August 1, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



139 



Friday, after a holiday spent in restful 

 occupation and amusements and after an 

 entertainment lasting until far past mid- 

 night. Some of us occasionally fail to con- 

 sider and measure accurately the cash 

 value of an hour of a class's time. We 

 should be greatly disturbed if in our fac- 

 tory the power were needlessly shut ofE 

 during the working hours of the day, or the 

 lights went out at night, or the subsistence 

 department failed to provide suitable food 

 and lodging for our workmen, and we 

 would at once discover the causes for this 

 industrial inefficiency; but if the class is 

 made to wait while a visitor or an assistant 

 detains us, we may have little remorse, or 

 indeed thought, concerning our academic 

 inefficiency. To attend an engineering col- 

 lege it costs a student at least one dollar 

 per week per credit hour of college work, 

 or from sixteen to twenty dollars per week. 

 If, therefore, the teacher in a college of 

 engineering is absent without a substitute 

 from a one-hour class-room engagement, it 

 may be causing each of the ten to two hun- 

 dred students to spend a dollar in need- 

 lessly trying to fulfil his part of the con- 

 tract with the institution. The same is true 

 of inexcusable latenesses. 



A good teacher is one who has an unim- 

 peached and deserved reputation for mental 

 honesty, right living, patience under ha- 

 rassment and sound character. The engi- 

 neering teacher who describes tricks of the 

 trade, petty dishonesties, evasions of both 

 the spirit and the letter of the law, without 

 showing at least his disapproval of them, 

 who shuts his eyes to dishonesties in class- 

 room and college life, is neither a good 

 teacher nor yet a. good citizen. The teacher 

 who is a leader in trickery, deceit and 

 bluff during the term and who permits stu- 

 dents to sit in an examination room so close 

 together as to be under constant tempta- 

 tion to undesired dishonesty is particeps 



criminis to any dereliction of the student 

 then, and possibly later. When cheating 

 in examinations is made a sine qua non for 

 honor and high grades, if not for gradua- 

 tion, and when the most skillful compiler 

 of invisible ponies and the most successful 

 cheater becomes the honor man of the class, 

 as I have heard reported in recent trips 

 among the colleges, it would seem that an 

 old-fashioned course in moral philosophy 

 and ethics should be in order for both the 

 teachers and the students. We all fail, I 

 fear, frequently enough, but we should not 

 be forced, or allowed, to fail inordinately. 

 Occasionally we hear condonation expressed 

 at the human frailties of the teacher, be- 

 cause he is considered as a genius in his 

 specialty, and on account of his lovable 

 qualities. Far be it from me to cast stones 

 at my brother man, but I have never been 

 able to discover a reason why a drunkard, 

 or a libertine, should be tolerated in the 

 teaching profession and frowned out of so- 

 ciety in other professions and not allowed 

 to work where the physical well-being of 

 others was involved. Surely the mental 

 and the spiritual well-being of our young 

 men are paramount to their physical ex- 

 istence. 



The one moral trait which seems to be 

 most frequently demanded above all others 

 from the teacher is that of patience. Some 

 of us do not enjoy walking with persons 

 who walls slowly or with very short steps, 

 and who take a long time to get over very 

 little ground. Similarly, we have to go 

 equally slowly in expounding a new prob- 

 lem to a class, or in drawing out of even 

 the average student the principle underly- 

 ing the problem in hand, and in causing 

 him to think about the subject consecu- 

 tively and logically. We have all asked 

 ourselves at the end of the hour, "How 

 many in that class really took in the full 

 significance of what I was talking about?" 



