PERRY CONTRASTS TEACHING METHODS

The conflict between the old fashioned type of recitation instruction and modern lecture methods was discussed by Professor Bliss Perry in an address last night in the Union before more than 500 members of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Speaking from his early experience, Professor Perry described first the old fashioned type of pedagogical professor, who "wore silk hats and frock coats, and were as eager to save the soul as to instruct the mind."

In sharp contrast to the constrained classroom teachings of professors such as these, Professor Perry cited the dynamic personal dominance of the early lecturers in the German universities at which he studied for two years.

In the installation of the lecture system at Princeton several years ago, when a group of young Princeton professors, led by Woodrow Wilson, succeeded in inaugurating the lecture system in the college against the wishes of the trustees and the reactionary members of the Faculty, Professor Perry gave an example of the conquest of the new methods of instruction over the old.

Professor Albert Feuillerat, Professor of English Literature at Rennes, and exchange professor from France, next spoke briefly.

Professor Feuillerat declared that the interchange of professors between France and America showed a reversion to the epoch of the Renaissance when professors from different cities travelled through Europe giving their lectures.

"That a French professor should travel thousands of miles to teach Shakespeare to American students seems strange," said Professor Feuillerat, "and that an American Professor from Harvard should travel those same thousands of miles to teach French architecture to French students seems quite as strange. Yet it all points to the relaxation of the national conceits of twenty-five years ago when each nation rested content with its own learning to the exclusion of all others.