PROFESSOR AND TEACHER.
The two words that recur most frequently perhaps in the discussion of matters of education are "teacher" and "professor;" yet there are no two that are used so carelessly and loosely. It seems as if the thought that they may not be synonymous seldom, if ever, occurs to those using them. If one of our writers or speakers upon education were suddenly called upon to state exactly what he meant by a "professor" in distinction from a "teacher," he would be at a loss for an answer. He might reply, after some hesitation, "Why, a teacher is a man who teaches at a school or an academy, and a professor is a man who teaches at a college." If he were pressed still more closely, and asked to give the precise difference between a "school or an academy" and a "college," it is safe to assume that he would find himself nonplussed. There are colleges in the country, some large and others small, some old and others young, some good and others poor; but aside from the fact that they provide a curriculum of four years and teach a certain amount of Latin, Greek and mathematics, they do not possess features enough in common to enable us to define with exactness "a college." It is not in the power of language to devise a formula so elastic as to embrace Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Trinity, Cornell and Michigan University, without at the same time ignoring the characteristic features of one or the other. Even if we admit that there is a vague ideal unity underlying the so-called college system, by virtue of which it is a system and not a mere aggregate, we shall not make much progress in our search after the proper definition of the term "professor." The utmost that can be said of our college system, as a system, is that it stands on a somewhat higher plane than the schools, that it is supposed to finish a young man's education, and consequently that the men whom it employs for such a purpose—its professors—are, or at least ought to be, abler men than the teachers proper. The difference, then, between professor and teacher is one of degree, and not of kind. Both teach, and both teach in great part the same subjects and in substantially the same way; that is, by means of textbook and recitation. Herein lies the explanation of the disposition evinced by some of our best schools to call their teachers "professors." An institution like Phillips Exeter or Andover can scarcely be said to assume more than it is entitled to in putting itself on an equality with Hobart College or Racine.
On turning to Germany, we observe no such laxity in the use of the term "professor." He, and he only, is professor who "professes" to have made himself eminent in his special branch, and whose claims have been allowed officially by a university or by the government. He is not even a teacher in the English or American sense. He is a scholar and investigator who has produced results worthy of distinction, and it is upon the strength of those results, and not because of his real or supposed ability to impart knowledge and stimulate industry among students, that he receives his call to a university chair. [1]
The words of one who is himself a leading professor in one of the most renowned universities are so explicit upon this point that they deserve to be translated and carefully studied. Heinrich von Sybel, in his academic address delivered at Bonn in 1868, says: "The excellence of our universities is to be found in the fact that they are not mere institutions where instruction is given, but are workshops of science[2]—that their vital principle is unceasing scientific productivity. Hence it is that the state assembles the best men of all Germany as professors at its universities, so that the phenomenon, common enough in England and France, of a distinguished savant without a university chair is with us a very unusual exception. Hence it is that in appointing to such a chair the first and last demand is for published evidences of such activity. As for the so-called ability to teach (Lehrtalent im formellen Sinne), we are satisfied if it is not utterly and notoriously wanting. The question upon which everything turns is, Has the candidate given evidence of his capacity for original investigation and production? Whoever has this capacity is sufficiently qualified, according to our German notions, for fulfilling the essential function of university instruction."
In other words, a German professor is a man who has devoted himself to special and original research—to "science" as Von Sybel uses the term—and whose discoveries and works give strength and increase of dignity to the university with which he is connected. He is appointed upon his merits as a discoverer or an author. The further consideration—namely, whether he is what we Americans style a "good teacher"—was not so much as an afterthought in the minds of those who gave him his call. The explanation of this disregard of the personal element in the professorial character is obvious. The professor is not called upon to teach. It does not constitute any part of his vocation to spur up the sluggish, to keep the idle busy, to give each student enough to do, and make first principles perfectly clear to all. So far from coming down to the level of the students, the professor expects that the students will make every possible exertion to rise to his level, while he himself can scarcely be said to lend a helping hand. To the sentimentalist, then, he might appear a very selfish mortal. But by going beneath the surface of the relation between professor and student, and examining into its essence, we shall find that it is an eminently healthful relation, because it is based upon the recognition of mutual rights and duties. The professor, as a man of science, has a right to the free direction of his talents. The student has the right to develop what there is in him without supervision or interference. He is to make a man of himself by seeking diligently after the truth in a manly, independent spirit. All that the professor can do for him is to point out the road to the truth.
This view of the functions of a professor may appear obscure and exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it gives the clew to the entire German system of university education, and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say that Germany, under any system, would be a land of erudition.
However pleasant it might be to go into the details of the professional position and character in Germany, it will be more profitable, and certainly more practical, to compare this fundamental German idea, as already given, with the salient features of professional life in America. The American professor, then, is a teacher. Unless he is the fortunate occupant of an exceptionally favored chair, his chief, and even his sole, function in the college body is to teach, in the strictest sense of the term. He has to prescribe textbooks, assign and hear lessons, grade recitations, mark examination-papers, submit carefully prepared term and annual reports to the faculty. When the question of conditioning or dismissing a student on the ground of defective scholarship comes up for decision, his opinion must be given and weighed in connection with that of others, in order that the faculty may strike a fair general average. The number of hours that he is compelled, by the college curriculum, to pass per week in the recitation-room is seldom less than fifteen, and may be as high as twenty. The classes themselves are ill-sorted and often troublesome, and are usually unwieldy by reason of their size. The professor's mind must be continually on the watch to prevent disorder and enforce attention. Besides, as every one knows full well who has tried it, there is nothing so exhausting as to supply "brains" to those who either have not received their portion from Nature or else have squandered it for a mess of pottage. Every professor-teacher can bear witness to the truism that one hour in the recitation-room is fully equal, in its drain upon the vital energy, to two passed in private study or authorship. The sense of responsibility, we might say, is omnipresent. It does not cease with the recitation: it follows him to his study, and haunts him with the recollection of absurd blunders made by young men who should have done better—the dispiriting reflection that despite his best efforts the stupid and indifferent will not learn. If to this normal wear and tear and these every-day annoyances we add the participation in what is pleasingly styled enforcement of discipline—that is, protracted faculty-meetings, interviews with anxious or irate parents, exhortations to the vicious to mend their ways—we shall probably come to the conclusion that the professor's burden is anything but light. We all have heavy burdens. But while admitting the universality of the adage, we are nevertheless at liberty to ascertain if we cannot make the burden of a particular man or class easier to bear by fitting it to the back.
Editors, essayists, college presidents and reformers assure us that we are on the verge of a change, and perhaps a great change, in our system of higher education. They dilate upon the indisputable fact that most of our older colleges have made rapid strides within the past ten years, augmenting their endowments, erecting handsome buildings, establishing new departments of study and increasing the number of students. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, were never so well off, in point of money and men, as they are at this day. The inference is, of course, if so much has been done in ten years, what may we not expect by the end of the century? The University of Virginia holds its own, notwithstanding the desolation wrought by the late civil war, and Ann Arbor and Cornell have shot up with extraordinary vigor. There can be no doubt that our institutions of learning are full of robust life. And it is no less certain that this growth of resources is due to private enterprise. Our colleges have grown because graduates, and even non-graduates, have taken an interest in them, and endowed them with a munificence which seems incredible to a Frenchman or a German. But in studying the aspect of higher education it behooves us not to lose sight of the fundamental principle that education is something spiritual in its nature, and that it cannot be gauged by buildings, by endowments, by the trappings of wealth—in short, by anything material. Endowments and buildings are only the means; unless the end to which these means are subservient be clearly perceived and persistently followed, the means themselves may prove a hindrance rather than a help. Of this Oxford is a notable proof.
Have, then, the end and aim, the method and agencies, of college instruction changed essentially within the past fifteen years, or are they likely to change essentially within the coming twenty-five? In the year 1770 the greatest genius of Germany entered the walls of the old university-town of Strasburg, there to complete his education. He has bequeathed to us a faithful record of his studies, his amusements, his daily life. Connecting this Strasburg experience with the previous experience at Leipsic, we know what it meant in the eighteenth century to be a German student. We know that the professors in those days were pedagogues in the Anglo-American sense, and that university-life stood little if at all higher than our own present college-life. But when Goethe died, in 1832, the universities of Germany had reached their prime. Since then they have made no gain. It may be doubted if the professors, on the whole, rank quite so high to-day for originality and vigor of research as did their predecessors forty years ago. Wherein lies the secret, then, of this wonderful change wrought in the brief span of two generations, between 1770 and 1830, and amid the dire confusion of the great Revolution and the Napoleonic era? The change was twofold. It consisted, first, in allowing to the professor the free play of his individuality; second, in providing him with a properly trained body of students. From the practical recognition of these two principles, which have nothing to do with wealth and buildings, proceed the power and glory of the German universities. Viewed from the English, or even the American point, some of these universities might be pronounced poor, not to say starvelings. The buildings are old and out of repair, the professors are scantily paid, the students are needy, there is a general atmosphere of want and discomfort. But the work they do is noble, and its nobility consists in its freedom, its heartiness, its strict devotion to truth.