Teaching Teaching

Harvard professors usually earn their position and achieve eminence as scholars and not teachers. Sometimes the brilliant scholar is also a vivid lecturer, but too often students are subjected to mediocre presentations of material easily available in textbooks.

In his recent report, "A Criticism of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences," Dean Elder states that the teaching aspect of the Ph.D. "has been scandalously neglected." According to Elder's survey of those who took their doctorate from 1950 to 1954, one quarter had no training in education. Once instructors, GSAS graduates find that future promotion depends principally on getting works published, and not on success as teachers.

Perhaps it is true that the excellent teacher must have an inborn dramatic flair; nevertheless training in teaching would help even the reticent to improve their ability to impart knowledge. At present, teaching fellowships give the future instructor valuable experience. Making them available to more graduate students by shortening them from four to two years would be one valuable step in helping doctoral candidates develop teaching ability.

But while those students with fellowships get experience in teaching, too often their students become mistreated guinea pigs. Lack of any training in teaching is often reflected by the section man who lectures pompously to a dozen students as if they were a gathering of hundreds, or by the one who trusts to luck that students will have questions to keep the hour lively.

One solution worth exploring is the institution of a courses or courses in education to doctoral candidates who plan to go into college teaching. Such a course could impart techniques and advice on how to "lead into" a subject, how to stimulate discussion, and how to improve lectures.

Since different methods of presentation are needed in the natural sciences, the humanities, and social sciences, it might be best for such courses to be organized by area within the GSAS. Instruction might range from GSAS "workshop" seminars for graduates in a specific field to a formal course in the philosophy of education offered by the Graduate School of Education.

Such a background would be valuable for both the instructor and his students. Besides the ability to search for knowledge, future teachers should have the training to communicate their findings excitingly and lucidly.