Guiding the Teacher

Abstract

T HERE is a rising generation of scholars daring to gamble with their professional futures by expending creative effort on the problems of curriculum and method which are so crucial in general education. The number of these is insignificant, however, compared with the total output of our graduate schools, and when one realizes that more than one hundred and fifty institutions are offering survey courses, and these courses are only a single segment of general education, he can readily see why the supply of properly trained teachers is meager. A major problem facing those colleges interested in general education is that of obtaining a scholarly teacher who is interested primarily in students. Even when the graduate school has trained such a person, tradition is such that a young Doctor of Philosophy knows he is likely to lose the respect of those in his field if he manifests a major interest in teaching rather than in research. Young college teachers often fail to realize that college education must directly contribute to the social and personal adjustment of the student. In fact, most young men with doctorates believe that lower-division courses are primarily preparation for the upper-division courses, and that aside from this they have only a mental discipline value in the solution of life problems. They also have a tendency to place such an exaggerated emphasis on subject-matter that they often fail to consider the needs, interests, and abilities of the individual student in selecting methods of teaching. Because of the difficulty in finding qualified teachers, Stephens College seeks to employ only open-minded persons with sound academic preparation, and to supply while they are in service the training they did not and perhaps could not receive in graduate school. Two valuable aspects of this inservice training are the college program of educational research and the student-advising program. At first thought it may seem incongruous that an advising program could have a major objective additional to student advising; however, the needs of most teachers are quite similar to the needs of good advisers. It is the purpose of this discussion to present the advising plan as it contributes to the improvement of teaching. Every teacher at Stephens is an adviser to approximately ten students, assigned according to the student's