Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-10-09
THE GOWNSMAN
The Graduate School
THIs week and last. in some score.

THIS week and last, in some scores OF in
stitutions throughout America, variously
called colleges and universities, graduate
work and study begins,/ An appendago ana
addition to the old accepted curriculum for
tho bachelors degree, the graduate school
is just about a generation old, though few
Of our oldest schools are entering into their
earliest thirties. The idea of further study
after graduation gave these schools at first
tho clumsy designation post graduate
schools" But as a graduate only becomes
such after graduation: we, for the most part,
now dodge the post.
GRADUATE schools came into existence
opartly because of foreign examples more
because it was felt that there must be some
opportunity for n man who wished nclthcr
to be lawyer, physician, nor minister,
to study for a more complete or more special
equipment than the ordinary college course
could give him. There were men who wanted
more knowledge and more training out OF
which to make better living. The tech
ncal schools supplied much of this. but
often at the expense of n more general and
liberal education. And even the, technical
schools did not supply all. II a student
wished to perfect himself in the higher ma
thematics for example, either to teach or
for the love Of the subject, the applications
OF mathematics to engineering or shpbuild-
ing or mining were not exactly what he
wanted And the student Of chemistry,
physics or biology soon found himself be-
yond the industrial applications of those
subjects. Hence the graduate school came
into existence to train i'll higher learning.
in learning, unapplied and untcchnical,
with strong bias toward practical utility
in that it was, from the first, a school for
the training of teachers, but with an idcal
beyond this, the training of scholars as
specialists and investigators into new fields
OF learning.
THIS double function of the graduate
school has clung to it with some damage
to its free activity in each function.
teacher and an investigator are not always
to be found in the same man or woman. NO
one who teaches can possibly know too
much of the subject in his charge, but n
different degree of knowledge may suffice
for the mere teaching of topic from that
complete mastery which can alone equip the
investigator him who leads us out into new
and untrodClcn fields and adds. by actual
| discovery or at least by placing things in
trucr light, to the sum total of human
knowledge. 1t is no wonder, then, that
these two things, the training of teachers
and the training of scholars and invcsti
gators should have fallen somewhat apart.
On the one hand we are told by some that
q teacher had better spend more of his time
| in learning how to teach than to spend it
| all in the acquisition of his subject. Else
| where we find n certain condescensOn on
| the part of the men of microscopes and lab
Oratories for ''mcre teachers who only
impart what they have garnered and do not
acquire original or new stores of knowledge.
TNHE Gownsman has often wondered why
l. teaching is not recognized more commonly
as the art that it is. technical matter
pure and simple to be learned like any
other neutrality-suspicious. playing. golf, bridge
or sermonizing-by practice: like any other
| technical matter, too, thing for which
| some people have an aptitude and some have
not. On the other hand. no one can speak
to be listened to more than once, unless he
| speak out of Il reasonable fullness of knowl-
edge 1t is not the primary function of
graduate school to train teachers, because
| in becoming mere training school" of this
! kind such a school becomes as much an in
| stitute of technology as school of en-
! gineering. graduate school. like Il col
| lege, ought TO stand for knowledge, pursued
| disnterestedly and for its own sake. 1t
ought to make scholars, not pedagogues. in
| vestigatOrS not mere teachers. 1t ought to
be the school of our great scientific men to
! be, our historians. our linguists and philo-
| logians, not merely a place for the equip
ment of school superintendent, college
| teachers, deans and presidents.
A MONG the things on the credit side of
|
| that we seek so eagerly to find and set
against that black balance of debt and loss,
II more general recognition of the practical
value of the trained mind may be set down
as an indubitable item. We may not have
! had sufficient number Of specifically trained
mathematicians or engineers; had the war
| lasted longer we might not have had even
| doctors enough to go around, but we did
| have a respectable body of men who knew
! the discipline of schools, that proper foun-
dation for the discipline of life; and these
| constituted the material out of which the
| leadership of the war was improvised with
results, despite all cavil, remarkably sue
cessful.
WITH the schools and the colleges devoted
! w to that general education which should
| he omen as foundation to all and with the
technical schools, whether of trade science,
| medicine. law or education. applying edu =
cation to the practical purposes of each, the
| graduate school. takes its place at the apex
of our educational system as properly the
school of specific inquiry, the school of
individual development and research, in
which the chosen scholar. man or woman.
may devote his time to amplifying his
knowledge and with it the knowledge of the
world. There is a real danger that our
American graduate schools may become too
much mere schools for the making of teach