This is not the place to discuss the details of appointment and promotion plans, interesting and important as they are. But it is evident that the scheme of training outlined, if adopted, would call for changes in present practices.
The appointing authorities of colleges looking for young teachers could ascertain their strong and weak points as they developed during their apprenticeship in classrooms and in other educational activities, as well as the quality and trend of their scholarship. They would not rest satisfied with ascertaining the minute corner of the field of philosophy, history, or physics in which a man recommended had done research. Records could be kept throwing much-needed light on the teaching ability, scholarship, and personality of candidates for appointment. In selecting college teachers, appointing authorities would value this evidence and would come to prefer teaching power to investigating ability.
Moreover, the record keeping, and, no doubt, some of the supervision begun during the apprentice years would continue during the early instructorial years. This would render it possible to evaluate and to value effectiveness in teaching in making promotions. Ambitious teachers would no longer be practically forced, as their only resort, to neglect their students and give their best energies to publication in order to make a name and get a call, in the interest of promotion. The expert teacher would have a chance and a dignity equal to that of the skilled investigator. The individual could follow, and not be penalized for so doing, his own bent and the line of his highest capacity.
Training of investigators
The training now given in graduate schools here and elsewhere for the doctorate in philosophy will, of course, continue, and increase rather than diminish. Investigators will be preferred in research, in universities, and in some colleges and college departments. They will be increasingly prized in the government service and in important branches of industry. The recent terrible experiences burn into our minds the imperative need strong nations have of exact knowledge and of skill that has a scientific edge. And the specific training for these great tasks will be stronger when it is based on a college course in which highly effective and whole-hearted teaching is valued and rewarded.
Sidney E. Mezes
College of the City of New York
Bibliography
Anonymous. Confessions of One Behind the Times. Atlantic, Vol. 3, pages 353-356, March, 1913.
Canby, H. S. The Professor. Harpers, April, 1913.