For Educational Accord

T HE editor of School and Society has more than once expressed regret that the professor of education attracts perennial criticism in many quarters simply by reason of his happening to exercise his profession, a criticism blindly insensible to individual differences. I am disposed to sympathize with the editor's view. So far as I know, I have got on very well with professors of education, and I am well aware that there are many of them to whom even the most casehardened professors, cloistered from the cradle within liberal-arts departments, could hardly take exception. I may say also that I have found that the atmosphere of a teachers' college can be very salutary to one who has been, because of traditional faith that knowledge of a subject is absolutely primary for the capacity to teach it, somewhat apathetic to talk of methods and of the necessity of keeping a constant and vigilant eye upon objectives. The liberal-arts professor transferred to the teachers' institution, provided he keeps an open mind, can hardly fail to be influenced by the perpetual emphasis around him upon the processes of teaching, without of course losing essential allegiance to pure learning as such. He knows that he is under critical surveillance of a type somewhat more intense than that to which he has been accustomed, by both his students and his colleagues. All this, I maintain, cannot but do him good, however much he may disagree with fellow faculty members concerning ways and means of teaching, and however heartily he may decry possible insistence on the idea that method, rather than background of knowledge, is the thing wherewith to catch the conscience of the would-be learner. But among professors of education, it does appear that there are too many partisans of inadequately considered change; and this fact, or condition, seems to the old-line teachers of old-line subjects to stem from insufficient educational moorings on the part of many socalled leaders in education themselves. Having grown up without certain stabilizing foundations, and finding themselves suddenly elevated to posts of high advisory function, they are naturally disposed to push their own wares, and not to favor those things which they know little or nothing about, but which just as naturally may seem to their colleague critics the most important. This is not to say that in the liberal-arts camp there is always wisdom. To put the matter somewhat differently, there seem to be too many professors of education whose reach exceeds their grasp by far too wide a margin. Education, as we know, is a relative newcomer in colleges and

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