December 28, 190G.] 



SCIENCE. 



841 



This advocacy of ten or twelve years of 

 uninteresting studies, none of which could 

 hold the attention for five minutes unless 

 they were forced upon the student— as the 

 best preparation for dealing with the in- 

 teresting matters of real life, such as earn- 

 ing one's bread, building a home, rearing 

 a family, contributing to the common 

 weal, and achieving the highest success — 

 this remarkable doctrine is the product of 

 our own age. No ancient or medieval 

 teacher, so far as I am informed, ever pro- 

 mulgated or defended it. The credit or 

 discredit of its authorship belongs to our 

 own day and generation. On the other 

 hand, that veteran and very sensible writer, 

 John Locke, two hundred and fifty years 

 ago, said: "The great skill of a teacher is 

 to get and keep the attention of his scholar. 

 To attain this, he should make the child 

 comprehend the usefulness of what he 

 teaches him, and let him see, by what he 

 has learned, that he can do something which 

 he could not do before ; something which 

 gives him some power and real advantage. ' ' 



I join Professor Wendell in discounting 

 the whims and fancies of children, and in 

 his estimate of the value of an unintelligent 

 choice of studies; but we must part com- 

 pany when he would force me to accept 

 the doctrine that I must be careful not to 

 make my mathematics and mechanics very 

 interesting, lest their educational value be 

 impaired. May I not refer this matter 

 also to a section on education? 



FREE ELECTION OF STUDIES. 



Closely related to the above is the great 

 question of elective courses of study in our 

 colleges. Personally, I am less concerned 

 with this, since in the school or college of 

 engineering with which I am connected, 

 the curriculum is carefully laid down, and 

 there is no election till the end of the fresh- 

 man, and generally not till the end of the 

 sophomore, year— and even then only a 

 single election of a carefully prepared line 



of study is allowed. But I have been a 

 more or less interested observer of the 

 working of a free elective system elsewhere. 

 I am not now going to discuss it, or to 

 weigh it in the balance of experience. 

 Such a discussion of its theory and practise 

 would occupy a full paper before an educa- 

 tional section. Science teachers and scien- 

 tific men are, or should be, deeply inter- 

 ested in this matter, for, if I mistake not, 

 the rush for certain branches of science, 

 and away from the traditional studies, has 

 led in many cases to the calling of a halt 

 in the freedom of election. My own con- 

 viction is that the pendulum has swung too 

 far. The number of required studies 

 should be increased and the later years 

 should be given to a group of subjects se- 

 lected from a list of groups prearranged by 

 the faculty. It is perhaps not quite safe 

 to condemn a system which permits a stu- 

 dent, having entered college on substan- 

 tially the old requirements, to go through 

 and graduate with honor, without giving 

 during his entire college course a single 

 hour to any one of the three corner-stones 

 of the old curriculum of my college days: 

 Latin, Greek and mathematics — but it cer- 

 tainly raises a question in the mind of every 

 reader of educational history. Is there not 

 a golden mean between predestination and 

 free-will in the matter of studies and edu- 

 cational values? 



OTHER EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS— ATHLETICS. 



Never, since the days of Grecian games 

 at Olympia, has physical culture, including 

 field athletics, been so prominent a feature 

 of student life as now. We can truthfully 

 say that to-day athletics is the most con- 

 spicuous part of an academic education. 

 Unquestionably the curriculum is out of 

 balance, and a readjustment is necessary. 

 The healthy, normal boy (and I may add, 

 the healthy normal girl) requires and en- 

 joys vigorous exercise in the shape of 



