OLD LAMPS FOR NEW 239 



sightedness of that large majority of employers who for years have re- 

 quired from the engineers they employ not broad training and scientific 

 capacities, but a facility in the particular operative requirements of 

 their industries. In part, this condition has arisen from the competition 

 of technical schools for students, and the resulting tacit commercial 

 agreement between institution and student that each graduate shall be 

 found his first employment. Thus an institution chooses the heads of 

 its departments, as far as its finances allow, not for teaching ability, 

 but for influential acquaintanceship with men of affairs. To place the 

 average of its product it must train for immediate usefulness. There 

 results a number of attendant and contributory evils, such as shop 

 methods of instruction by an inbred teaching staff, the detailed fol- 

 lowing year after year of the same outlines for courses, the perform- 

 ance of laboratory work as an end instead of as a means of encouraging 

 analysis and vivifying principles, an over-emphasis of draughting and 

 machine shop work, the construction by classes of dynamos and steam 

 engines as advertising evidence of technical proficiency, the steady 

 cramming of formulas and numerical values of physical constants, the 

 narrowing commercialized outlook upon all problems of life, the lack 

 of esprit de corps, and the more or less entire absence of cultural 

 studies and influences. Such an arraignment can not hold against all 

 our technical schools, but upon the whole the exceptions are not in- 

 dividual institutions, but their individual departments. 



Whatever may be the faults of curriculum and educational policy 

 to which the technical school student is subjected, he learns to work 

 hard, consistently and with scientific honesty. Upon this gospel of 

 hard work depend almost entirely his chances of future salvation and 

 success. In the commercial world, however, many pockets and ruts 

 await the man of narrow training and hard-working proclivities. 

 From these pockets, to be found in any large manufacturing or opera- 

 ting industry, too frequently the technical school graduate fails to rise. 

 In many cases native disabilities are to blame, but more frequently 

 the narrowness of an early training is the fundamental cause. This 

 narrowness of preparation may be analyzed generally into three de- 

 fects. 



First, and most seriously to be charged to the account of the tech- 

 nical schools, is the lack of scientific breadth and depth which has been 

 previously mentioned. Upon too thin a layer of pure science and 

 mathematics does the engineering school build its superstructure of 

 commercial machines and technical processes. Too soon do empirical 

 equations and shop rules take the place of mathematical analysis and 

 a priori reasoning, Too soon does the laboratory work become an exer- 

 cise in the operation of commercial machines under conditions which 

 require of the student only the throwing of switches and the reading 



