t up"; "it takes them two or three years after they get out to
find themselves"; "they first have to get rid of a lot of theoretical
notions that have been given them before they can learn the practical
things of life." President Foster of Reed College, Oregon, puts it thus:
"It is possible to graduate from almost any college without an idea in
one's head." Professor Wenley, Head of the Department of Philosophy in
Michigan University, had about the same thought when he gave me his
original definition of an American college as "A so-called institution
of higher learning whose chief accomplishment is the inoculation of
innocent youth against education." Or shall we put it in the words of
our friend Mr. Dooley: "Nowadays when a lad goes to college, the
prisidint takes him into a Turkish room, gives him a cigareet an' says:
Me dear boy, what special branch iv larnin wud ye like to have studied
f'r ye be our compitint perfessors?"

Such are some of the caustic remarks that we occasionally hear. Of
course the situation is always exaggerated in such criticisms; but, as
the old saw puts it, "Where there's so much smoke, there must be some
fire." Where does the trouble lie? All sorts of guesses have been made,
and some careful investigations entered into in an effort to discover
the cause. The outcome of all such consideration, so far as I am able to
learn, throws the responsibility upon the teacher rather than upon the
institution as a whole, and upon his teaching ability rather than upon
any lack of knowledge. We cannot teach, it is said. In spite of the
knowledge that we possess, we do not know how to present that knowledge
so that another can gain it. Nicholas Murray Butler, the brainy
President of Columbia University, says, "The teaching of many very
famous men [in colleges and universities] is distinctly poor; sometimes
it is even worse."

These are rather interesting statements and worthy of thought. What is
meant by teaching, anyway? Teaching involves a double process and two
persons, both active upon the same matter. Both must be successful for
either to be. Teaching is causing to learn, and when there is no
learning, there can have been no teaching. "Learning is not merely the
correlative idea of teaching, but is one of its constituent elements."
No matter how much an instructor may know, no matter how much he may say
nor what he may do, if he doesn't cause the student to put forth those
mental activities that result