TEACHING IN THE SECTIONS

The decision of the Graduate School faculty to admit only those men who have gained a Phi Beta Kappa key or who have shown distinct ability in their line of work, will undoubtedly raise the standards of scholarship in the Graduate School and reduce the growing congestion of budding Ph.D.'s, who crowd the stacks of Widener.

However there seems to be little hope that this measure will produce a new brand of section man, who has ability and sufficient interest to inspire interest. With the present methods of graduate study, students will continue to be inflicted with the perfunctory teaching of a man, whose interests and talents lie wholly in his special field of research, and who considers his teaching only as a means of paying his tuition.

The section man is the victim of an educational plan, which fails to realize the distinction between research and teaching. It is perfectly true that all great teachers are great scholars, who have explored the material in their fields to the boundaries of human knowledge, but it is also true that all scholars and investigators are not teachers.

The present system in which the teacher is confused with the pure research worker might be remedied by adopting a plan recently announced at the University of Chicago, in which the graduate students of each department are given opportunities to teach under the supervision of some experienced educator and are also offered a special course on the problems of college teaching. A corollary to this proposal would be the granting of two separate Ph. D. degrees, one for those who plan to go on with educational work and the other degree to those primarily interested in research.