imately related to the lives of
the students.

(_b_) Closely related to this first cause of ineffective teaching is a
lack of sympathetic understanding of the student's viewpoint. The
scholarly teacher, deep in the intricacies and speculations of his
specialty, is often impatient with the groping of the beginner. He may
not realize that the student before him, apparently indifferent to the
most vital aspects of his subject, has potentialities for development
in it. His interest in his researches and his vision of the
far-reaching human relations of his subject may blind him to the
difficulties that beset the path of the beginner.

(_c_) The inferiority of college teaching in many institutions can
often be traced to the absence of constructive supervision. The
supervising officer in elementary and secondary schools makes
systematic visits to the classrooms of young or ineffective teachers,
observes their work, offers remedial suggestions, and tries to infuse
a professional interest in the technique of teaching. In the college
such supervision would usually stir deep resentment. The college
teacher is, in matters of teaching, a law unto himself. He sees little
of the actual teaching of his colleagues; they see as little of his.
His contact with the head of his department, and his departmental and
faculty meetings, are usually limited to discussions of college policy
and of the sequence and content of courses. Methods of teaching are
rarely, if ever, brought up for discussion. The results are
inevitable. Weaknesses in teaching are perpetuated, while the devices
and practices of an effective teacher remain unknown to his
colleagues.

(_d_) A fourth factor which accounts for much of the inefficiency in
college pedagogics is made the thesis of Dr. Mezes' chapter on "The
Training of the College Teacher." The college teacher, unlike teachers
in other grades of an educational system, is expected to teach without
a knowledge of educational aims and ideals, and without a knowledge of
the psychological principles which should guide him in his work. The
prospective college teacher, having given evidence of scholarship
alone, has intrusted to him, the noisy, expressive, and rapidly
developing, youth. We set up no standards aside from character and
scholarship. We do not demand evidence of teaching ability, a
knowledge of applied psychology and of accepted teaching practices,
skill in presentation, power of organizing material in