The sequence in which heat, electricity, sound, and light follow mechanics seems quite immaterial. Several equally logical plans may be organized. Preference is usually accorded one or the other on the basis of local conditions of equipment, and needs little reference to pedagogy. If one gives to mechanics its proper importance, the difficulty in giving instruction in the other topics seems very much less. The momentum acquired seems to serve for the balance of the year. Always must analysis be insisted upon, if our college course is going to differ from that of the high school. If we are to let students be content to read current from an ammeter with a calibrated scale and not have the interest to inquire and the ambition to insist upon the knowledge of how that calibration was originally made, we have no right to claim any collegiate rank for our courses. But if we define electrical current in terms of mechanical force which exhibits a balanced couple on a system in rotational equilibrium, there can be no dodging of the issue, for in no other way than by the study of the mechanics of the situation can the content and the limitations of our definition be understood. Any college work, so called, that does less than analyze thus is nothing more than a review and amplification of the material that should be within the range of the high school student and in that place presented to him. The first college course reveals a different method, the method of analysis. Science at the present time is so far developed that in no branch is progress made by mere description and classification. The method of analysis is dominant in the biological and the earth sciences as well as in the physics and chemistry of today.
Teaching of advanced courses in physics
On the more advanced college courses which follow the general physics course little comment is needed. Problems and questions here also exist, but they have a strongly local color and are out of place in a general discussion. The student body is no longer composed of the rank and file, half of whom are driven, by some requirement or other, into work in which they have but a passing interest at best. It is no longer a problem of seeing how much can be made to adhere in spite of indifference, of how firm a foundation can be prepared for needs as yet unrecognized in the subject of the effort. A very limited number, comparatively, enter further work of senior college courses, and these have either enthusiasm or ability and often both. Of course, a cold neglect or bored indifference in the attitude of the teacher will be resented. It will kill enthusiasm and send ability seeking inspiration elsewhere. But any one who is fond of his subject, and of moderate ability and industry, should have no difficulty in developing senior college work. If our instructor in the general course must be a scholar to be successful, the man in more advanced work must be one a fortiori. If he is not, few who come in contact with him have so little discernment as to fail to recognize the fact.
Organization of advanced courses
Organization of senior college work may be in many ways. One method where an institution follows the quarter system is the plan of having eight or ten different and rather unrelated twelve-week major courses which may be taken in almost any order. Half of these are lecture courses, the other half exclusively laboratory courses. There should be a correspondence of material to some extent between the two. Lectures on the kinetic theory of gases should have a parallel course in which the classical experiments of the senior heat laboratory are performed,—such experiments, for example, as vapor density, resistance and thermocouple pyrometry, bomb calorimetry viscosity, molecular conductivity, freezing and boiling points, recalescence, etc. A course of advanced electrical measurements should have a parallel lecture course in which the theoretical aspects of electromagnetism, the classical theories, and the equations that represent transitory and equilibrium conditions in complex circuits are discussed. In optics, likewise, there is ample material of great importance: physical, geometrical optics, spectroscopy, photography, X-ray crystallography, etc. The advanced student in these fields finds more elasticity and opportunity for cultivating a special interest in having a large number of limited interest courses from which to choose than in having such material presented in a completely organized course covering one or two years of complete work. Instructors who are specialists have opportunity of working up courses in their own fields which they do more efficiently under this plan. Research begins at innumerable places along the way, and the senior college courses so organized are the feeders of all graduate work.
Dangers of formalizing methods of instruction
In all of the above discussion it should be clearly remembered that no single plan or no one particular method has the final word or ever will have. As long as a science is growing and unfinished, points of view will continually be shifting. We are largely orthodox in our teaching. If brought up on the laboratory method of instruction it may seem the best one for us, but others may prefer another way which they have inherited. Let us appeal, then, for a constructive orthodoxy. Let us be as teachers of a subject to which we are devoted, truly and sincerely open-minded, quick to recognize and sincere in our efforts to adopt what is better wherever we meet it: waiting not to meet it, either, but going out to seek it. From the humblest college to the greatest university we shall find it here and there. Not alone in schools but in the legion of human activities about us on every hand are people who are doing things more efficiently, more thoroughly, and more skillfully than we do things. If we would be of the number that lead, we must be among the first to recognize these facts and profit by them.
First, let our work be organized with respect to that of others—the high schools; not discounting their labor but having them truly build for us.
Second, let us be open-minded enough to see that all methods of instruction have their advantages and make such combinations of the best elements in each as best suit our purpose.
Above all things, let us know our subject. Here is a task before which we quail in this generation of vast vistas. But there is no alternative for us. No amount of method will remove the curse of the superficially informed. Let us devote ourselves to smaller fields if we must, but let us not tolerate ignorance among those who bear the burden of passing on, with its flame ever more consuming, the torch of knowledge.