function of diffusing it ”

“ The first such issue is that of quality and how it is measured. Formal higher education has developed a set of quality measures based on a specific relationship between the education provider and the student. ”

“ Yet another step needs to be made before science can be said to have taken its proper place in the universities. That is its recognition as a faculty, or branch of study demanding recognition and special organization, on account of its bearing on the wants of mankind. The faculties of theology, law, and medicine, are technical schools, intended to equip men, who have received general culture, with the special knowledge which is needed for the proper performance of the duties of clergymen, lawyers, and medical practitioners. ”

“ It is, to all appearance, impracticable and inadvisable to let these institutions of research take over any appreciable share of that work of scientific and scholarly instruction that is slipping out of the palsied hands of the universities, so as to include some consistent application to teaching within the scope of their everyday work. ”

“ In effect, the terms of the charter, the will of the trustees, and every local consideration called for the establishment of a school of science, pure and applied, of university rank, wherein scientific studies were to be liberalized in an ever-increasing degree until with fuller means and ampler resources a university program, with all its complexities, might be entered upon. ”

“ It is obvious that you cannot have universal education without restricting your teaching to such things as can be universally understood. It is plain that you cannot impart 'university methods' to thousands, or create 'investigators' by the score, unless you confine your university education to matters which dull men can investigate, your laboratory training to tasks which mere plodding diligence and submissive patience can compass. ”