For Better Instruction

In his annual report Dean Hanford of Harvard urges improvement in the quality of instruction given freshmen, pointing out that outside of the large lecture courses they come in contact mainly with young instructors who are more interested in pursuing their own graduate work than in teaching. Mach of the indifference toward learning which quickly envelops college students is attributed to poor instruction.

Recitation sections in most basic courses at Cornell bear out the need for better pedagogy, and freshmen are by no means the only one to suffer. In Chemistry 105, Physics 6, Economics 1, and some of the elementary language courses the student has no more than a fifty per cent chance of striking a well-taught section. In freshman English, where more of the men seem eager to stimulate intellectual activity, he may fare somewhat better.

Instructors, however, cannot be blamed for indifference to the quality of their teaching. The low pay they receive necessarily makes them look upon their work merely as something to tide them over a difficult part of their career. Their advancement depends upon their outside study, and to this they devote their efforts.

Dean Hanford suggests paying instructors sufficient to enable them to alternate between full-time teaching one year and full-time graduate study the next. Obviously the University's income does not permit doing this at present.

Nevertheless, until some endowment makes Dean Hanford's proposal feasible, good instruction can be encouraged in other ways. Most effective would be a policy of recognizing reaching ability as well as scholarly attainment in the promotion of a certain number of men. Most underclass courses need stimulating instructors rather than profound scholars. Certainly writing and research would not suffer too severely by the release of those teachers who can do their greatest work in the training of young men. Cornell Daily Sun.