SOME CURRENT PROBLEMS IN THE TEACHING OF ACCOUNTING.

Accounting is passing through the familiar stages that other and older fields have traversed in their development. In accounting, as in other fields, practice preceded theory. Practice went forward on a hit-and-miss basis, but it went forward. There was no ready reference to a body of carefully reasoned principles, and there was no time, under the press of everyday business, to develop one. In the first stage of accounting development, about the only steadying factor was the high caliber of the men engaged in evolving practice. These men mostly relied on their common sense to solve problems. Modem accounting is now struggling through the second stage of its development, the stage of criticism. The criticism is mostly of practice including terminological disputes but criticism has also been made and received on such fragments of theory as we find in written form. The present stage has also changed course and shifted emphasis by reason of an ever tightening trend of governmental regulation, and ever increasing burden of taxation on concerns and individuals alike.