NovEMBER 29, 1918] 
those who criticize the present methods for 
emphasizing the virtues of obedience and 
discipline and for failing to promote inde- 
pendence, and impulse, and constructive 
doubt, and spontaneous enquiry. 
Undoubtedly modern educators substi- 
tute largely passive acceptance for creative 
thought, a substitution that is deadening 
rather than stimulating, and it is to the 
eredit of Sigma Xi that thirty years ago it 
was founded to do its part in persuading 
students to see and to think for themselves 
and to make deductions, based on their own 
studies. 
The old-fashioned teacher says that by 
the old régime was bred a sense of obliga- 
tion, a respect for authority, a readiness to 
respond to the eall of duty, traits that are 
sadly missed in the rising generation; while 
the opposition claim that these good quali- 
ties need not be sacrificed in the modern at- 
tempt to arouse individuals to mental 
alertness and self-reliance. 
A few years ago, one of the former mem- 
bers of this chapter came to be in charge 
of a class in applied mechanics in a western 
university and he tried an experiment. 
Instead of teaching general laws by lecture 
and recitation, he gave out practical prob- 
lems on pressures and on strength of beams 
and guidéefl the students into a knowledge 
of the laws by which that particular prob- 
lem could be solved. He reports a greater 
understanding of the principles than ever 
before and an unheard of enthusiasm for 
the subject. With so many of us teachers, 
why should not we turn our scientific minds 
on to the problems of effective teaching? It 
ean not of course be altogether mechanical. 
We can not invent any adequate system of 
gauging the intelligence, or of regulating 
hours of study, of composing syllabi or of 
imposing quizzes, until work goes on with 
the pressure and dispatch of an engine 
room, the product accurately measured in 
SCIENCE 
531 
kilo-watts or in foot-pounds. But we may 
properly make investigations into the sub- 
ject with a view of getting the greatest re- 
turn for the energy expended. 
The questions of foundation and funda- 
mental subjects needed in professional work 
is both delicate and important. Shall an 
engineering student spend twelve hours or 
five hours on analytics and calculus in prep- 
aration for civil engineering? is a question 
to be solved only by turning the technical 
school into a laboratory and experiment- 
ing on the subject. Shall physics be taught 
as theory or as a laboratory exercise and 
how many elementary principles of phys- 
ics does an engineer really need? is another 
most pertinent question. Why does the 
engineer need to spend three years in his 
preparatory school on a modern language 
that apparently has no further bearing on 
his college course? is another perplexing 
question perhaps not so easily adjusted 
to laboratory tests. But experiments on 
inducements to study, on stimuli and in- 
centives might be carried on almost with- 
out number. The general faculty have 
been considering inducements for the im- 
provement of scholarship, all based on 
scholastic rank, on marks, an extraordinary 
spectacle that the faculty especially of 
arts, burdened with the task of imparting 
culture and mental discipline should think 
that scholarship can be compared and 
measured by numerical grades. What our 
society could do is to determine experi- 
mentally the best methods of teaching, the - 
best methods of competition to compel stu- 
dents to rouse themselves and develop their 
ambition to excel. Once mothers gave their 
children in the spring nauseous doses of 
sulphur and molasses to purify their blood 
and for many years that magic phrase was 
sufficient justification for the practise. Is 
there not something of the same sort going 
on in educational matters, and how shall 
