Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1907-01-08
Neal Brown Talks of University
Before the 7 Teachers.
(From the MiIwaukee News. Dec. q. J

From the Milwaukee News, Dec. ~
Neal Brown of Wausau in an address
on 1.-THE People and the University"
said in opening that he came to bear
the testimony of an alien and stran-
ger, whose greatest familiarity with
teachers had been derived through the
baton of authority Mr.. Brown remind
ed his audience that he owed little TO
school or college, and then he set out to
treat the educators to some valuable
criticism. His address was in part as
follows:
81 need not eulogize the teachers
profession. 1t stands first in my judg-
ment among all the activities OF men.
1t has upon those who follow its engross-
ing labors, two effects, one to make
them broader and wiser, another to
narrow and atrophy them. Scholastic
studies may become the dullest mill
round of inconsequential and fruitless
toll. If you of this profession, do not
at all times guard yourselves against
this evil tendency you may degenerate
into the merest hacks or pendants,
wasting your lives in dropping buckets
into empty wells, growing old IN draw
ing nothing up, becoming mere func-
tionaries- not living men and women"
Referring to the enforced conditions
for entrance to the university, Mr..
Brown said:
81 hot mil q
non-high school graduates are quite
rigid, tending to exclude students who
may be better qualified to enter the uni
versity than high school graduates. An
example of this is that the holder of an
unlimited state certificate legally quail
fed to teach in accredited high schools,
cannot enter the university without an
examination. As to restrictions placed
upon entrance into the law school they
would have shut out from such advan-
tages hundreds of the great jurists and
statesmen in American history.
THEY ARE TOO EXCLUSIVE.
1.-THE heads of departments in the uni
versity do not come into close enough
contact with the students. If this is
because the heads of department are too
busy writing books and doing literary
or other work for their own profit and
fame, those outside activities should be
curtailed Whatever be the reason, it
is fact that too much of the work, is
left with unclassified assistant profes-
sors, and mere instructors, of untried
capacity A student is entitled to the
fullest possible fellowship with the
heads of departments. He should not
be put off with the ministrations of a
professional understudy-a poor relat-
ion as it were, at the board.
SCHOOL INSPECTION INADEQUATE.
High school inspection on the part
of the university has been bad. 1t is
an inspection that does not inspect. 1t
has been carried out in part at least
through the agency of inspectors who
are not fitted for the work They have
made casual and cursory inspections of
high schools and their reports of results
have been calculated to deceive.
This evil of incompetent inspection
has been widespread and should be re-
formed. Such an inspector should be
person of as high character, breadth
and scholarship as the head of the state
university. think it is the strong de-
sire of the educational forces of the
state that these abuses should be cor
rected, and that the university should
divert more energy and more funds
from the ornamental and the impracti-
cal, and inaugerate system of inspec-
ton that will increase the efliciancy of
the common schools, that will put the
university into communication with
teachers in the high schools through
men of breadth, character and
scholastic equipment of the very high
est order.
"A mere teacher, and by this l mean
one who can only 60 through the form
of teaching, is nearly worthless. The
same can be said of the mere lawyer,
versed ouIy in the black letter lore and
musty precedents of the law. He may
be able to frame nice sharp outlets of
law, or white the point of an abstrac-
ton down to nothing, or divide hair
between the south aud southwest sides,
but if he is nothing more than this, as a
practical advisor he will be a failure.