ate an atmosphere of cooperative learning,
will break down the traditional barriers of hostility between master
and pupil, and may incidentally bring to the surface many useful hints
for the framing of discussion problems.

=The course of study--(a) Determined by the maturity of the students=

To a certain extent teaching methods are determined by the age of the
students. In 1910, of all the institutions reporting, 73 stated that
sociology instruction began in the junior year; 23 admitted
sophomores, 4 freshmen, 39 seniors. But the unmistakable drift is in
the direction of introducing sociology earlier in the college
curriculum, and even into secondary and elementary schools. Hence the
cautions voiced above tend to become all the more imperative.
Moreover, while in the past it has been possible to exact history,
economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, or education as
prerequisite to beginning work in sociology, in view of the downward
trend of sociology courses it becomes increasingly more difficult to
take things for granted in the student's preparation. Until the dream
of offering a semester or year of general social science to all
freshmen as the introduction to work in the specialized branches of
social science comes true, the sociologist must communicate to his
elementary classes a sense of the relations between his view of social
phenomena and the aspects of the same phenomena which the historian,
the economist, the political scientist, and the psychologist handle.

=(b) Determined by its aims=

Both the content and methods of sociological instruction are
determined also in part by what its purpose is conceived to be. A
study of the beginnings of teaching this subject in the United States
shows that it was prompted primarily by practical ends. For example,
the American Social Science Association proposal (1878), in so far as
it covered the field of sociology, included only courses on punishment
and reformation of criminals, public and private charities, and
prevention of vice. President White of Cornell in 1871 recommended a
course of practical instruction "calculated to fit young men to
discuss intelligently such important social questions as the best
methods of dealing practically with pauperism, intemperance, crime of
various degrees and among persons of different ages, insanity, idiocy,
and the like." Columbia University early announced that a university
situated in such a city, full of probl