Rexford Tugwell, Brain Trust Head, Declares Teaching by Lectures Futile

"I believe in an apprenticeship education in economics, as well as in other subjects," said Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and present leader of the "brain trust," in an interview with the CRIMSON recently. Among several Harvard economic instructors, it is openly rumored that efforts are being made to induce Tugwell to accept a position on the Harvard faculty in the near future. Similar rumors exist at Washington.

"Economics is a subject of vast and increasing importance. Economic motives lie very deep, perhaps even deeper than Freud conceives of sex motives as lying; for if the perpetuity of the race rests on sex motives, then the continuing existence of the race rests on economic motives. They underlie and color all our conduct. Such a fundamental subject certainly should be taught with thoroughness. The question is how to teach it with thoroughness.

"Education joined to research is ideal education. Old pedagogical methods are out of date. We know now that a student is not a vessel into which refined and clarified wisdom may be poured. Rather, a great deal of refining and clarifying must be done in the student's own mind. We have discovered that education is not passive but active; that a lesson learned by rote is a lesson forgot. Methods of education of the older generation were undesirable, not only because they were passive, but also because they proved themselves impracticable with the advent of mass education. Lectures grew more formal, great numbers of text books were written from the lectures, and teachers of younger grades were expected to teach by expounding them. The utter futility of this as an educational method has begun to dawn on the whole academic world.

"Today the newer methods of instruction respect the intelligences of the students quite as highly as they respect the intelligences of the teachers. These methods consist concretely in constructing typical situations in which the minds of students are put to it to find solutions. And when the student fails, then is the psychological moment for the teacher -- he suggests ways out of the difficulty. The hope is that the student will leap at suggestions because his mind has already fumbled for them, feels a definite need for them, and so sees their significance. This is the new conception of the teacher's task; and this must be the new conception of the teaching method of economics."