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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 970 



existence for the promotion of engineering 

 education, at this its twenty-first meeting, 

 when our growth betokens that we have 

 come to our legal majority, at least in years, 

 I desire to lead your minds into the con- 

 sideration of what is a good engineering 

 teacher and to give you an appreciation of 

 his personality, and what he is as I have 

 seen him in three score and more of engi- 

 neering colleges and technical schools. 



What then is a good teacher? And my 

 first answer is that he is one who knows 

 enough of his subject to have something to 

 impart. I sometimes think the reason men 

 from the highest ranks of consulting engi- 

 neers so frequently make poor teachers, 

 from the point of view of the students, is 

 that they know too much, and can not ap- 

 preciate the fact that the students are down 

 in the basement of the structure whose 

 facade they are embellishing with artistic 

 points of elegance and efficiency, and that 

 the students are crawling on hands and 

 knees along the path they are traveling 

 with seven-league boots. In order that the 

 teacher shall have something to impart, he 

 should have had a proper education and 

 some training, experience, travel and ob- 

 servation, as these are among the necessary 

 qualifications for a good teacher. The man 

 who has never earned his daily bread in the 

 close commercial competition of the fac- 

 tory, works or mine, needs to learn one of 

 the essential requirements of the success- 

 ful engineering teacher, namely, to have 

 rubbed elbows with workingmen of the 

 artisan type and to have measured himself 

 by their standards of knowledge and skill. 

 One who has received only the education 

 that he is trying to impart, possibly at his 

 alma mater, probably in the same room in 

 which he received it, who has never cut 

 himself loose from his college's apron 

 strings, and who has not taught or worked 

 elsewhere, is not likely to make a good 



teacher until he has been trained in the 

 school of experience elsewhere. If gradu- 

 ate students should migrate for their best 

 good, surely college teachers should do the 

 same. In a previous paper before this so- 

 ciety I have already referred to one insti- 

 tution, almost one hundred per cent, of 

 whose teachers in one department are the 

 educational offspring of the great mind 

 which presided over the department for 

 thirty years. Experience of any kind al- 

 ways serves a teacher well, and the more 

 he has had of that which pertains to the 

 subject that he is teaching, the better it will 

 be for him and his students. Travel and 

 inspection trips, to learn by observation 

 how others are doing the same thing that he 

 is expected to do, are extremely broaden- 

 ing and take him out of his natural groove. 

 It is needless to say that continued reading 

 and increase in one 's knowledge of his pro- 

 fession is absolutely essential for the ad- 

 vancement of the good teacher. 



A good teacher is one who can talk on 

 his feet audibly enough to be heard without 

 effort and intelligently enough to be under- 

 stood without subsequent correction. For, 

 if the listener can not hear what is being 

 said for his instruction, both parties are 

 wasting time which is more or less valuable. 

 If the recipient of the instruction continu- 

 ously fails to get an intelligent under- 

 standing of what has been said, he has no 

 right to be in attendance; and, similarly, 

 if the teacher continuously fails to give an 

 intelligent understanding of what he is 

 trying to say, he should be removed and 

 not allowed to waste the valuable time of 

 the students. A man who can not impart 

 his knowledge can not be a good teacher. 

 Hence, health, adequate previous rest and 

 endiarance are essential to the good teacher. 

 Few of us, I think, appreciate the difference 

 in the instruction given and taken in Sep- 

 tember and in May, on Monday and on 



