College Teaching Part 33

ROWE, J. S. University and Collegiate Research in Munic.i.p.al Government. _National Munic.i.p.al League: Proceedings._ Chicago, 1904, pages 242-248.

SCHAPER, W. A. What Do Students Know about American government before Taking College Courses in Political Science? _Journal of Pedagogy_, June, 1906. Vol. XVIII, pages 265-288.

Society for the Promotion of Training for the Public Service. E. A.

Fitzpatrick, Director. Madison, Wisconsin. _The Public Servant._ Issued monthly.

---- Universities and Public Service. _Proceedings of the First National Conference._ Madison, 1914, pages 289.

Training for Public Service. New York Bureau of Munic.i.p.al Research, Annual Reports.

WHITE, A. D. The Provision for Higher Instruction Bearing Directly upon Public Affairs. _House Executive Doc.u.ment No. 42_, part 2, 46th Congress, 3d Session.

---- Education in Political Science. Baltimore, pages 51.

---- European Schools of History and Politics. _Johns Hopkins University Studies_, Series 5, Vol. XII.

WILSON, WOODROW. _The Study of Politics. An Old Master and Other Essays._ Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893, pages 31-57.

WOLFE, A. B. Shall We Have an Introductory Course in Social Sciences?

_Journal of Political Economy_, Vol. XXII, pages 253-267.

YOUNG, JAMES T. University Instruction in Munic.i.p.al Government.

_National Munic.i.p.al League: Proceedings._ Rochester, 1901; pages 226-234.

Footnotes:

[40] The courses usually given in departments of political science are:

1. American government, (_a_) National, (_b_) State and local, (_c_) Munic.i.p.al.

2. General political science.

3. Comparative government.

4. English government.

5. International law.

6. Diplomacy.

7. Jurisprudence or elements of law.

8. World politics.

9. Commercial law.

10. Roman law.

11. Administrative law.

12. Political theories (History of political thought).

13. Party government.

14. Colonial government.

15. Legislative methods and legislative procedure.

16. Current political problems.

17. Munic.i.p.al corporations.

18. Law of officers and taxation.

19. Seminar.

20. Additional courses, such as the government of foreign countries, the regulation of public utilities, and the political and legal status of women.

Cf. _The Teaching of Government_, page 137. Published by the Macmillan Company, 1916. With the permission of the publishers some extracts from the report of the committee on instruction have been used. The report should be consulted for the presentation of data and for a further consideration of some questions of instruction which cannot be taken up fully within the compa.s.s of this chapter.

[41] Cf. _The Teaching of Government_, page 182.

[42] _The Teaching of Government_, pages 206-207.

[43] The discussion of methods follows in part the Report of the Committee on Instruction, pages 192-194.

[44] See especially article by Ernst Freund on "Correlation of Work for Higher Degrees in Graduate School and Law School," Vol. XI, _Illinois Law Review_, page 301.

XIV

THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY

The study of philosophy covers such a wide range of subjects that it is difficult to generalize in attempting to answer the basal questions which call for consideration in a book like this. In the great European universities it includes psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics, the history of philosophy, and sometimes even the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of the State. Although special courses may not be offered in every one of these fields in our American colleges, their philosophical territory is sufficiently extensive and the separate provinces sufficiently unlike to baffle any one seeking to describe the educational aims and methods of the domain as a whole. In order, therefore, to do full justice to our task it would be necessary to treat each one of the various philosophical branches separately and to expand the s.p.a.ce a.s.signed to us into a fair-sized volume. Since this is not to be thought of, we shall have to confine ourselves to a consideration of the traits common to all the subjects, without forgetting, however, such differences as may call for different educational treatment.

=The unified college course in philosophy=

The difficulty of which we have spoken becomes less formidable when the teacher of the traditional philosophical subjects regards them not as so many independent and disconnected fields of study, but as parts of a larger whole held together by some central idea. The great systematic thinkers, from Plato down to Herbert Spencer, have aimed at "completely unified knowledge" and have sought to bring order and coherence into what may seem to the casual onlooker as a disunited array of phenomena. Philosophical teaching will be the more fruitful, the more it is inspired by the thought of unity of aim, and the more consciously the teachers of the different disciplines keep this idea in mind. That is the reason why philosophical instruction given in a small college and by one man is, in some respects, often more satisfactory than in the large university with its numberless specialists, in which the beginning student frequently does not see the forest for the trees. It is not essential that the teacher present a thoroughly worked-out and definitive system of thought, but it is important that he constantly keep in mind the interrelatedness of the various parts of his subject and the notion of unity which binds them together,--at least as an ideal.

And perhaps this notion of the unity of knowledge ought to be made one of the chief aims of philosophical instruction in the college. The ideal of philosophy in the sense of metaphysics is to see things whole, to understand the interrelations not only of the branches taught in the department of philosophy but of all the diverse subjects studied throughout the university. The student obtains glimpses of various pictures presented by different departments and different men, and from different points of view. Each teacher offers him fragments of knowledge, the meaning of which, as parts of an all-inclusive system, the pupil does not comprehend. Indeed, it frequently happens that the different pieces do not fit into one another; and he is mystified and bewildered by the seemingly disparate array of facts and theories crowding his brain which he cannot correlate and generally does not even suspect of being capable of correlation. To be sure, every teacher ought to be philosophical, if not a philosopher, and indicate the place of his specialty in the universe of knowledge; but that is an ideal which has not yet been realized. In the meanwhile, the study of philosophy ought to make plain that knowledge is not a mere heap of broken fragments, that the inorganic, organic, and mental realms are not detached and independent princ.i.p.alities but kingdoms in a larger empire, and that the world in which we live is not a chaos but a cosmos. An introductory course in philosophy, the type of course given in many German universities under the t.i.tle "Einleitung in die Philosophie" and attended by students from all sections of the university, will help the young student to find his bearings in the multifarious thought-world unfolded before him and will, at the same time, put him in the way of developing some sort of world-view later on.

Philosophical instruction that succeeds in the task outlined above will have accomplished much. Nevertheless, it cannot attain its goal unless the student is introduced to the study of the human-mental world which const.i.tutes a large portion of the field a.s.signed to the philosophical department: the study of psychology, logic, ethics, and the history of philosophy. These branches deal with things in which the human race has been interested from its early civilized beginnings and with which the young persons entering college have had little or no opportunity of becoming acquainted. And they deal with a world which no man can ignore who seeks to understand himself and his relation to the natural and social environment in which his lot is cast. A knowledge of the processes of mind (psychology), of the laws of thought (logic), of the principles of conduct (ethics), and of the development of man's interpretation of reality (history of philosophy) will supplement the knowledge acquired by the study of physical nature, preventing a one-sided and narrow world-view, and will serve as a preparation for intelligent reflection upon the meaning of reality (philosophy in the sense of metaphysics).

=Controlling aims in the teaching of philosophy=

All these subjects, therefore, have as one of their aims the training of the powers of thought (judgment and reasoning); and philosophical teaching should never lose sight of this. Thinking is a difficult business,--an art which is practiced, to be sure, in every field of study, but one for which the philosophical branches provide unusual opportunity and material. It has become a habit with many of recent years to decry the study of logic as an antiquated discipline, but it still remains, if properly taught, an excellent means of cultivating clear thinking; there is no reason why a consciousness of correct ways of thinking and of the methods employed in reaching reliable judgments should not prove useful to every one.

We should say, therefore, that the study of philosophy has a high cultural value: it encourages the student to reflect upon himself and his human and natural surroundings (society and nature) and to come to grips with reality; it frees him from the incubus of transmitted opinions and borrowed beliefs, and makes him earn his spiritual possessions in the sweat of his face,--mindful of Goethe's warning that "he alone deserves freedom and life who is compelled to battle for them day by day";--it helps him to see things in their right relations, to acquire the proper intellectual and volitional att.i.tude toward his world through an understanding of its meaning and an appreciation of its values; in short, it strengthens him in his struggle to win his soul, to become a person. This is its ideal; and in seeking to realize it, philosophy cooperates with the other studies in the task of developing human beings, in preparing men for complete living, and is therefore practical in a n.o.ble sense of the term. It has a high disciplinary value in that it trains the powers of a.n.a.lysis and judgment, at least in the fields in which it operates. And the habit acquired there of examining judgments, hypotheses, and beliefs critically and impartially, of testing them in the light of experience and of reason, cannot fail to prove helpful wherever clear thinking is a requisite.

The teacher should keep all these aims in view in organizing his material and applying his methods. He should not forget that philosophy is above all things a reflection upon life; he should endeavor to train his pupils in the art of interpreting human experience, of grasping its meaning. His chief concern should be to make _thinkers_ of them, not to fasten upon them a final philosophic creed,--not to give them a philosophy, but to teach them how to philosophize. If he succeeds in arousing in them a keen intellectual interest and a love of truth, and in developing in them the will and the power to think a problem through to the bitter end, he will have done more for them than would have been possible by furnis.h.i.+ng them with ready-made formulas. There is nothing so hopelessly dead as a young man without the spirit of intellectual adventure, with his mind made up, with the master's ideas so deeply driven into his head that his intellectual career is finished. The Germans call such a person _vernagelt_, a term that fitly describes the case. What should be aimed at is the cultivation of the mind so that it will broaden with enlarging experience, that it will be hospitable to new ideas and yet not be overwhelmed by them, that it will preserve inviolate its intellectual integrity and keep fresh the spirit of inquiry. Such a mind may be safely left to work out its own salvation in the quest for a _Weltanschauung_.

"Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old."

In emphasizing the need of such central aims in instruction we do not wish to be understood as not appreciating the utilitarian value of the philosophical branches and their importance as a preparation for professional activity. Like all knowledge, these subjects have their worth not merely as means of developing human personality but also as means of equipping the student with such knowledge of facts, methods, and theories as will prove useful to him in his other studies and in the daily affairs of life. The teacher, the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, the artist, the engineer, the business man, will be benefited by an understanding of the workings of the human mind, of the laws of human thinking, and of the principles of human conduct. It is not absolutely necessary, however, in our opinion, that separate cla.s.ses specially designed for the different professions be formed in the colleges; after all, it is the same human mind that operates in all the fields of human activity, and a knowledge of mental life in general will serve the purposes of every vocation. Doubtless, courses in psychology, logic, and ethics, for example, might be offered having in view the particular needs of prospective members of the various callings, but such courses would, in order to meet the situation, presuppose an acquaintance with the respective professional fields in question which only students well along in their professional studies could be expected to possess. Courses of this character might profitably be given for the benefit of professional students who have already taken the introductory subjects necessary to their proper understanding.

=Introduction of philosophy in the college course=

It is not easy to determine the most favorable period in a student's college career at which philosophical subjects should be taught. The more mature the student is, the more successful the instruction is apt to be; but this may be said of many other studies. There is no reason why an intelligent freshman may not begin the study of psychology and logic and perhaps of some other introductory philosophical branches; but as a rule better results may be obtained by admitting only such persons to these cla.s.ses as have familiarized themselves with university methods.

=Problems of philosophy and the development of thought to be emphasized, rather than the historical sequence=

We should recommend that every student in the college devote at least three hours a week for four terms to the study of psychology, logic, ethics, and the history of philosophy. In case not all these fundamental courses can be taken, the student will most likely derive the greatest benefit by giving a year to the study of the history of philosophy, or one term to the introduction to philosophy, where he has only that much time at his disposal. It seems easier, however, to arouse a philosophical interest in the average student through a study of the basal philosophical questions from the standpoint of contemporaneous thinking than through the study of the history of philosophy. He is generally lacking in the historic sense, and is apt to be wearied and even confused by the endless procession of systems.

This is particularly the case when the teacher fails to emphasize sufficiently the progressive nature of philosophical thinking in its history, when he regards this as a mere succession of ideas rather than as a more or less logical unfolding of problems and solutions--as a continuous effort on the part of the universal mind, so to speak, to understand itself and the world. A course in the introduction to philosophy acquainting the student with the aims of philosophy and its relation to other fields of study, and placing before him an account of the most important problems of metaphysics and epistemology as well as of the solutions which have been offered by the great thinkers, together with such criticisms and suggestions as may stimulate his thought, will awaken in him a proper appreciation of a deeper study of the great systems and lead him to seek light from the history of philosophy.