Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery - Dental Columbian Yearbook (New York, NY)

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ORAL HISTOLOGY ORAL ANATOMY MOSES DIAMOND D.D.S. Associate Professor of Dentistry M. RUSSEL STEIN D.D.S. Research Assistant JACOB ERBREICH D.M.D. Assistant in Dentistry CHARLES F. BODECKER D.D.S. Professor of Dentistry EDMUND APPLEBAUM D.D.S. Assistant Professor of Dentistry V WILLIAM LF.FKOWITZ D.D.S. Assistant in Dentistry

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We consecrate our professional knowledge and skill to the advancement of human welfare, safety, and progress. As we benefit by the technical knowledge and public esteem won for the Profession by Den- tists who labored in the past, we shall ever strive to augment that heritage before passing it on to the Dentists who are to follow. We therefore affirm our guiding purpose: So to live and work as to justify the trust and confidence reposed in the Dental Profession. To carry out professional engagements with generous measure of performance, and with fidel- ity toward those whom we undertake to serve. To foster a spirit of courteous consideration and fraternal cooperation within the Profession. To extend encouragement and a helping hand to younger Dentists and to those in need. To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the Profession before personal advantage, and the Public Welfare above all other considerations. After 55 years of contact as student and practitioner with the problems of the dental pro- fession, I affirm my belief that a faithful adher- ence to the principles stated in Doctor Down- ing ' s definition, and in the above vow will result in a broader success, a happier maturity, and a more contented seniority than can be hoped for if they are not observed. I want to speak of another fact that can profoundly influence the future of every young practitioner who gives heed to it. To be fully occupied and steadily striving for a worthwhile and desirable objective, is the surest road to a contented life that has been discovered. One who constantly carries a sense of having more things to do than he can possibly accomplish, seldom has a discontented moment. The most unhappy man I have ever known was one who said and believed that everything worth while doing in this world had already been accomplished — that all the really worthwhile dis- coveries had been made and all methods of ex- ecution in important fields had been perfected. As I was casting about for a message wor- thy of these pages, I garnered from the writings of Lincoln Steffens the striking concept that no- thing is yet done finally and right — that nothing is yet known positively and completely. If this be only a partial truth, then the whole world is full of things to find out and to do, to do over and to do right. To further quote Steffens: — We have not now and never have had a good (perfect) government — there is not now and nev- er has been a perfectly run railroad, school, news- paper, bank, theater, factory, grocery store. No business has been built, managed, financed as it should be, must be, and will be someday. Again he says: — what is true of business and politics is gloriously true of the professions, the arts and crafts, and the sciences. In science probably 90 per cent of the knowledge has yet to be discovered. Chemistry and physics are little more than a sparkling mass of questions. Progress is rampant in every field. In our own profession you have learned how each dec- ade and even each year has brought forth some new achievement to enable us to deliver better service to humanity. As you have learned of past discoveries you have sensed their profound effects upon the practice and the service values of your profession. My meaning will be plain if you stop for a moment to consider coping with the problems of daily practice without cohesive gold foil, rubber dam, vulcanization, gold cast- ing, present day ceramics, modern denture re- tention, anaesthesia and the x-ray. You have seen desensitization of dentine developing under your own eyes. All your elders will tell you that our field is still full of unsolved problems awaiting solution. It is for the youth of today to find the solution of these problems. Oh you, of ' 37 Columbia Dental, g : rd your- selves and march on to scale the heights we, your elders, have but glimpsed in the distance. As you pass, be assured we stand at salute as you lead the way for those who will follow on after you to try for the peaks which you in turn will see lying on beyond you.

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MOTIVATION IN EDUCATION MOSES DIAMOND, D.D.S. Associate Professor of Dentistry As I look back upon my own schooling, I do not remember particularly being conscious of any criticism of the methods employed, with the exception of isolated experiences. I ap- parently had had a reasonable adjustment to the stereotyped procedure and was strangely alert to a self responsibility for doing my job. I did have an awareness, however, that the same thing could not be said about many of my school mates. It is exactly these differences in reaction to an environment with a particular set of con- ditions upon a group of personalities, which pre- sent the most difficult problem in education. The entire development of the movement of modern education, I believe, may be summed up in an attempt for a keener understanding of the personality as a whole, and the development of a system which may constantly be in a state of flux to cater to the personality with its wide range of variability. Just what the important landmarks in the rapid growth of education over a period of about one-quarter of a century have been and to what extent the realization of the objective has been attained, I will endeavor to show. The rigidly formalized and impersonal ap- proach of a quarter of a century ago, which unfortunately still exists in many sources of edu- cation as if no development had taken place, may be illustrated by a present-day experience. A mother disturbed by the reports of bad deportment of her child in the early grades of public school, finally sought an interview with the teacher. She sat through the hour. Two two-syllable words were spelled out of a group of about sixty children and repeated several times. One row of children were then called upon to stand and each child in turn was asked to spell the alternate word. This procedure was carried through the group. Two interesting things happened. The children of the first row, long since finished, with nothing to do, found themselves in all sorts of mischief. The children of the last rows, confused by the constant repeti- tion of the sounds of alternate words, began spelling his word using the first syllable of the one word and the second syllable of the second word. No additional comment need be made. Bergson in 1913, engaged in psychological experiments of similar character with similar re- sults. The personality in this instance as of a quarter of a century ago, was given no consid- eration. Soon after the World War, criticism of the formalized methods of education began to seep into our intellectual weeklies and one read a great deal in the Freeman, New Republic, and the Nation, against forced feeding in educa- tion. In 1916, I read Freud ' s Three Contribu- tions to the Theory of Sex, a monograph de- livered in the form of lectures at Clark Univer- sity in 1910, at the invitation of Stanley Hall. I mention these two sources of early influence at this time, as the beginning of my interest in education, to show particularly the opposite poles of approach from which my interests sprang. The one was pertinent criticism of the philosophy of educational procedure, the other a new approach to the evaluation of personality understanding. Following the war in 1919, in the anticipa- tion of becoming a parent and in the realization of the responsibility for the education of an off- spring, my organized interest in matters of edu- cation began. From that time on, as time would permit, my interest in education ran along paral- lel lines — the study of the philosophy and meth- ods of procedure of education and the patient, but fascinating pursuit of personality evaluation. The barra ge of criticism against forced feeding in education emanated from the writ- ings of John Dewey, whose philosophy partly in- fluenced by William James, placed the emphasis on the doing instead of the talking, thereby changing the entire philosophy of educational procedure. John Dewey may fittingly be called the father of modern education. Marietta Johnson, I believe, was the first in this country to attempt a practical application of the Dewey principles and started an experi- mental school in Alabama, which, although pretty much removed and isolated from any large cen- ter of activity, soon attracted considerable at- tention. Some years later she started a similar experiment in Greenwich, Connecticut, and dur- ing the summers, offered some courses and prac- tical demonstrations in the Greenwich School. Some few teachers and parents availed them- selves of the opportunity. The experiment at this stage was carried on with very young chil- dren. In 1914, Margaret Naumberg started a similar experiment which three years later be- came the Walden School. With the new approach of education orthodox psychology was founded wanting.