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SCIENCE 



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



never practised anything that he has 

 taught, who has never seen built anything 

 that he has designed, who has never pre- 

 pared for an elaborate test of some plant 

 or machine and found that he had foreseen 

 all the various requirements in the way of 

 labor, apparatus and equipment, even to 

 the board and lodging of himself and his 

 assistants, can not expect to be considered 

 as yet a really good engineering teacher. 

 However, it must be remembered that as 

 this is an educational society, and not an 

 engineering or a technical society, as Dean 

 Charles H. Benjamin has so aptly put it, 

 so it must be remembered that the colleges 

 need men who to be teachers must be first 

 able to impart their knowledge, draw out 

 from their students all that is in them, and 

 cultivate in them the habits of correct 

 thinking, clear vision, active imagination, 

 sound reasoning powers, and good judg- 

 ment; and because they possess these 

 things themselves and can train others in 

 them, they are therefore fit to be counted 

 among the good teachers. It is for these 

 reasons that good engineering teachers are 

 said to be more difficult to find than are 

 good teachers of other subjects. 



A good engineering teacher must know 

 what engineering really is. He must have 

 clearly defined ideas on what are the dis- 

 tinguishing features of engineering, tech- 

 nical, manual training, trade school and 

 industrial educations. He must have no 

 half-hearted ideas as to where the engi- 

 neering trades stop and where the profes- 

 sion begins. He must not be afraid to get 

 out into the deep water of the profession 

 of engineering. He must not believe that 

 the proper engineering education is strictly 

 utilitarian and vocational, and not one bit 

 cultural. He must look between the folds 

 of the ancient armor of his colleague in 

 the college of arts of his institution, and 

 discover that the scientific spirit has largely 



superseded the literary spirit even in such 

 subjects as Latin, Greek and the modern 

 languages ; that in fact in the work of some 

 language teachers there is more of science 

 than of language; that the so-called liter- 

 ary colleges are training men for vocations 

 just as truly as are our colleges of engi- 

 neering, law and medicine; that while the 

 old-time classical colleges used to train men 

 to be gentlemen, their successors in the edu- 

 cational world train men for joui'nalism, 

 insurance, politics, trade and business, as 

 well as for education, the law and the min- 

 istry as heretofore. We engineers think 

 that they are to be congratulated, in that 

 they have enlarged their system of educa- 

 tion and no longer make it so general as to 

 fit the student for nothing in particular 

 and so non-technical as to be useless except 

 as a preparation for one of the professions. 

 ' ' To know the best that has been thought 

 and said in the world" is what Matthew 

 Arnold calls culture. To the engineer, 

 this is not the fullness of culture, but the 

 rather to know the best that other men 

 have thought, and said, and done. Even 

 this is only half of the full duty of a cul- 

 tured engineer. He should not only know 

 the best that others have thought, and said, 

 and done, but he should, as far as he may 

 be mentally able, have contributed to the 

 thought, and writings, and doings of the 

 world. The engineering, above all other 

 professions, demands that its members shall 

 not be solely scholars, nor yet students of 

 unsolved problems, but they shall have 

 solved some of the problems which have 

 pressed upon civilization for solution. 

 Engineering teachers should be not schol- 

 ars solely, nor yet students only, but pio- 

 neers and creators in the work of civiliza- 

 tion. The first live in the spiritual palace 

 called a library, where time, memory and 

 the receptive faculties are alone required. 

 The student lives in the laboratory where 



