Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 353]

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History University of Illinois

schools of education was exceedingly bitter. Some one at that time characterized the two methods of education in this way. 'The old school trains the student to express his thoughts clearly and effectively, the new school gives him some thoughts to express. • This statement points out what was then and is now the weakest point in a scientific education. It was not and is not at all difficult to find a man, scientifically educated, thorough master of his subject, yet utterly incapable of imparting his knowledge to others, and who in consequence is an entire failure as a teacher. "Dr. Gregory saw this danger very clearly and as one means of counteracting it he devoted a large share of his daily chapel talks to different phases of this subject. These talks were all the more effective because he had in his faculty at the time an exceedingly brilliant man, universally liked by the students, unusually successful in all his personal undertakings and yet except for the enthusiasm he inspired in his students a complete failure as a teacher. Dr. Gregory was so much in earnest about this matter that he sometimes permitted himself to use rather startling methods in order to drive home his point. One morning, having been detained in his office a few minutes beyond the time for chapel assembly, he hurriedly entered the room, walked quickly up the aisle, mounted the platform and as he suddenly turned said 'Boys, it does not make any difference how much good stuff is in a jug, if the stopper is driven so tight it cannot be drawn the whole thing is almost worthless.? Then using this as a text he talked to us for half an hour on the loss of efficiency which many men suffer through their inability to tell other people the things they really know. This talk was certainly effective not only through the clearness with which the subject was presented but quite as much through the unusual character of the introduction. "As another means to the same end, Dr. Gregory announced one morning at chapel that the faculty had decided to organize two literary societies, and to assign each student to one or the other. He then proceeded to read the roll with the statement that the even numbered students were assigned to the Philomathean and the odd numbered to the Adelphic. It will be seen that such an arrangement came as