Across a deep pit, the faculty of Arts and Sciences has traditionally glared at the faculty of Education. Its antipathy has arisen from the attitude that a Graduate School of Education is little more than useless and from resentment of the inference cast by the latter's very existence that there is more to teaching than a knowledge of the subject taught. This attitude is merely a single instance of a general attitude to the same effect that teachers are born and not made, that teaching is an art which no amount of training in the science of education can impart. Dean Holmes of the Harvard School of Education has summed it up as the opinion that "any fine boy or girl will make a good teacher" whether or not he has any knowledge of the technical aspects of teaching itself.

Dean Holmes annual report is a significant educational doctrine. For it has logically and comprehensively stated the case for Graduate Schools of Education as training grounds for teachers. Such schools have two separate functions. They train educational administrators whose sole function will be formulation of general educational policy. They also train individual Latin and History teachers in the science of teaching. This first function is generally admitted. The second is almost generally denied.

Yet, according to Dean Holmes, a good Latin teacher is versed not only in Latin but also in general educational theory: the psychological, the philosophical, and the sociological bases of education. Given such a technical knowledge of teaching itself, he will grasp his problems more fully and cope with them more capably once they are recognized.

This idea is not new. There are hundreds of Fallen Oak Teachers' Colleges which sell Child Psychology and Fourth Grade Methods in wholesale quantities. What is new is Dean Holmes' emphasis on the necessity of correlating the science of education with knowledge of the liberal arts subject itself. The two must be integrated so that each individual teacher can apply his technical knowledge differently.

If teachers must be taught to teach in this manner, the fact must be recognized. It must be recognized by the arts and sciences faculties, for it is only by their cooperation that the training can be brought about. Harvard has to an extent recognized it in the Board for the Degree of Master of Arts in Teaching, composed jointly of professors in Arts and Sciences and professors of Education. Candidates for the degree become proficient in their chosen subject under the former, and study the science of teaching under the latter. But a greater degree of cooperation is necessary.

It must also be recognized by the general public. For, until it is, teaching standards will remain low, and teachers will be selected because they attend Sunday School or marry politicians' cousins. Only when the teacher is generally conceived as a technical expert in the art of teaching will this type of teacher be injected into the veins of secondary education. And only then will secondary schools gain the new life which President Conant sees as essential for the perpetuation of democracy.