174 
The American boy can abridge his course 
one full year by completing his prepara- 
tory course at seventeen, as he can easily 
do if he has brains and industry. He may 
cut the eollege course by another six 
months if he is specially well prepared, 
able and industrious and may thus take his 
doctor’s degree at twenty-three and one 
half. 
On the other hand, the average boy slips 
a cog somewhere like his German brother 
and loses time along the way. Our statis- 
tics show that the average age of the fresh- 
man entering the University of Illinois is 
a little over nineteen instead of eighteen 
as it should be; or seventeen as it might 
well be; or even sixteen, as it sometimes is. 
Many students lose again in college and 
must return for a part or the whole of a 
fifth year before getting their first degree. 
Such students, however, would rarely be 
considered as candidates for the doctor’s 
degree, nor would they care themselves to 
attempt it. 
It will thus be seen that the courses in 
the two countries run along somewhat 
parallel lines so far as the formal require- 
ments are concerned. 
The German realschule, or gymnasium, 
is, on the whole, a more thorough and effect- 
ive center of training than the American 
high school. The teachers are better edu- 
cated and the discipline is more severe. 
The German boy must work or he is thrown 
out of the school. The American boy is 
permitted to dawdle along and fool away 
a good portion of his time without running 
any serious risk of dismissal or even of be- 
‘ing required to take the year’s work over 
again. 
: In the best American high schools with 
properly educated teachers the American 
‘boy has a chance of acquiring as good a 
training as his German brother, or would 
have such a chance, if the lazy idlers in his 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 892 
class could be put in a division by them- 
selves. Under the actual circumstances, 
he must use one year in college, and some 
high authorities would say two years, in 
order to get as far along in real mental 
training and effective knowledge as the 
German boy when he leaves the prepara- 
tory school. 
The German engineering school gives 
little attention to the so-called general sub- 
jects in its curriculum. These are taken 
care of in the preparatory school. No 
languages or history appear, among the re- 
quired or elective subjects. Certain gen- 
eral subjects which have a practical value 
for the engineer, like commercial law, pa- 
tent law, finance, political economy, etc., 
are listed among the possible courses to be 
chosen, while opportunity is also offered 
for courses in foreign languages—F rench, 
Russian, English, ete. 
To put our American engineering schools 
on a par with the German as educational 
institutions, we must first of all improve 
the quality of our preparatory instruc- 
tion. This will be done, not by lengthen- 
ing the college course, or by merely re- 
quiring a bachelor’s degree for admission ; 
but by insisting that the student who 
wishes to take up engineering studies 
should have a thorough grounding in the 
elements of a liberal education, including 
the mother tongue, foreign languages, 
mathematics, history and the natural sci- 
ences. This can all be acquired by the 
time the student is eighteen or nineteen 
years of age without spending three or 
four years in college after leaving the high 
school. Perhaps a good compromise might 
‘be effected for a time by requiring one or 
two years of general study in an arts 
“eourse as a preliminary requirement for 
admission to the technical courses. If 
mathematics and physics, chemistry and 
drawing, were prescribed for this college 
