bargaining with school boards, and arguments to legislators, but it should not mean threats, intimidation, and strikes. A contract is inviolable. The teacher who is not forced to accept appointment and who cannot be locked out of his schoolroom has no excuse to strike. When every expedient is exhausted and a school or system is still unwilling to put its work on a professional basis, the last resort that is honorable is for teachers to refuse appointment and to brand that school or system as unpatriotic. It follows that no teacher with any professional pride will fill a place left vacant under such circumstances.

5. The organization should coöperate with every other group of citizens for the promotion of the public good, but should avoid entangling alliances with anyone.

Entangling alliances. The teacher occupies a peculiar position in the body politic. He instructs children in the rights and duties of citizens. His wards of to-day are the voters of to-morrow. Some of them will be found in every group, party, sect, and organization that exists in the community. He should teach them the fundamental principles of American life and help them to make wise choices in their affiliations, but he may not proselytize or conduct propaganda for any cause on which citizens are divided. A decent respect for the opinions of others must characterize all that he does. The organization, therefore, which acts as the super-teacher cannot favor either Jew or Gentile, republican or democrat, capitalist or laborer. It honors them all for the good they strive to do, and will join with them in all good works, but it cannot be subservient to anyone. I realize that the American Federation of Labor is potentially one of the

most beneficent organizations in the United States, and I have the highest regard both for its leaders and for their objects, but it would be a mistake both for the Federation of Labor and for the prospective organization of teachers, to form an offensive and defensive alliance. It might be the easiest way to secure an increase of teachers' salaries, but more pay is not the only object of a teachers' organization, and not the one that will insure its greatest usefulness either to the profession or to the public.

It would be just as fatal to become entangled with the Manufacturers' Association, the Bar Association, the Christian Association, or the Democratic Party. If this latter suggestion is ludicrous, so also is the example set by some groups of teachers who have already identified themselves with the labor organizations. "Friends with all, but allies of none," must be the slogan of a teachers' organization.

The attainment of professional aims. These five points seem to me worthy of consideration by those who would write a code of ethics for teachers and a constitution for a teachers' organization. My chief concern is to free teachers from local oppression, to change their status from employees of a school board to servants of the State, to demand of them professional fitness, and to expect of them professional service, and to evaluate their worth by their contribution to American citizenship. Once these ends are attained, I am certain the public will gladly pay the price. Center the united strength of half a million of teachers on these points, and the teachers' millennium will soon be ushered in.

CHAPTER XIV

THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING1

HE problem of professional training is to-day the most important problem in the administration

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of American universities. Reckoned in terms of cost, or of equipment necessary, or of students and teachers engaged, there is no other feature of university work so prominent. Indeed, if student population continues to increase at anything like the ratio of increase experienced in the last decade, the time is surely coming when some of our universities—particularly state universities will be exclusively devoted to professional training and to the prosecution of research - itself a highly specialized form of professional training. The academic instruction now given in the freshman and sophomore years will be relegated to junior colleges, as is now being done in California, where the State University is overcrowded. Even a short look ahead justifies special consideration of the nature and extent of professional training in the future development of the university.

Shortening the period of apprenticeship. What is professional training? Let me say at the outset that I do not regard it as anything esoteric. It is merely a device to shorten the period of apprenticeship undertaken by every learner who would acquire the knowledge and skill possessed by the leaders in his field. It is a means of

1An address delivered at the inauguration of Lotus D. Coffman as president of the University of Minnesota 1921.

carrying the novice over the road already trod by his masters, and of saving him from some of the dangers that lurk in his way. Its highest aim is attained when, in addition to the modicum of knowledge and technical skill required for admission to the profession, the young practitioner goes forth with unselfish ideals of service and a mental equipment that impels him to develop his own professional strength.

Knowledge, skill and ideals. The aim of the professional school is to fit its graduates to give expert service in a society that feels its need of technical skill and is willing to pay for it. The world buys products of human labor, but what it really pays for is the technical skill of the worker. And back of technical skill lie specialized knowledge and the fine art of using it properly. Indeed, the only difference between the artisan who repeats a thousand times an hour the same clever trick of manipulation, and the operative skill of the great surgeon, lies in the extent of knowledge focused on their tasks and the ideals that inspire the workers. Both workers may have skill of the highest order, but in the one, the center of control is the spinal cord; in the other, a higher center takes charge. Specialized knowledge, high ideals, technical skill - these three are the trinity of professional guidance.

Proportioning professional aims. It follows, therefore, that a professional school should set up three dominant ends to aim at. In its curriculum it should strive to organize and systematize the knowledge available in its particular field so that its students may get the essential facts needed at the beginning of their career; in its teaching

it should give inspiration to creative effort and altruistic service; and at some stage of its training provision must be made for gaining technical skill. The pedagogical problems of all professional schools grow out of these three fundamental requisites. These factors, however, are all variable quantities. A professional school may be acceptable in general and yet be weak in one or more of these essentials. The ideals that guide the faculty may be rightly conceived, and yet fail to function in the lives of students and graduates. The knowledge gained in course may be defective because of lack of scholarship on the part of instructors, want of intelligence in students, or through bad teaching. Technical skill may be purchased at too great a cost, or neglected to the point of leaving graduates helpless on entering their vocational employment. Right proportion in the adjustment of these essentials is the crux of administration in every type of professional school.

The curriculum of the professional school. - Consider first the problem of the curriculum. The professional student is not concerned with science in general, or philosophy in general, or anything else in general. His needs are very specific. He is given absurdly short time to get the information that scholars and masters of his subject have been collecting for centuries. His task is to select what is usable, to rearrange and classify it, to order it in such a way that principles shall emerge which may guide him to new knowledge or direct his practice. The whole process of education hitherto experienced is now reversed. Instead of getting a liberal education that aims to develop the man through culture and discipline of academic studies, the professional student finds himself in a situation that

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