Training college

“ It is, doubtless, presumptuous for criticism of an educational system to emanate from one who has no closer contact with education than the training of a professional student and the practice of a profession, yet the general tendency of colleges to adapt their methods and aims to conform with the demands of practical life, encourages the writer in pleading in behalf of the worker in the great university of the world, who still desires to keep in touch with the scholarship of the college. ”

“ The colleges, besides providing the future teachers with subjects, almost always offer to provide them with instruction in the principles of education, and frequently offer to provide them with instruction in the very technique of classroom work.
Our verdict, therefore, which we hope will be satisfactory to counsel on both sides, is that the college is by no means a trade school, but that if the woman who is going to earn her living will choose the one trade of teaching, she can almost always get a pretty fair trade training by going to college. ”

“ But it would be desirable for one college to give a thorough classical education for the training of scholars in this direction and as a basis for work in literature, in law and in other professions. It is an advantage for men to enter on their professions with diverse training in order that they may specialize in different directions. Such a college should have a graduate department, which the Amherst committee apparently regards as superfluous, in order to maintain the scholarship both of its professors and of its students. ”

“ Why doesn’t it send them into the world to be useful?”
“That’s what a good many people say, about us students,” I replied. “But books and professors and courses of study are only a part of what a student gets in our college, sir. It’s a very peculiar situation. I’m older than most of the students, and have had the advantage [312] of a professional training, and so can look on the college through somewhat serious eyes. You would be astounded, for instance, at the tremendous education that the men receive from purely student affairs.” ”

“ The old idea that a college graduate must study for medicine, law, or the pulpit,Page 216 has attracted a large number of them into these professions. We have learned, however, that these professions are not superior to other avenues in science and business. A college training is only a means to an end. It is giving a man fitness for work of any kind. The departments opening up to college-trained men in all lines of work are multiplying and expanding with each succeeding year. ”

“ Whatever may have been true for the earlier time, when the American college first grew up and flourished, it is beyond question that the undergraduate department which takes the place of the college today cannot be rated as an institution of the higher learning. At the best it is now a school for preliminary training, preparatory to entering on the career of learning, or in preparation for the further training required for the professions ”

“ It brings together a body of students whose outlook to the future is identical, it encourages, therefore, narrow views, and breeds the exclusive professional spirit in a profession whose usefulness depends on its power to assimilate the thought of the time and to sacrifice its interest for wider interests. The training college system as a means of equipping teachers for their work is not satisfactory, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was well justified when he said: “The thing which mattered most in the educational work in England to-day was the question of the training colleges”. ”

“ Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised—we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him. ”

“ The system of elective studies which now widely characterizes the training in our higher educational institutions has made it increasingly [64] difficult for the college man to secure a clear idea of a college course and the comprehensive training which is his due. In many institutions the whole curriculum is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The endeavor to follow the demands of the times and the desire to secure patrons and students, have often brought to both the faculty and the undergraduate an uncertainty as to the true meaning of the college. ”

“ Too often the college provided rooms for teaching, the instructor provided the rest. Yet it must be conceded that the colleges did admirable work. They imparted not a great deal of knowledge, for the courses were very narrow, but there was a system in the training which sharpened many a dull intellect and made the already sharp intellect keener. The purpose confessedly was not to impart knowledge, but to train the intellect, to fit the man for professional study. ”

“ It is the only college that a great part of the people ever will know. Do not neglect that great fraction who are never going to get anything higher and beyond in order to put your time on those who are going on to colleges and universities. You must be the people's support, and you may well thank fortune that it doesn't seem to be nine-tenths of your business out here in the West to fit boys and girls for a college examination. If that ever threatens to become your business, then you withstand it and face it to the death, for there is nothing will ruin education faster than that ”

“ Since these undergraduate schools have grown large enough to afford a secure contrast as against the smaller colleges that are engaged in the same general field, it is coming to be plain to university men who have to do with the advanced instruction that, for the advanced work in science and scholarship, the training given by a college of moderate size commonly affords a better preparation than is had in the very large undergraduate schools of the great universities. ”

“ Man is a unit, but inasmuch as God has endowed him with various capacities, his highest glory should be to develop them. The only limit to the college student is his native abilities and aptitudes, modified by the parental training, various social influences, and the preliminary discipline in the public schools. The college that receives the students, with their different aims and predilections and acquirements, and leads them to appreciate the greater possibilities of their natures, and arouses and encourages them to strive for their fullest development, is worthy of confidence and support. ”

“ The chief object of college training, it was said, is to discipline and strengthen the intellect, to give the student that grasp and power of thought which he may apply to all the work of later life. The college should not be expected to pay much attention to the cultivation of the imagination and the emotions. These faculties, to which literature makes appeal, are not, it was said, under the control of the will, and you cannot cultivate or strengthen them by sheer resolve or strenuous exertion. ”

“ They have no desire to follow out a course of study whose purpose is a technical preparation, nor is such a course well adapted for them. The demand which their presence in the college makes is for what we may call a general preparation for life, some knowledge of facts, some training of judgment and taste, sympathy with a variety of intellectual interests, such broadening and liberalizing of mind as is possible. To the instructor who teaches in the eager atmosphere of an active university such a demand may seem illegitimate, because it seems vague and weak. ”

“ It is true that there is an increasing, and just now, an unusual demand for college-bred men in all walks of life. The prescribed preliminaries to legal and medical education are, step by step, approaching graduation from college, and have reached it, in some instances, while these professional courses themselves have been extended and deepened, till they are now nearly or quite on a par with the old liberal training with which they are co-ordinated in the modern university. ”

“ Had you been under eighteen, you might have become an apprentice as a pupil-teacher in an elementary school; but as you are eighteen already, you had better pass the Queen’s Scholarship Examination, and then seek employment as an assistant teacher, or, much better, enter a teachers’ training college. You could study all the requirements more fully by obtaining through a bookseller a copy of the New Code, issued by the Education Department. If you wanted further advice, it is probable that some Board School or National School mistress in your own town would give it. ”

“ Hitherto practical training has been thought necessary for teachers of primary schools only, but similar training is very desirable for teachers in high schools and colleges also. Indeed, it is already becoming increasingly difficult for college graduates without practical and theoretical pedagogical 72 knowledge to secure good positions. In addition to the lectures open to undergraduates, courses will be organized for graduate students only, conducted with special reference to preparation for the headship and superintendence of schools. ”

“ The strong-minded and mature student appears the exception to this statement, but in general will be found to be pursuing a self-imposed curriculum with a definite vocation in mind. The prospective ministers, lawyers, doctors and teachers were excluded from consideration because their college course is not necessarily a broadly cultural one, but a selected vocational training. For the same reason must the mature student be excluded. A college instructor can separate his class into three groups, those who set the pace, those who follow, and those who fall. ”

“ There are many reasons why the normal school should not be called upon to do this for us; but the chief one is that the institution offers no opportunity for genuine apprenticeship. And without apprenticeship, training is greatly hampered, as the normal schools themselves have learned in the case of the high-school teacher. To the college, then, falls the training. The larger universities must offer it in a graduate school, and somewhat after the following manner.
1. A three-year course, of which one year shall be given over to pedagogy and two to actual teaching, shall lead to a doctorate. ”

“ It is admitted at the outset that some self-educated men have succeeded withoutPage 199 a college education, while some college-trained men have failed in active life. It should be remembered that colleges do not exist to make ability, but to develop it. There is certainly nothing in a college education which unfits men for the practical duties of life. Some college students have meager talent to begin with, and a college training aims to help them make the most of themselves. ”

“ At least, this holds good for the majority of institutions; a small number of colleges devote their whole effort to cultural training, and some of the larger institutions, particularly in the East, find it possible to postpone most of the professional preparation to a period of graduate work. But on the whole the average well-equipped college includes the training of teachers as one end of its foreign-language work. Ordinarily, such mastery of the subject as would prepare for teaching cannot be gained within the four years' college course. ”

“ It is true, however, that such a course as that outlined above demands a large amount of time, compared with the results attained; and while successful courses in Representation are offered in certain colleges, the great mass of college students, who cannot hope to acquire a high degree of skill, would hesitate to devote a large part of their training to technical work, even if college faculties were willing to grant considerable proportions of credit for it toward the bachelor of arts degree. ”

“ Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training School, permit the pupil, with the advice of the principal, to make his own combination of subjects. Whether prepared by the school or by the pupil, however, the courses lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, progressive high schools are in absolute agreement,—the course of study must furnish both culture and technical training in a form which meets the needs of high school children. ”

“ The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and there."
The value of the college training of to-day cannot be too strongly emphasized. You cannot save time nor money by omitting it, whatever the profession on which you enter. The college is becoming a part of life. For a long time the American college was swayed by the traditions of the English aristocracy. Its purpose was to certify to a man's personal culture. The young man was sent to college that he might be a member of a gentler caste. ”

“ During the early years of our national existence it might have been possible to bring into one institution the greater part of the young men desiring higher training by offering superior courses of study, but later, when college graduates began sending their sons, the alma mater was the first choice and was the college finally selected unless the opportunities were far greater at some other institution or else for economic reasons a near-by or home college was chosen. ”