in learning, he doesn't teach. And it is
claimed that, in many cases, our university instructors do not know how
to do this. He knows but he does not know how to cause another to know,
is a common criticism.

I suppose it is true, tho loyalty makes me rather dislike to admit it,
that with us the poorest teaching in our entire educational system is
done in colleges and universities. My own observation both as a student
and as a teacher all along the line leads me to say that, in the main,
our best teaching is done in the elementary grades, second best in the
high schools, and poorest in the higher institutions. Another puts it
thus: "We have excellent teaching in the lower primary grades and in the
graduate schools, but between these two extremes, we can call it
teaching only by courtesy." Another, the president of a State
University, is reported to have said, "I have resolved never again to
turn my undergraduates over to young Ph. D.'s. It takes five years to
make a commonsense teacher of a raw doctor fresh from three years of
graduate work."

If these statements are true, and I am afraid that there's much of truth
in them, the situation is rather serious. Still, it isn't at all
surprising when one takes the whole matter into consideration. For
relatively few university instructors have given any attention to the
matter of teaching itself. They have studied the subject matter with
which they are to deal. They have become proficient so far as knowledge
is concerned. No fault can be found with them touching the matter of
erudition. But they have not given any reflective thought to the art of
teaching. They have not made a study of the human mind in its
development in order to know how it receives knowledge as mental
nourishment, and to understand the assimilative process; they have not
given themselves to a systematic and scientific study of human life so
as to know how to handle it in its various moods and characteristics.
How differently these good people would have planned if they had
expected to practise Law, or Medicine or to enter the Ministry! In every
such case they would have made professional preparation for their work.
Isn't it strange that any one should think that this profession--the
most important--could be practised with success in its higher realms, by
people who have never given its practise one moment's attention?
President Butler, in giving reasons for poor college teaching, says,
"Too few instructor