set himself up as the final arbiter of the claims of these contending
aims. They are all vitally necessary for a thorough understanding of
life's problems. The significant conclusion for teaching is that one
or more of these aims must be consciously chosen and that content and
method must be determined by them absolutely. Teaching for the sake of
teaching consumes time and makes drafts on energy, but it leaves the
student no richer in power and with no truer understanding.

=Should the aim be modified for varying groups of students?=

It is obvious that no general law can be formulated for the adjustment
of aims to the needs of students. Teachers have usually found it
necessary to change the aim, the content, and the method of a course
according to the needs of different classes of students. In one of our
colleges science students are required to take two years of Latin. The
course offered these young men gives the ordinary drill in grammar,
translation, and analysis of Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil, as well as
practice in prose composition in which nondescript and disjointed
English sentences, grammatically correct, are turned into incorrect
Latin. This description, without any changes whatever, applies also to
the course given in the introductory years in Latin to students
specializing in the arts. Even a superficial analysis reveals a
different set of needs in the two classes of students which can be
served only by a corresponding difference in content and mode of
teaching. A student who takes French or German because he wants enough
mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals
about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which
appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational
phases of these languages.

There are courses that are foundational and that must therefore be
governed by an eclectic aim. In the first course in college physics it
is obvious that we must teach the necessary facts of the subject as
well as its method. These aspects of the work must be emphasized with
equal force for all students; no differentiation need be made for
future medical or engineering students or for prospective teachers of
the subject in secondary schools. Generally speaking, initial courses
in a department are governed by an eclectic aim, but in the advanced
courses there must be constant adjustment to the needs of various
groups. An eclectic aim can be as effective an instru