September 27, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



481 



The artisan day and evening school is 

 somewhat on the order of German and 

 English low-grade technical schools. I 

 earnestly hope that the suggestion of this 

 school may be adopted and that the experi- 

 ment may be fairly tried in America. The 

 plan for a technical college is in complete 

 harmony with our best engineering schools, 

 and needs no discussion here. 



.The scheme for a technical high school, 

 however, seems to me faulty. This school 

 would be of high-school grade, taking 

 pupils from the grammar schools and cov- 

 ering presumably four years. The normal 

 ages of entrance and graduation would ac- 

 cordingly be 14 and 18. 



Three things in the Committee's outline 

 of this technical high school deserve more 

 attention than I can give them at this time : 



1. The elective principle is to be recog- 

 nized, the student selecting the required 

 number of courses under the direction of 

 the director of the school. Here the pupil 

 at a tender age (only 14 or 15) is asked to 

 surrender his birthright to the privilege of 

 choice when he is 18. 



2. The course in mathematics — which 

 begins with elementary algebra — is to in- 

 clude the elements of calculus ! Of course, 

 it must include solid geometry, higher 

 algebra, trigonometry and analytical geom- 

 etry ! One rarely meets with such an 

 astounding proposition from engineers who 

 are supposed to have studied mathematics 

 and to know what they are talking about. 

 They might as well propose that the pupils 

 shall take thermodynamics in a short course 

 of lectures. To be sure, similar ambitious 

 schemes have been proposed elsewhere for 

 boys just out of the grammar school, but 

 they came from people who could have 

 known very little mathematics, and noth- 

 ing of the uses of the calculus. This 

 criticism may seem trivial, but in more 

 than one place the scheme attempts too 

 much. 



3. The technical studies suggested take 

 the form of trade work or special employ- 

 ments, with well-equipped shops and ex- 

 perimental laboratories under the direction 

 of expert artisans. 



What Mr. Carnegie will do with this last 

 suggestion remains to be seen, but any at- 

 tempt to embody it in a real technical high 

 school of secondary grade will be full of 

 interest to the educational world. If any 

 man was well prepared to give the scheme 

 a fair trial that man is Andrew Carnegie ; 

 but it will cost a vast amount of money and 

 its experience will teach us how not to do 

 many things. 



I have high respect for the members of 

 the Advisory Committee, but I think a less 

 ambitious scheme would be more success- 

 ful. You cannot teach the higher mathe- 

 matics in a high school, and I have no 

 great faith in the value of attempts to teach 

 employments, commercial or industrial, 

 within the limits of any secondary school. 

 Such attempts are certain to mislead and 

 ultimately hinder those they aim to help. 

 Any trade or special employment must be 

 dwarfed and narrowed before it can be 

 brought down to the grasp of an untrained 

 boy, and its very narrowness unfits it for 

 the best educational uses. 



The school is the place where one should 

 learn the fundamental unchanging laws 

 and manifestations of force and materials. 

 Special occupations, like special construc- 

 tions, should be analyzed in their elements, 

 and pupils should become expert in such 

 analyses, in so far as they involve universal 

 elements that pupils can comprehend. But 

 there are many things essential to a busi- 

 ness employment which cannot even be ap- 

 prehended in school. As William Mather, 

 M.P., says : 



" There is no possibility of teaching in a 

 school that sort of knowledge which prac- 

 tical work carried out on commercial prin- 

 ciples, within restrictions as to time of 



