JOEL H. HILDEBRAND University of California, Berkeley, Calihrnia
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philosophy of teaching 'which I am submitting to you has evolved during nearly a half century devoted to the twin activities of teaching and research. The "activation energy" which caused me to commit it to writing was furnished by word from the Editor of the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION that at least one chemist, somewhere, had expressed curiosity about my theories of teaching chemistry. I took this as a compliment since editors reject papers often but solicit them rarely. After the paper had been written, and while it was undergoing the ripening process important for perfecting cheese, wine, and papers such as this, there came the flattering invitation to receive the Remsen Award and to deliver an address suitable to the occasion. I offered a purely scientific topic but suggested that my paper on my philosophy of teachmg might be equally appropriate in view of the fact that Remsen was not only a great chemist but also a great teacher. I take the position, as you will see, that teaching and research are complementary and not antithetical activities a t the level of college and university, and I trust that my address, in this respect a t least, may be worthy of the memory of Ira Ramsen. Mine is a philosophy in a Socratic or Confucian sense; it is a way that appeam good to me, not a logical system that another should necessarily follow. It seems appropriate, therefore, to present it somewhat conversationally and to speak in the first person. My philosophy begins with a principle of conduct which is applicable not only to teaching but to all of lie. It is well expressed in the homely adage, "Whatever is worth doing a t all is worth doing well." T h i s sounds like a moral maxim but it is in reality only good common sense, because a consciousness of skill, of artistry, of accomplishment in the face of difficulty, are essential ingredients for a satisfying life. Even the uninteresting tasks that are a necessary part of the lives of us all can be transformed by this principle into interesting games. Let me illustrate. I n my youth I once faced a summer vacation during which, as a dutiful son and nephew, I had the cleaning of quantities of fish. Now cleaning fish is about the last activity one would choose for the sheer joy of it, but I had an idea. I decided to make a virtue of necessity. I invented motion analysis and found it possible, thereby, a t each fish-cleaning session, to beat my preceding score of fish per minute. This was something that the fisherman could not usually
do, and it became really exciting as the scales flew and the stop watch ticked. So, if even fish cleaning could be thus made interesting, I am sure that almost anythmg can, and teaching, certainly. And the principle works both ways, for poor performance can spoil the fun of an inherently pleasurable activity. Swimming, for example, is a delightful sport for an expert but hardly for a novice who inhales water along with his air. I like to suggest to the occasional student who says he is not interested in chemistry that the fault may not lie entirely with the subject or the teacher but with the feebleness of his own effort. He may be one of those students who, as described by a certain exasperated teacher, comes to class, settles down onto the small of his back and seems to say, "Well, here I am, now, damn you, learn me." I like to suggest to students who confess to lack of interest that they dismiss the question of their interest in chemistry and concentrate for a while upon interest in developing their own powers; that they approach chemistry as the candidate for a track team approaches the bar over which he is trying to jump, not because he is fascinated by the bar, hut because he wants to improve his skill to surmount that kind of an obstacle. Now this principle applies tb teachers quite as much as to students; indeed, the mistake many people make is not to apply this principle to all of their main activities. There are persons who, although they teach for their living, do it so indifferently that they derive little satisfaction from it. Some justify their indifference by the oft-repeated fallacy that the same person cannot be good a t both teaching and research. That is not trne, for many eminent scientists are superlative teachers. If an ambitious young instructor desires to demonstrate his ability at research, there are better ways than by neglecting his teaching obligations. Nor should a teacher expect that infertor scholarship will he taken as evidence of superior teaching. This is even worse, for although teaching is not essential to scholarship, scholarship is essential to teaching. How can a teacher interest his students in the subject a t hand if he is not sufficientlyinterested in it himself to ask any hitherto unanswered questions? For that is the foundation of research. To ladle out knowledge from a stagnant pool is not good teaching. The discovery of truth and its transmission to others belong together, and their joint exercise can afford satisfactions greater than either 'Presented as the Remsen Lecture before the Maryland Sec- one practiced by itself. There are some university teachers who regard it as tion of the American Chemical Society a t Baltimore, May 27, beneath their dignity to teach freshman. I find this 1949. 450
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di5cult to understand. During thirty-five years, I have taught freshmen and graduate students. I have begun by operating on the raw material and ended by putting on some of the 6nishing touches, and I have found the beginning to be quite as interesting as the end. The raw material is far more plastic than it will be a t any later stage; the freshmen are forming their habits, making their choices, 6nding out how to study and how to think. They are humble and receptive, full of purpose and hope. They are more dependent upon good teaching than at any later period, when they will have learned more about going under their own power. It is, therefore, more of a challenge to teach at this stage and more of an art to do it well. I am not alone in this opinion; it is the accepted doctrine in the department to which I belong, where a number of permanent staff members regularly take charge of small freshman quiz sections. There have been as many as eight full professors so engaged during a single term. They have set a good example to our teaching assistants. THE JOB
And now, what is the job? To this question there is no single, simple answer. A'well-developed discipline, such as chemistry, presents more "infinite variety" than Cleopatra. So do the students, for they come from school with all grades of ability and preparation, from poor to excellent. Some come with interest.already aroused which it would be criminal to disappoint. Some are capable of becoming scientists and scholars, and should be so treated. The majority, although they will not become "intellectuals," will be the citizens who and and be prepared to do both as intelligently and wisely as possible. One may help them to think more keep at the steering wheel of life, with emotions in their place in the fuel tank. The task appears to many persons so diverse as to require two different courses, one 'for preprofessional another for what has come to be called "general education." This demand for separ* tion is based upon the lack of general educational value in those courses which deal mainly in facts and techniques, with laboratory exercises which encourage the student to see only what he is told he should see. I agree that this is not good general education but I claim that neither is it good preprofessional education; it is technical training only and should be left to vocational schools. The prospective professional chemist should, in his freshman year, be introduced to chemistry as a science, not merely to its facts, terminology, techniques and recipes. 1 heartily agree with the remark made by Professor Debye that "The use of a funnel in the mouth of the student is no way to instill an ability to think." But how about the freshman who does not expect to become a scientist? It seems to he generally agreed t h a t every educated person in these times f3hould have some understanding of what science is all about, but
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there the agreement ends. Some try to solve the problem by means of "survey," or "integrated" courses, consisting often merely of brief exerpts from a variety of sciences. The men called upon to contribute these scientific scraps are considered to be such "narrow specialists" (I cannot see why a specialist must be narrow) that it is evidently t,he students who must do any integrating that is achieved. My colleague, Professor John D. Hicks, has remarked that these so-called "integrated" courses might quite as properly be called "dispersed.l' Now there is a profound difference between knowing some elementary facts about a variety of sciences and knowing what science :tself is about. I t is the difference between the upstart "general education" and the old and respectable "liberal education." The former is often spoken of as if it were merely an improved version of the latter, but judging from some of the curricula designed to impart it, it is a collection of miscellaneous and necessarily superficial knowledge which is to be poured into a student, usually within two years, after which he is "generally educated" and can either leave college or "specialize." The process of imparting it becomes much like one described in a delightful German rhyme, Wenn alles schl&ft,und einer spricht, Den Zustsnd nennt man "Unterricht."
which 1have freely translated as follows: When many sit in relaxation, While one dispenses information, We call the process education.'
~ i b education ~ ~ ~ is l concerned.primarily not with facts but with ideas. The liberally educated person is marked not by what he knows but by how and how often he thinks, and the liberalizing process accordingly should involve a generous amount of thinkmg, It can he only begun in college, but not there completed, not t beginning I regard as even in four years. ~ u this important as preparation for a as liberal education, and, therefore, as yon have by this time suspected, I am advocating a single approach in the freshman year to both purposes, I am well aware that this is a minority viewpoint, hut one of my hopes iil this address has been to enlarge the minority who accept it, T H R WAYS ~ OF TEACHING
But before proceedmg with my thesis, I wish to consider two other ways of some understanding which, unlike the potpourri of which I have ahove, are in accord with the liberal tradition. ~h~~~ have been ably discussed by President James B, conant in his hook entitled, ,,On Science,yJ He them in these words: "There are two ways of probing into complex human activities and their products: one is to retrace 1
H I L D E B E J. ~ ~H., , "The Low-Down on Higher Education," Delkin, Stanford, California.
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the steps by which certain end results have been produced. the other is to dissect the result with the hone of revealing its structural pattern and exposing theI logical relations of the component parts, and, incidentally, exposing also the inconsistencies and flaws. Philosophic and mathematical minds prefer the logical approach, but it is my belief that for nine people out of ten the historical method will yield more real understanding of a complex matter." He states the essence of his plan as follows, "What I propose is the establishment of one or more courses a t the college level on the Tactics and Strategy of Science. The objective would be to give a greater degree of understanding of science by the close study of a relatively few historical examples of the development of science." I doubt whether the philosophical and the historical approaches would be as distinct in practice as Dr. Conant implies. A philosopher could hardly avoid case histories and Dr. Conant philosophizes about the ones he uses as illustrations, and all teachers of chemistry, I am sure, use historical material. As I wrote these paragraphs, I had just come from delivering a lecture on "The Story of Helium." Nevertheless, most teachers use history as seasoning rather than as the main diet. I contend that there is a third approach, one that is in better accord with what I have called the "Strategy and Tactics of Teaching." Designating the two prece.&mg approaches as the "logical" and the "chronological," the one I advocate is the "psychological." It is based upon two fundamentals of the psychology of learning, first, that it is easier to interest students in the more immediate, live problems than in the more remote, dead ones. The story of a scientific idea is far more exciting if it leads up to the present, into explorations still going on, with unsolved elements inviting immediate hypotheses and possible experiments. The discovery and isolation of plutonium has, I think, far greater pedagogic value than the story of the devflopment of the air pump. The second fundamental IS that "ability to do something difficult is developed not fist by hearing it expounded but by &st-hand effort and practice. The role of the learner must be an active one. If the goal of 'understanding science' on the part of laymen is to bring a little more reasonableness into human affairs, is not the most appropriate method the encouragement of a little scientific thinking and experimentation on the part of students, even if necessarily on a rather elementary plane, rather than reliance solely upon descriptions of scientific effort by others? This principle is well understood in the realm of physical education, where muscular control is developed by performance, with repetition directed towards ever higher levels of difficulty and skill, and only incidentally by lectures and demonstrations. Athletes, including amateurs, are developed on the field, not on the bleacher^."^ I find powerful support for my contention in these words of Dr. J. R. Oppenheimer, in his fascinating
lecture entitled, "Physics in the Contemporary World.''' In it he says, in part, "President Conant, in his sensitive and thoughtful book, 'On Understanding Science,' has s ~ o k e na t length of these matters. He is aware of how false it is to separate scientific theory from the groping, fumbling, tentative efforts which lead to it. He is aware that it is science as method and not as doctrine which we should try to teach. His basic suggestion is that we attempt to find, in the history of our sciences, stories which can be recreated in the instruction and experiment of the student, and which thus can enable him to see a t first hand how error may give way to less error, confusion to less confusion, and bewilderment to insight." "The problem that President Conant has here presented is indeed a deep one. Yet he would be quite willing, I think, that I express skepticism that one can recreate the experience of science as an artifact. And he would no doubt share my concern that science so taught would be corrupt with antiquarianism. It was not antiquarianism, but a driving curiosity, that inspired in the men of the Renaissance their deep interest in classical culture . . . . I am inclined to think that with exceptions that I hope will be many, but fear will be few, the attempt to give the history of science as a living history will be far more difficult either than to tell of the knowledge that we hold today, or to write externally of that history as it may appear in the learned books." VARIOUS WAYS OF PRESENTING CHEMISTRY
I and my colleagues have experimented for many years upon the problem of presenting chemistry to students in such a way as to activiate their minds, to stimulate them 'to develop some degree of skill to think and to act scientifically. This demands effort on the part of the teacher as well as the student. It is easy to make up exercises and examinations callmg for facts, recipes, and parroted definitions;. i t takes time and thought by the instructor to coustmct those that call for thought by the students, but it can be done. The working out of an "unknown" in qualitative analysis offers one such opportunity. It is possible, of course, to treat "unknowns" in qualitative analysis by the aid of only recipes and standard procedures, but it is possible on the other hand to make each unknown a little piece of original research on the part of the student. Instead of asking a stock question such as "What is the standard method of separating iron and zinc?" one may put such a question as the following, "An unknown is made by selecting one or more of the following metals in powder form, Zn, Cu, Ag, Fe, and Al. Treatment with 0.1 M Hi304 gives effervescence, and leaves a residue, which, after separation from the solution, dissolves in 2 M HNOa to give a colorless solution. The sulfuric acid solution gives no precipitate on addition of Hi3 but a black precipitate upon subsequent OPPENHEIMER, J. R.,"Physics in the Contemporary World," +
q u o t e d from my review of Dr. Conant's book in THISJOUR- Second Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 25, 1947. NAL. 24, 570 (1947).
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addition of NaOH. On the basis of these observations, write in the space immediately following the formula, (+) for each substance known to be present, (-1 for each substance known to be absent, and a question mark (?) for each substance whose presence is in doubt." In order to answer such a question a student has not only to know his facts in terms of their actual, visual significance, but he has to th'mk out the various cross-relationships, as in a game of chess. Again, some degree of understanding of the relation between atomic structure and the physical and chemical characteristics of matter is not tested by the mere recitation of facts regardmg the Periodic System of elements, but it i s required in order to answer a question like the following: "Atom X has an atomic number of 10. Atom Y has 7 valence electrons, with 2 electrons in the group below the valence group. Atom Z has 11 more extranuclear electrons than Y. Atom Q has 2 valence electrons, with 18 in the underlying level. On the basis of these figures write the formula of: (a) the most stable ion of Y, (b) of 2, (c) the molecule of the free element X, id) the molecule of the element Y, (e) the most ba;ic hydroxide, (f)the most stable binary compound with hydrogen, (g) the most probably ammonia ion, (h) the hydroxide most likely to be amphoteric." There is no chemist in this audience, however well educated, who could answer that question without considerable analysis, nevertheless, our freshmen -do develop the ability to handle questions of that degree of dfficulty. It can be done. We are not limited merely to pious hope that our students are gaining some degree of understanding of science-and not but first-hand understandillg. I have a suspicion that the difficulty lies sometimes not with the students but with certain instructors, the kind whose own chemical knowledge is a stagnmt pool, not a flowing stream, fed by sources high in the mountains were of research. I have heard of instructors embarrassed by their inability to answer certain questions in our freshman books, and who t h e ~ f o r conclude e that the books are much too d8icult for freshmen. I I do in of their have more faith in freshmen instructors, and I know a good deal first hand about freshmen because I have nearly always taken charge of a small quizsectionof my own. If every lecturer posemortem on his to large classes would lectures, he would learn a great deal about students and about himself. Laboratory experiments can be accompanied by questions such as these, "Predict what will happen when. . . ., etc., and What conclusion can you draw from a comparison of the amount of silver chloride precipitated in your three tests?" The laboratory should be the central feature of the course, for i t is there that the student assumes his most active role, but it is possible to inject the spirit of inquiry also into the lecture. One of my younger colleagues told me that he had been chagrined by the failure of a lecture experiment to turn out the way he
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had said it would. I said to him, "When you are as old as I am you will never say, 'I shall now show that . . . .,' but rather, 'Let us see what will happen if . . . .' " While that is playing safe it is also better pedagogy. The lecturer can introduce many topics in the form of questions. He can use dramatic suspense with telling effect, taking advantage of the superior possibilities offered by a subject such as chemistry. He should think n terms of lecture experiments, not lecture demonstrations. I have always felt thankful for my advantage over, say, the professor of economics, who cannot exhibit his "economic man" on the stage as I can my colors and explosions. It is an advantage envied me by a philosophic colleague who regretted that "a false syllogism in philosophy could not explode and injure the performer the way it could in chemistry." Now a teacher squanders all his dramatic advantage if, in order merely to exhibit his knowledge, he tells in the first act how the plot is going to turn out. No playwright would commit that error. VALUE OF APPROACH
But, the reader may well ask, does this approach accomplish its purpose? My answer is that the evidence has been favorable in enough cases to make me feel that our efforts have been very much worth while. 16 has been likewise oftenunfavorable enough to keep me in a wholesome state of humility and experimentation, I offer one inkresting bit of unsolicited student testimony selected from many. hi^ student wroteas follows: When I attended your f i s t lecture for the semester, I found outexactly how 1 stood, Your picture of the memorizing student fitted me perfeetlg;.. I knew that either I mwt change my methods of studying or my proposed career as a medical research worker would be closed as a possibility. Well, I changed! Believe me, it was difficult to force myself to understand chemistry instead of simply to absorb it like a parrot. But I was able to do it. After a few weeks, my gray matter began to function properly m d I was able to anallyee simple problems and draw correct conclusions. The ability to 89 this typeof andytic d thinking became easier after a time and I succeeded in obt&iningan "*I' in the course. Wbile the grade was important (as all "A's" are to premed students) I believe the real value of your course in my case was to force me to use my brain correctly. Since that time I have never lacked self-confidenceas I formerly did. I am sure that my new-found ability to think has helped me to do better work in my other studies a t California and will continue to help me throughout my life.
But not every student, I must admit, responds l i e that one. In a class of over one thousand there are always some who do not respond to any intellectual stimulus one is able to furnish. There are the students who feel guaranteed for life by father's business and mother's social position, and othen whose minds simply cannot "take it," like the boy who wrote a letter to me explaining his failure by his "low mentabolism" (a new term which surely deserves a place in our language). We university teachers should not be like sheep drovers, spendmg most of our effort upon the stragglers, we should spend much of it upon those out
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in front who do not demand our attention. A university should be primarily not a place of compulsions but one of opportunities. If its attention is absorbed by the one, it cannot do justice to the other. One can make a rich fare available to students with robust appetites without trying to force anyone to swallow more than he can digest. I h d , indeed, that stragglers are more stimulated by curiosity about what is happening up front than by any prodding I can,deliver from the rear. I have been speaking thus far mainly about teachimg and examining freshmen, but, as I stated earlier, I teach also graduate students, and I wish to add a few remarks about them. There are two questions to ask ourselves: one, "What are we trying to accomplish?" and, two, "Will the means we propose to use be likely to accomplish that purpose?" If one may judge from the means often employed in traiuimg and testing Ph.D. candidates, the purpose is t o turn out walking encyclopedias, persons whose minds are stored with .nformation. As the process actually works, however, the information the candidates try to cram into their minds is the particular stock the members of the examining committee have in theirs. When I was preparing for my doctoral examinations I studied from a precious record of the questions asked during previous years by the several professors in the department, accumulated out of the goodness of their hearts by the previous victims. Fortunately for the prospective victims, most of the . questions re-occurred with cyclic regularity. My role changing to that of inquisitor, I have become more and more grateful, as the years have passed, for my privileged position in not having to try to answer the questions put to the candidates by my fellow inquisitors. As chemistry has spread out in all directions, the portion of it a t my command has become a continually shrinking portion of the total, and my scores on factual examinations would have sunk continually lower and lower. But fortunately for me, the only questions I need try to answer are those of my own choosing, and I am free to neglect others, as I must, in order to answer these. Indeed, in order to accomplish anyth'mg important in our short lives we must deliberately neglect a lot of other thimgs and this principle guides the activities of every successful scientist. Now if we are trying to help graduate students to become scientists, should we not begin by treating them as scientists? Should we not encourage in them the qualities of the scientist, such as imagination, originality, initiative, judgment, and curiosity, expecting them to acquire the knowledge essential to their work but not insisting upon too much more? If so, should not the teaching and testing be designed to develop these qualities and not t o keep candidates forever boning for examinations? A scientist is essentially a person who can solve problems, not a person crammed with information. When the Department of Chemistry in the University of California was taken over thirty-seven years ago - by . rs group of young iconoclasts, our first move was to replace graduate courses on standard subjects by semi-
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nars on subjects under active investigation by members of the staff. Next, we expected our students to begin research during their first year. Third, we limited the h a 1 examination to the field of the thesis, and eventually abolished it altogether, basing our final judgment upon the candidate upon the research represented by his thesis. Fourth, we radically changed the nature of qualifying examination for advancement to candidacy. We now permit the student to select his own weapons for his contest with the committee. He chooses three topics, one in each of the three fieldsorganic, inorganic, and physical-and prepares t o discuss them critically with the committee, which judges him upon the qualities of mind exhibited in both the choice and the handling of his theses. We have a t hand already his record in advanced courses and there is no point in finding out by further examination what we already know about him. We try to teach by drawing out the good in the candidate rather than by filling him up with our notion of what is good for him. If you think such teaching of graduates is too unorthodox I ask you to consider the subsequent performance of the doctors who have been educated in this way. MORE ABOUT LIBERAL EDUCATION
But to return to the liberal education of undergraduates; educational psychologists have discovered that there is only a pitifully small "transfer" from lessons learned in one fieId into another, and some have gone so far as to deny the possibility of any general mental discipline. I accept the finding that the transfer is small, but I believe that i t may be, nevertheless, one of the most important fruits of sound education. The function of ideas is to connect subjects which appear superficially unrelated, and a teacher who is not a "narrow specialist" but a broadly educated man, with a rich and varied experience, can do much to assist students to see possibilities for transfer Consider, for example, a question like this, "Given that the following reactions occur as written: Brz 21- = II 2Br-; 2Fe++ Br2 = 2Fe4++ 2Br-; Mn02 4H+ 2Br- = Brz 2Hz0 Mn++, what can you predict from these about the directions of the reactions 2Fe++ Iz = 2Fe+++ 21-? 2Fe+++ Mn++ 2Hz0 = MnOz 4H+ 2Fe++?" This disconcerts the average freshman as something altogether new, but one can point 6ut that the logic involved is widely applicable; indeed, he uses it confidently when he predicts the winner of the "big game" from comparative earlier season scores. He should not shy away, therefore, from the same logic in algebra with x's, y's, and 2's; or even with oxidation potentials in chemistry. Again, a teacher can make many openings for calling attention to the nature of the reasoning, and also t o the spurious nature of much that passes for reasoning in advertising and politics. I have had fun discussing such claims as the one that the use of a certain tooth powder would make one's teeth "from two and a half t o five and a half times brighter." Brighter than what
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was not stated, just "brighter." A properly educated person should question the standard, and how the brightness was measured, for if reasonably clean teeth could be made five and a half times brighter they should almost shine in the dark. I could write a hook upon this theme, but this particular audience hardly needs my help in supplying additional examples. And if the teacher is not completely "narrow," his students are likely to find it out, and be influenced by it, one way or another. I remarked casually to my class one day that the San Francisco orchestra was to play a Beethoven symphony on the campus that evening and I suggested that a good many of them might enjoy it if they should sneak away from the noises in their fraternity houses and attend the concert. "There are two main types of music," I said, "good music and popular music; good music is the kind that continually improves upon re-hearing, while popular music is so bad that no one can stand any single piece of it for more than one season." I suggested that they would hear more in the symphony if they should get someone to explain the structure of a Beethoven symphony. That was all I said, but a flock of them came to the desk a t the close of the lecture asking me to explain symphonic structure, so I gave an elementary exposition. After the concert, a number of them thanked me for awakening them to a new appreciation. This and similar instances have convinced me that a scientist can do something for the humanities which is all the more effective because it is extraprofessional. But one should try to do it only by hints, slipped in on the side, in small.doses, and never by extended sermonizing. If overdone it may only set up resistance. A teacher should not go about "with his mind unbuttoned." A liberal education, in my philosophy, is not a package which can be delivered, complete, in the two years prior to specializing in a major, nor even in four years. I t is a life-long process which can be only begun, but not completed, in college. I t is not a particular curriculum, nicely balanced between conflicting departmental claims. It is not a certain body of knowledge, although it cannot be acquired apart from knowledge. Its best teachers are specialists who are not narrow; men distinguished alike for the breadth and depth of their scholarship; men who not only think contagiously about their specialties but who are, at the same time, conscious of ethics, philosophy, politics, and the fine arts. Nor should their sense of the obligations of their calling be so narrow, according to my philosophy, as to end a t the doors of their own particular laboratories and classrooms, as is implied in the statement of "Com-
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mittee A for 1947" (not the current committee) of the American Association of University Professm, published in the Spring 1948 number of the Bulletin, which states, "So long as the Communist Party in the United States is a legal political party, affiliation with that party in and of itself should not be regarded as a justifiable reason for exclusion from the academic profession." According to this doctrine, a teacher of mathematics, for example, so long as there were no complaints about his understanding of his subject or his teaching, should suffer no loss of academic respectability if he should become, say, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. If one should question the propriety of his joining a group which makes a practice of terrorizing Negroes, he could reply, "It is not illegal, besides, you are imputing to me 'guilt by association,' and you can't prove that just because I belong to the Ku Klux Klan I really believe in its tactics, and furthermore, the right to belong to such an organization is part of my academic freedom." I can hardly believe that many in this audience would accept such a defense. Surely, the only proper attitude for a university professor to take toward any enemy of freedom must be that voiced by Thomas Jefferson when he said, "I have declared eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." In short, teachers should not be engineers operating academic machinery, or schoolmasters bent on circumventing student tricks. They should he men filled with the high ideal of a true university. A worthy philosophy of teaching must include such an ideal. I shall close with an expression of this ideal by John Masefield, in words more beautiful than any of mine, an ideal that should animate the teacher and, by his help and example, his students. .
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There are few emthly things more splendid than a University. In these days of broken frontiers and collapsing values, when the dams are down and the floods are making misery, when every future looks somewhat grim and every ancient foothold has become something of a quagmire, wherever a University stands, it stands and shines: wherever it exists. the free minds of men. urmd .. on to i.dl srul ivir tmq.iiry, m.,y still bring widom into human itTitirs. I i l w ;trr ire. wmhly t l h g m r m hqautiful than n i..ni\rr>ity I t is n plare whrw rhu?r wlm 1 1 ignumnc.7 ~ ~ may strirc to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see; where seekers and learners alike, banded together in the search for knowledce, will honor thought in all its finer ways, will welcome thinkersin distress or in exile, will uphold ever the dignity of thought and learning and will exsot standards in these things. They give to the young in their impressionable years the hond of s. lofty purpose shared, of a great corporate life whose l i n k will not beloosed until they die. They give young people that close compsnionship for which youth longs, and that ohanoe of the endless discussion of the themes which are endless, without which youth would ssem a wsste of time.
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