lied to
specific problems in engineering. Applications give added insight into
knowledge and therefore make for greater thoroughness of
comprehension.

=Teaching as a process of arousing self-activity=

Locke's Blank Paper Theory, enunciated centuries ago, has been
repeatedly and triumphantly refuted even by tyros in psychology, but
in educational practices it continues to hold sway. College teaching
too frequently proceeds on the assumption that the mind is an aching
void anxiously awaiting the generous contributions of knowledge to be
made by the teacher. College examinations usually test for
multiplicity of facts acquired, rather than for power developed.
College teaching usually does not perceive that the mind is a reacting
machine containing a vast amount of pent-up potential energy which is
ready to react upon any presentation; that development takes place
only as this self-activity expresses itself; that education is
evolutionary rather than involutionary. Teaching is, therefore, a
process of arousing, sustaining, and directing the self-activity of
pupils. The more persistently and successfully this activity is
aroused, the more systematically it is directed to intelligent ends,
the more skillful is the teaching. Teachers do not impart knowledge,
for that is impossible; they _occasion_ knowledge. Only as the teacher
succeeds through questions, directions, diagrams, and all known
devices, in arousing the self-activity of the student, is he producing
the conditions under which knowledge is acquired by the pupil.

=Evaluation of common methods of teaching=

The methods commonly used in college teaching are as follows:

1. Lecture method, with or without quiz sections.

2. Development method, with or without textbook.

3. Combination of lecture and development method.

4. Reference readings and the presentation of papers by students.

5. Laboratory work by students, together with lectures and quiz
sections.

Teachers have long debated the relative merits of these methods or
combinations of them. They fail to realize that each method is
correct, depending upon the aim to be accomplished and the governing
circumstances. No method has a monopoly of pedagogical wisdom; no
method, used exclusively, is free from inherent weakness. A teaching
method must be judged by its ability to arouse and sustain
self-activity and to attain the aim set for a specific lesson. With
this standa