It is obvious that no general law can be formulated for the adjustment of aims to the needs of students. Teachers have usually found it necessary to change the aim, the content, and the method of a course according to the needs of different classes of students. In one of our colleges science students are required to take two years of Latin. The course offered these young men gives the ordinary drill in grammar, translation, and analysis of Cæsar, Cicero, and Vergil, as well as practice in prose composition in which nondescript and disjointed English sentences, grammatically correct, are turned into incorrect Latin. This description, without any changes whatever, applies also to the course given in the introductory years in Latin to students specializing in the arts. Even a superficial analysis reveals a different set of needs in the two classes of students which can be served only by a corresponding difference in content and mode of teaching. A student who takes French or German because he wants enough mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational phases of these languages.
There are courses that are foundational and that must therefore be governed by an eclectic aim. In the first course in college physics it is obvious that we must teach the necessary facts of the subject as well as its method. These aspects of the work must be emphasized with equal force for all students; no differentiation need be made for future medical or engineering students or for prospective teachers of the subject in secondary schools. Generally speaking, initial courses in a department are governed by an eclectic aim, but in the advanced courses there must be constant adjustment to the needs of various groups. An eclectic aim can be as effective an instrument in enhancing the quality of teaching as a single, clear-cut aim, provided there is a clear recognition of the relative importance of the ends set up, and provided a definite plan is evolved to attain them.
The aim or aims of a subject or a lesson, once formulated, must always be kept before the students as well as before the teacher. Every pupil must know the ends to be attained in the course he is taking, and as work progresses he must experience a growing realization that the class is moving toward these ends. The subject matter of the course, the method of instruction, the assigned task, now glow with interest which springs from work clearly motivated. The average student plods through his semester from a sense of duty or obedience rather than from a conviction of the worth of both subject matter and method.