ill be impelled to trace
economic forces, in their actions and interactions, far beyond the
particular enterprise, to show how the welfare of others is affected.
To do this rightly, knowledge of the conditions must be combined with
a deeper theoretical insight; but the civic aim operates selectively
to limit the choice of materials and analysis to those contemporary
issues that appeal at the time to the textbook writer, to the teacher,
or to the public. Still different is the case of the teacher who finds
his greatest joy in the theoretical aspects of economics, possesses a
clean-cut economic philosophy (even though it may not be ultimate
truth), and has faith in economics as a disciplinary subject. Such a
teacher will (other things being equal) have, relatively, his greatest
success with the students of greatest ability; he will get better
results in teaching the "principles" than in teaching historical and
descriptive facts. None will deny that this type of education has an
important place. Even in the more descriptive courses appeal should be
made to the higher intellectual qualities of the class, leaving a
lasting disciplinary result rather than a memory stored with merely
ephemeral and mostly insignificant information.

The teacher with colorless personality and without interest in, and
knowledge of, the world of reality, will fail, whatever be the purpose
of his teaching. The higher the teacher's aim, the farther may he fall
below its attainment. A college teacher whose message is delivered on
the mental level of grammar school children should, of course, score a
pretty high percentage of success in giving a passing mark to
sophomores, juniors, and seniors in American colleges. But is this
really a success, or is it rather not evidence of a failure in the
whole school curriculum, and of woful waste in our system of so-called
"higher" education? Are colleges for the training of merely mediocre
minds?

=Aim and attitude more fundamental than method of instruction=

These questions of aim and of attitude are more fundamental than is
the question of the particular device of instruction to be used, as
lecture, textbook, etc. Yet the latter question is not without its
importance. In general it appears that practice has moved and still
moves in a cycle. In the American college world as a whole each
particular college repeats some or all of the typical phases with the
growth of its economic department.

(1) First is