THE TEACHER AS A MAN

Dr. Glenn Frank of Wisconsin, ever acute to the needs of modern education, cites the scarcity of great teachers as one of the fatal weaknesses of American universities. In this deficiency, he says, lies the source of much of the calumny which has come to be heaped on higher education. The giants of teaching are gone and in their place have left an army of efficient but mechanistic instructors who are excellently equipped as far as their technical knowledge is concerned but who lack the spirit which characterized such men as--to cite Harvard examples--Eliot and Norton.

This complaint is well taken. Certainly the great material prosperity which has been the fortune of American universities, the enormous growth which they have sustained, have outdistanced the personalities of active teachers. Harvard has been, more fortunate perhaps than any other university in escaping the formalism of the large academic factory and, in addition to possessing several men who by virtue of their own attractions have gathered a following, has introduced the tutorial system, calculated to bring the student into closer contact with his mentors. But outside Harvard, in the majority of great universities, opportunity for intimacy is small and immensity has crushed personal contact, admitted to be the most valuable bond between those who want to learn and those whose duty it is to teach.

There is an aphorism to the effect that great teachers like great poets are born and not made. This is true only in a limited sense men whose characters are especially suited to teaching are, of course, not procurable in large quantities or on demand.

Such men there are, however, and when university governments realize that their characters form as valuable an addition as the degree paraphernalia which has come to be essential to good positions, the quality of the universities will be improved. This does not mean that any scholastic excellencies need be sacrificed merely for the sake of a man who is blessed with a sympathetic touch with his students. But there are cases in which the two are combined and it is in the hands of those men that the future of American university teaching rests. The increase in quantity in students may not be equaled by a similar increase in the quality of instructors, but those men who are fortunate enough to be recognized as great teachers and whose influence transcends that of the subject in which they specialize, should be allowed a larger scope for their efforts. Never before has the necessity of great personalities been so vital; formalism--the octopus of the modern university--must be crushed, and its most deadly enemy is the man whose individuality can cope with its enormity.