An Answer From Dean Holmes

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial "Educated Educators", in the CRIMSON of May 23, had some value, since it emphasized the importance of genuine learning on the part of teachers and real enthusiasm for their subjects. May I point out, however, that your editorial reveals a marked ignorance of the actual work of normal schools, teachers' colleges, and university departments of education in this country? It is quite apparent that you are unfamiliar with the organization, aims, and achievements of such institutions. I can not believe that the Dean of Barnard College, whose editorial in the New York Herald-Tribune, you quoted, is also uninformed on these matters. Would it not be well before you take up a subject of this kind to make sure that you know something about the real situation on which your editorial bears?

In the present instance, it would certainly have been easy for you to find out what is done in the training of high school teachers. Your statement that "it is, of course, high school teachers mainly who are attacked by the blight of 'method'" is altogether erroneous. Your subsequent statement "a man takes college courses in Education, studies child psychology and pedagogy at a normal school, and finally goes into a classroom with slight knowledge of and slight interest in the subject which he is teaching" is equally wide of the mark.

There is, in truth, some danger in state requirements in Education. Such requirements can not be said surely to make for improvement in teaching. They probably do less harm than you or the Dean of Barnard College may suppose; but argument on that point would have to be extensive, leading to rather nice distinctions. It is clear enough that every teacher who is to do anything like a good job should have all the scholarship implied by a good A.B. degree and more besides. In addition, he should have a thorough and well-ordered knowledge of educational conditions, problems, and techniques. This means so much more than anything you imply by your use of the word "method", that it is fatuous to say that a trained teacher ought to have both knowledge of his subject and knowledge of method. A trained teacher ought to be a person of learning and also a person who knows education. The Dean of Barnard College and your own editorial writer contributed to an important tendency in American education when they insisted that teachers should not study "method" before they know thoroughly the subjects they are to teach. This is indeed an important truth, but it is only a half-truth. Teachers should know their subjects thoroughly and they should also know what education is about, what its processes are, and how its undertakings should be organized and managed. In other words, you can't make an educated educator simply by teaching him a subject. Henry W. Holmes.