Septembeb 4, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



291 



maties. Let it be pure or applied mathe- 

 matics, it is the principle involved which 

 must be taught. If this rule is not ad- 

 hered to we shall find ourselves teaching 

 something different from that which it was 

 intended to teach. 



The principle is that the technical 

 courses in our engineering schools must be 

 separated from our general educational 

 courses. The technical courses are for the 

 purpose of fitting the man for a special 

 life work which is to come later on. The 

 general education which he should have, 

 by way of preparation, should precede his 

 technical course as far as possible. 



The straight technical course should be 

 given as a course of two years extent, 

 while the general and preparatory sub- 

 jects should precede in a three- or four- 

 year course. 



The University of Minnesota has adopted 

 a five-year engineering course. This is 

 along the lines I am recommending and I 

 prophesy that it will soon be extended to 

 other schools and separated into two parts. 



Let your professor of engineering teach 

 engineering and your professor of mathe- 

 matics teach mathematics. That is the 

 general pedagogical principle I want to 

 announce. 



By C. S. HovTE, President, Case School of 



Applied Science. 



I have been very much interested in the 

 discussion of this subject because for 

 thirteen years I was a professor of mathe- 

 matics in an engineering school and dur- 

 ing the past five years I have been en- 

 deavoring to reconcile the differences be- 

 tween professors of mathematics and pro- 

 fessors of engineering. One thing in this 

 discussion which strikes me as very pecul- 

 iar is the sad lack of knowledge displayed 

 by the engineering professors as to what is 

 being done in mathematics in their own 

 schools. I believe from my experience and 



from what I have seen in other institutions 

 that the professors of mathematics are 

 teaching mathematics most admirably as 

 mathematics, but they are not teaching 

 mathematics as a department of engineer- 

 ing. I do not believe that mathematics 

 should be taught as a department of engi- 

 neering. Mathematics is a science in itself 

 and should be taught by specialists in that 

 science if our students are to be trained 

 in the proper way. The professor of 

 mathematics has two duties to perform. 

 One is to teach his students the principles 

 of mathematics— that is, to teach them to 

 reason and to understand why certain 

 processes are right and why others are 

 wrong. The student must also be taught 

 how to use his mathematics so that he can 

 solve any problem as soon as that problem 

 is expressed in mathematical terms. 

 Another duty of the mathematician is to 

 teach the student to be exact. Unless the 

 engineer is exact, unless he can obtain 

 definite and reliable results in his engi- 

 neering work, he can not succeed in his 

 profession. This accuracy must be very 

 largely taught in the mathematical depart- 

 ment and much of the time and care be- 

 stowed upon classes is for the purpose of 

 accomplishing this result. 



I believe also that the professors of engi- 

 neering are teaching engineering thor- 

 oughly and well. The difficulty which we 

 are discussing to-day is not in the teaching 

 of mathematics alone nor in the teaching 

 of engineering alone, but in the connection 

 between the two. The technical student 

 is, I believe, taught pure mathematics well, 

 but when he enters the class in engineering 

 he finds that he has to deal with mathe- 

 matics under a new form — that is, the par- 

 ticular engineering subject he is studying 

 must be translated into mathematical 

 terms and this is where he frequently 

 meets with great difficulty. The student 

 in algebra who has learned to solve equa- 



