January 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



85 



Bottger's book, thinks that while it may be 

 true of our colleges and technical schools, 

 it is wrong as regards the graduate work 

 of our universities, and this is probably- 

 true of our graduate schools of the higher 

 class, but plainly not so in those which turn 

 out some of our weaker doctors of philos- 

 ophy. 



Hugo Miinsterberg points out, in a way 

 well worthy of consideration, some of the 

 faults of our secondary educational system. 

 He says : 



I do not want to be misunderstood as seeing 

 no fault in the American system of instruction. 

 There are not a few wrong tones which hurt the 

 ear of the newcomer, discords to which he will 

 never become insensible. But these fundamental 

 errors belong to the school rather than to the 

 college. It is enough '.o point out the most dev- 

 astating one; the lack of mental discipline at 

 the very beginning of the intellectual growth. The 

 school methods appeal to the natural desires and 

 do not train in overcoming desires; they plead 

 instead of commanding, they teach one to follow 

 the path of least resistance instead of teaching to 

 obey. The result is a flabby inefficiency, a loose 

 vagueness and inaccuracy, an acquaintance with a 

 hundred things and a mastery of none. Public 

 life has to suffer for it, a community which does 

 not get a rigid mental discipline through home 

 and school influence must always remain the play- 

 thing of the lower instincts. 



How much more the American college might 

 have been able to produce if it could have received 

 into its freshman class young disciplined minds, 

 trained in accurate and careful learning and in 

 the restraint of primitive impulses. The college 

 would not have been burdened by wasting much 

 of its costly time in repeating the elements of 

 learning and patching up the slang-disfigured 

 English language. 



Professor C. A. Waldo, in his vice-presi- 

 dential address before Section D of the 

 American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science at St. Louis in 1903, on "The 

 Eelation of Mathematics to Engineering," 

 said, dealing with the question of our 

 preparatory schools: 



This is the indictment of the schools, that they 

 use, largely to the exclusion of the thought ele- 



ment, a mass of formal and conventional educa- 

 tional material and thus paralyze thought and 

 make abortive any natural mental growth. 



Professor J. J. Stevenson remarks {Pop- 

 ular Science Monthly, January, 1904) : 



The old adage says : " He who would command 

 must first learn to obey." That American lads 

 are sorely in need of such training is only too 

 evident. . . . Such training means — training to 

 think, to reason. Lads often fail to receive this 

 training in secondary schools, as any instructor 

 who has had to deal with freshmen can testify. 

 Secondary schools to-day are little better than 

 cramming houses to fit pupils to answer odds and 

 ends of questions in papers for entrance examina- 

 tions. Loose training and restlessness under re- 

 straint characterize the American students in the 

 lower classes at college; lack of home training 

 may be in part responsible for the latter char- 

 acteristic, inferior teaching in secondary schools 

 for the former. 



There is much of truth in the preceding 

 assertions. Our secondary and high schools 

 are unsatisfactory. They offer to the col- 

 leges a mass of more or less unformed 

 material which must be worked over again 

 at great loss of time and energy. It is 

 evident, therefore, that one of the first steps 

 in the improvement of the education of the 

 chemical, or, in fact, of any engineer, lies 

 in a modification of his early training. 



If we can not expect as much as might 

 be desired from the secondary schools, we 

 may at least study the material that is 

 offered, selecting and directing that which 

 is most suitable for encouragement, but we 

 must not force the crude product into the 

 professional schools. That, it seems to me, 

 is the great crime of to-day, especially in 

 the case of those who propose to become 

 engineers of any type. 



What provision can be made to avoid 

 these difficulties? I believe this lies in 

 postponing professional training except 

 in so far as elementary science may form 

 a part of any ordinary liberal education, 

 until a proper foundation can be laid for 

 it. We do not find at universities of the 



