College Teaching

College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College

It is characteristic of the American people to have profound faith in the power of education. Since Colonial days the American college has played a large part in American life and has trained an overwhelming proportion of the leaders of American opinion. There was a time when the American college was a relatively simple institution of a uniform type, but that time has passed. The term "college" is now used in a variety of significations, a number of which are very new and very modern indeed. Some of these uses of the term are quite indefensible, as when one speaks of a college of engineering, or of law, or of medicine, or of journalism, or of architecture. Such use of the word merely confuses and makes impossible clear thinking as to educational institutions and educational aims. The term "college" can be properly used only of an institution which offers training in the liberal arts and sciences to youth who have completed a standard secondary school course of study. The purpose of college teaching is to lay the foundation for intelligent and effective specialization later on, to open the mind to new interpretations and new understandings both of man and of nature, and to give instruction in those standards of judgment and appreciation, the possession and application of which are the marks of the truly educated and cultivated man. The size of a college is a matter of small importance, except that under modern conditions a large college and one in immediate contact with the life of a university is almost certain to command larger intellectual resources than is an institution of a different type. The important thing about a college is its spirit, its clearness of aim, its steadiness of purpose, and the opportunity which it affords for direct personal contact between teacher and student. Given these, the question of size is unimportant. There was a time when it was felt, probably correctly, that a satisfactory college training could be had by requir[Pg xiv]ing all students to follow a single prescribed course of study. At that time, college students were drawn almost exclusively from families and homes of a single type or kind. Their purposes in after-life were similar, and their range of intellectual sympathy, while intense, was rather narrow. The last fifty years have changed all this. College students are now drawn from families and homes of every conceivable type and kind. Their purposes in after-life are very different, while new subjects of study have been multiplied many fold. The old and useful tradition of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, together with a little history and literature, as the chief elements in a college course of study, had to give way when first the natural sciences, and then the social sciences, claimed attention and when even these older subjects of study were themselves subdivided into many parts. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 29604
Author: Klapper, Paul
Release Date: Aug 4, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English