Fourth, adhere to what a friend calls the 16 to 1 basis--16 parts fact and 1 part theory. Fifth, eschew the professor's chair. The blackboard is the teacher's "next friend." Recent time-motion studies lead us to believe that no man can use a blackboard efficiently unless he stands! The most celebrated teaching in history was peripatetic. Sixth, postpone the reconciling of discrepant social theorizings to the tougher-hided seniors or graduate students, and stick to the presentation of "accessible realities." Finally, an occasional friendly meeting with students, say once or twice a semester at an informal supper, will create an atmosphere of coöperative learning, will break down the traditional barriers of hostility between master and pupil, and may incidentally bring to the surface many useful hints for the framing of discussion problems.
=The course of study--(a) Determined by the maturity of the students=
To a certain extent teaching methods are determined by the age of the students. In 1910, of all the institutions reporting, 73 stated that sociology instruction began in the junior year; 23 admitted sophomores, 4 freshmen, 39 seniors. But the unmistakable drift is in the direction of introducing sociology earlier in the college curriculum, and even into secondary and elementary schools. Hence the cautions voiced above tend to become all the more imperative. Moreover, while in the past it has been possible to exact history, economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, or education as prerequisite to beginning work in sociology, in view of the downward trend of sociology courses it becomes increasingly more difficult to take things for granted in the student's preparation. Until the dream of offering a semester or year of general social science to all freshmen as the introduction to work in the specialized branches of social science comes true, the sociologist must communicate to his elementary classes a sense of the relations between his view of social phenomena and the aspects of the same phenomena which the historian, the economist, the political scientist, and the psychologist handle.
Both the content and methods of sociological instruction are determined also in part by what its purpose is conceived to be. A study of the beginnings of teaching this subject in the United States shows that it was prompted primarily by practical ends. For example, the American Social Science Association proposal (1878), in so far as it covered the field of sociology, included only courses on punishment and reformation of criminals, public and private charities, and prevention of vice. President White of Cornell in 1871 recommended a course of practical instruction "calculated to fit young men to discuss intelligently such important social questions as the best methods of dealing practically with pauperism, intemperance, crime of various degrees and among persons of different ages, insanity, idiocy, and the like." Columbia University early announced that a university situated in such a city, full of problems at a time when "industrial and social progress is bringing the modern community face to face with social questions of the greatest magnitude, the solution of which will demand the best scientific study and the most honest practical endeavor," must provide facilities for bringing university study into connection with practical work. In 1901 definite practical courses shared honors of first place with the elementary or general course in college announcements. The situation was practically the same ten years later. Still more recently Professor Blackmar, one of the veterans in sociology teaching, worked out rather an elaborate program of what he called a "reasonable department of sociology for colleges and universities." In spite of the fact that theoretical, biological, anthropological, and psychological aspects of the subject were emphasized, his conclusion was that "the whole aim is to ground sociology in general utility and social service. It is a preparation for social efficiency."