to "shoot over the heads" of their students, the best
way of avoiding this particular pitfall seems to lie along the road of
simple, elementary, concrete fact. The discussion method in the
classroom will soon put the instructor right if he has gone to the
other extreme of depreciating his students through kindergarten
methods. Likewise he can guard against being oracular and pedantic by
letting out his superior stores of information through free discussion
in the Socratic fashion. Nothing is more important to good teaching
than the knack of apt illustration. While to a certain extent it can
be taught, just as the art of telling a humorous story or making a
presentation speech can be communicated by teachers of oral English,
yet in the long run it is rather a matter of spontaneous upwellings
from a well-stored mind. For example, suppose a class is studying the
factors of variation and selection in social evolution: the instructor
shows how Nature loves averages, not only by statistics and
experiments with the standard curve of distribution, but also, if he
is a really illuminated teacher, by reference, say, to the legend of
David and Goliath, the fairy tale of _Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eye,
Little Three-Eye_, and Lincoln's famous aphorism to the effect that
the Lord must love the common people because he made so many of them.
Sad experience advises that it is unsafe for an instructor any longer
to assume that college sophomores are familiar with the Old Testament,
classic myths, or Greek and Roman history. Hence he must beware of
using any recondite allusions or illustrations which themselves need
so much explanation that their bearing on the immediate problem in
hand is obscured. An illustration, like a funny story, loses its
pungency if it requires a scholium.

=Pedagogical suggestions summarized=

Fourth, adhere to what a friend calls the 16 to 1 basis--16 parts fact
and 1 part theory. Fifth, eschew the professor's chair. The blackboard
is the teacher's "next friend." Recent time-motion studies lead us to
believe that no man can use a blackboard efficiently unless he stands!
The most celebrated teaching in history was peripatetic. Sixth,
postpone the reconciling of discrepant social theorizings to the
tougher-hided seniors or graduate students, and stick to the
presentation of "accessible realities." Finally, an occasional
friendly meeting with students, say once or twice a semester at an
informal supper, will cre