70 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 707 



p^ through progressions, q^ through quadratics, L =: logarithms, e^ elective. 



There is a general tendency over the 

 country to increase rather than diminish 

 the entrance requirements in mathematics. 

 Several institutions have recently done so, 

 and at a number of others there is a feel- 

 ing that both trigonometry and college 

 algebra should be required. This disposi- 

 tion to increase the entrance requirements 

 has come about not so much because of a 

 feeling that these subjects can be as well 

 or better taught in the secondary schools, 

 but because of a feeling on the part of 

 the technical schools that the entrance re- 

 quirements should be made as high as 

 possible in order to give room in the cur- 

 riculum for those professional and tech- 

 nical branches which are now deemed 

 essential. It may well be questioned 

 whether we are not in some danger of 

 going too far in increasing the require- 

 ments. I am sure that we should all agree 

 that the guiding principles should be the 

 limitations of the secondary school pro- 

 gram and the ability of the pupil at that 

 stage of his maturity to readily grasp in 

 a comprehensive manner the subjects pre- 

 sented. For example, the advisability of 

 adding college algebra to the entrance re- 

 quirements is certainly open to the ob- 

 jection that portions of it are clearly be- 



yond the maturity of the average high 

 school pupil, and the introduction of plane 

 trigonometry would seem inadvisable in the 

 average high school on the accredited list 

 of the state universities of the Mississippi 

 Valley. When either of the fundamental 

 principles mentioned is violated, we shall 

 have coming to our freshman class, stu- 

 dents with a decided and a justifiable dis- 

 like for anything mathematical. Rather 

 than to encounter this danger, it would be 

 far better to extend the engineering course 

 over five years or to require a year of 

 college work in science and mathematics 

 before the student enters upon his tech- 

 nical course. In this connection, it is in- 

 teresting to note that the University of 

 Minnesota has recently extended its course 

 to five years for students in civil, me- 

 chanical and electrical engineering, dis- 

 tributing the required work in mathe- 

 matics throughout the first four years. 



The writer does not share with some the 

 feeling that a greater uniformity in en- 

 trance requirements is either desirable or 

 of any particular consequence. Each in- 

 stitution, and especially the state institu- 

 tions, must take into consideration what 

 the secondary schools eontributary to it 

 can do satisfactorily and then shape its 



