712 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 46(j. 



uatiiral laws (more particularly of those 

 relating to energy which rest on the law of 

 conservation of energy), an extended 

 knowledge of the useful applications of 

 these laws, and an instinctive capacity for 

 reasoning straight, from cause to effect. 

 Moreover, they must know men and the 

 affairs of men— which is sociology; and 

 they must be acquainted with business 

 methods and the affairs of the business 

 world. Briefly, to reach his highest in- 

 fluence, each man must combine in one a 

 man in the physical sciences, a man in 

 sociology and a man of business. All en- 

 gineers can not reach this high mark, but 

 the engineering college course should start 

 each of its students toward that degree of 

 attainment which his individual powers 

 will permit. 



Michael Faraday (whose conservatism 

 and intellectual clearness are proverbial) 

 said that it requires twenty years to 'make 

 a man' in the physical sciences. The en- 

 gineering school must put each student in 

 the way of becoming, so far as his mental 

 and physical powers warrant, not only a 

 man in the physical sciences, but a man in 

 sociology and a man in business as well ; 

 and this must be done within the narrow 

 limits of four years. It is clear that only 

 the foundations of 'the man' may be laid 

 in the prescribed time, and the engineering 

 college must, therefore, rigorously hold it- 

 self to the fundamentals. The engineering 

 college faculty which is contented to deal 

 out so-called 'information courses' on the 

 narrowly empirical side of engineering 

 practice, deals a wrong to its students 

 which they may not recognize at the mo- 

 ment, but which will ultimately tell heavily 

 against their success. 



The students that enter the engineering 

 schools of the west, and I presume likewise 

 of the east, are from amongst the most 

 vigorous minds of the high schools and 

 preparatory schools; and yet it must be 



admitted that they ordinarily possess little 

 power of clear thinking, power of initiative, 

 regard for accuracy, or understanding of 

 continuous and severe intellectual effort, 

 as these important attributes are under- 

 stood in industrial circles. They ai'e not 

 j'et mature in body and are less mature in 

 mind (the latter being, I think, in accord 

 with the natural order of development). 

 But they commonly are well equipped with 

 physical vigor and latent mental strength. 

 Their preparatory schooling has given 

 them a defective acquaintance with the 

 construction of the English language and 

 the spelling of English words, a still more 

 defective acquaintance with French or Ger- 

 man or a fairly good grounding in ele- 

 mentary Latin, a smattering of civics and 

 history, a training in the elementary prin- 

 ciples of arithmetic, geometry and algebra 

 from which the factor of accuracy in appli- 

 cation has often been omitted, and perhaps 

 an enthusiastic interest in the physical 

 sciences. 



This enumeration of the attainments of 

 the students entering the engineering col- 

 leges may perhaps be intei'preted as reflect- 

 ing on the secondary school teachers, but I 

 wish vigorously to deny the validitj' of 

 any such interpretation. I can truthfully 

 say that, considering all of the conditions, 

 there is no more painstaking and right- 

 wishing body of people than these teachei-s. 



Many of the faiilts in the preparatory 

 training of our engineering college stu- 

 dents are caused by a doubt which is now 

 apparently agitating educational circles on 

 account of the question whether the high 

 schools shall be the 'people's colleges' or 

 remain in the station of secondary or "pre- 

 paratory' schools. This doubt is ap- 

 parently not yet resolved in the minds of 

 the molders of educational thought; but 

 the traditional old-time secondary school 

 training which produced men who could 

 spell and cipher and who had received a 



