An Arraignment of Productivity

Abstract

A N INVESTIGATION of the authorship of articles presented during the year i928 in some of the leading journals dealing with the subject-matter taught and studied in teachers' colleges indicates that the I37 teacher-training colleges of the country are woefully deficient in making contributions to a solution of present-day educational and scholastic problems. The twenty-two journals examined covered the fields of education, mathematics, English, foreign languages, science, psychology, and social science. Table I shows the number of pages contributed by various authors in ten leading educational journals during the year. The facts found here may be summarized as follows: In education, a field in which the teachers' college should make a great contribution because of its particular interest, measured by the number of pages written, 53 per cent of the material was presented by faculties of universities, I3 per cent by public-school administrators, i i per cent by faculties of teachers' colleges, IO per cent by classroom teachers, 6 per cent by miscellaneous individuals not directly connected with school or college instruction, 5 per cent by faculties of liberal-arts colleges, and 2 per cent by faculties of technical schools. In other words, in the field of education the members of university staffs were contributing fully five times as much to the solution of present-day problems as teachers' college faculties, and teachers' college faculties, in turn, contributed about as much as classroom teachers or school administrators. Of course, it would be absurd to ignore the comparative numbers of instructors in teachers' colleges and public-school teachers and administrators, but, in all probability, it would not be comfortable to compare the number of individuals engaged in teaching education in universities with the number engaged in dealing directly with the problems of education in the teachers' colleges. Table I I shows the number of pages contributed by various authors to twelve leading academic journals during the year i928. From this table it is found that, in terms of the number of pages written, university faculties are contributing 6i per cent of the material, miscellaneous individuals i2 per cent, the liberal-arts colleges 9 per cent, classroom teachers 9 per cent, faculties of technical schools 4 per cent, teachers' colleges