e, but they
have the failings common to platitudes. It often happens that those
who know but lack in imagination and sympathy are by that very knowing
rendered unfit to teach. "Knowing" so well, they cannot see the
difficulties that beset the learner's path, and they have little
patience with the student's slow and measured steps in the very
beginnings of their specialty. It is true that some are born teachers,
but our educational institutions could not be maintained if classes
were turned over only to those to whom nature had given lavishly of
pedagogical power. Experience teaches even teachers, but the price
paid must be computed in terms of the welfare of the student. Teaching
is one of the arts in which the artist works only with living
material; yet college authorities still make no demand of professional
training and apprenticeship as prerequisites for admission to the
fraternity of teaching artists.

Ineffective college teaching will not improve until professional
teaching standards are set up by respected institutions. The college
teacher must be possessed of ample scholarship of a general nature. He
must have expertness in his specialty, to give him a knowledge of his
field, its problems and its methods. He must be a constant student,
so that his scholarship in his specialty will win recognition and
respect. But part of his preparation must be given over to
professional training for teaching. Without this, the prospective
teacher may not know until it is too late that his deficiencies of
personality unfit him for teaching. With it, he shortens his term of
novitiate and acquires his experience under expert guidance. The plan
of college-teacher training, given by Dr. Mezes in Chapter II, so
complete in scope, so thoroughly sound and progressive in character,
is here suggested as a type of professional preparation now sorely
needed.

=Testing the results of instruction=

The usual test of teacher and student is still the traditional
examination, with its many questions and sub-questions. We still
measure the results of instruction by fathoming the fund of
information our students carry away. But these traditional
examinations test for what is temporary and accidental. Facts known
today are forgotten tomorrow. The professor himself often comes to
class armed with notes, but he persists in setting up, as a test of
the growth of his students, their retentivity of the facts he gave
from these very notes. In the f