54 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science 



This plea, then, is not against standardization but against over- 

 emphasis upon standardization. I am not arguing for chaos in scientific 

 education. But I do plead for the highest possible degree of individual- 

 ism in teaching. The relations between student and professor are 

 not susceptible to any sort of standardization. The appeal of mind to 

 mind must be a matter for individual development and the question of 

 just what is to be taught, and how, cannot be decided wholly upon the 

 basis of teaching system, or of clock-hours, credits, courses or semesters. 



We must not make a fetish of system. Why, I have heard members of 

 a college faculty argue with energy, and even passion, for insistence 

 upon the minutest details of their courses as they had developed them. 

 One might suppose that the routine of their semester's work had some- 

 how come down from Sinai, along with the thou-shalt-nots, or that 

 "eighteen-weeks-three-times-per-week" were one of the established laws 

 of nature. 



Our problem must include a solution of personal equation. It 

 might easily be that the two extremes of opinion, as represented in the 

 educational survey to which I have already referred, will turn out gradu- 

 ates about equally useful and equally qualified to represent that some- 

 what nebulous individual, the "chemical engineer", if these extremes of 

 development have followed as a natural consequence of the presence 

 of conspicuous ability in the departments represented by these extremes. 

 It is too much to suppose that this is always the case. We should indeed 

 be living in an educational Utopia if it were the case. But to just 

 the extent that such apparently one-sided development is due to the 

 policy of rewarding conspicuous teaching success by increased teaching 

 opportunities, and not to the operation of "pull" or personal favor or 

 politics, to such an extent will our scientific education be rewarded by 

 outstanding achievement on the pait of our teachers and of our gradu- 

 ates. When this shall be the case we shall forget much of our worries 

 about standardization. 



