48 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science 



according to any known rules. Were it not so, life would be a very 

 drab affair. When the time comes (if it has to come) that character 

 and personality, knowledge and enthusiasm are to be blocked out with 

 compass and ruler, when reflection and reason and mental creativeness 

 can be run through the "qualitative scheme" and labeled with all of the 

 appropriate prefixes and suffixes and according to approved standardized 

 spelling, we shall then be living in a colorless and tasteless and odor- 

 less world, to be sure. 



Not only is it not possible to standardize human life and endeavor, 

 it is an absolutely unthinkable proposition. But we are constantly 

 trying to do this with our educational system, which has so much to 

 do with the shaping of life. The very word "system" implies as much. 

 We must agree upon methods of teaching. We must agree upon text 

 books, if possible, and all use the standard system of books. We should 

 standardize the length and content of our courses, the number of hours 

 to be spent in administering them and, by the student, in studying them, 

 the kind of preliminary examinations to be administered to candidates 

 for education, the principles to be used in grading examination papers, 

 the number of "experiments" or "unknowns" or "subjects" to be re- 

 quired of the student, and the number of years that the work of this 

 .system shall be followed (pursued or taken, according to the point of 

 view), and so on and so forth. 



Whether the lecture system is a failure or is not a failure — that 

 is a question that has long been debated. We should like very much to 

 know, so that we could definitely adopt it or rule it out, for our standard 

 courses in science. I should say that the lecture system is a failure, 

 and that it is not a failure, just as will be the case as long as it is 

 used, and just as will be the case with every other system that ever 

 will be tried. It is a failure in one class because the px'ofessor's con- 

 ception of a lecture is to exhibit to his students the dry-bones of science 

 in all of their inhuman nakedness, and without a particle of living flesh 

 to cover them. Or else he recounts, with infinite pains and with abso- 

 lute fidelity, the lessons exactly as they are found in some text book 

 or in his notes. In which case his class room becomes the abiding 

 place of boredom. 



The system is a success in another class because this professor is 

 able to remember when he, himself, was a student. He knows that 

 his students are unlikely to learn much from the spoken lecture unless 

 they first become interested and that one is not easily interested in 

 anything that is presented only in its ugliest and most unintere.sting 

 aspect. He is able to lead his students to think, and to generate in 

 them the will to extend their study outside the class room, while the 

 other can teach effectively only by hearing required recitations on 

 assigned lessons. 



I think that the most naive argument for standardization of chem- 

 ical education that I have heard is this: that it is highly desirable that 

 when a student goes from one college to another, or from a college to 

 a university, he shall be able to "make connection" with the least pos- 

 sible loss of time or effort. "Chemistry," "taxonomy," "optics" and other 

 such names shall mean, then, just the same thing in one place as in 



