658 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 776 



tional ; others, like drawing, have a distinct 

 bearing on later professional work, but still 

 are taught in the theoretical spirit, and 

 with the purpose of developing power. To 

 the latter class may be said to belong the 

 subject of English composition. It is in- 

 tended to furnish a tool for business and 

 professional life; but at the same time it 

 should serve to broaden the student's in- 

 terests, to stimulate his power of observa- 

 tion, and to make him more alive to his 

 inner mental process and better able to 

 control it. 



The time devoted to this subject is con- 

 fined to two terms of fifteen weeks each 

 during the first year of the four-year course. 

 In the first term there are two class-room 

 hours, and two hours of preparation each 

 week. In the second term only half this 

 time is allowed, and the division between 

 class-room hours and preparation is left 

 somewhat to the option of the instructor. 

 When theme work is being assigned it is 

 usual to* consider two hours— the prepara- 

 tion period for the week— sufficient for the 

 production of a theme of about three hun- 

 dred words. 



The work of instruction is carried on 

 during the present year by a teaching force 

 of eight persons. No detailed account of 

 class-room methods is here intended, or 

 would, indeed, be possible. The work has 

 always been treated, by those responsible 

 for its control, with a breadth and liber- 

 ality which leave all possible scope for 

 individual ingenuity in the teacher and for 

 the adoption of new methods. To the 

 writer, accustomed for some years to this 

 large measure of freedom, it is incon- 

 ceivable that work so dependent for its 

 success on inspiration could be aceom-' 

 plished under any other system. At all 

 events it is the happy privilege of those 

 who teach English at the institute to regu- 

 late their own work, in all except its essen- 

 tial policy, and to adapt it, in so far as 



their various capacities allow, to their own 

 powers and to the needs of the class. 

 Under these conditions I must necessarily 

 confine my account to a general view; and 

 it is my purpose accordingly to discuss the 

 underlying principles of this teaching, in 

 so far as they seem likely to bear on the 

 general problem of engineering education. 

 Students enter the institute on the basis 

 of a high-school or college preparatory 

 training. Therefore, as far as English is 

 concerned, they come to us fresh from the 

 study of the requirements adopted by the 

 Commission of Colleges in New England. 

 They have been reading selected works 

 from the English classics, discussing theii^ 

 style and construction, writing apprecia- 

 tive essays about the characters which oc- 

 cur in them, or perhaps attempting "daily 

 themes" on subjects of a supposedly more 

 personal nature. In lieu of other models, 

 however, we may fairly suppose that the 

 style in this written work has been, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, molded after that 

 of the classics studied. The works pre- 

 scribed are, I believe admittedly, neither 

 the most absorbing nor the most noble in 

 the language. I doubt if they are such as 

 the teacher himself would choose as the 

 preferred companions of his idle moments ; 

 but rather they illustrate the general truth 

 that we advise children and the young to 

 undertake many tasks from which we our- 

 selves should shrink. Of necessity, then, 

 the college requirements in English are in 

 many cases administered by the secondary 

 school teacher as a medicine; and, in view 

 of the pressure of preparatory work, in 

 maximum doses. As a result of these con- 

 ditions the engineering student enters the 

 institute with strongly conceived notions 

 about the study of English. He does not, 

 as a rule, come of a "literary" family. 

 Outside school requirements, his reading 

 has been drawn chiefly from the Scientific 

 American and perhaps the newspapers. In 



