that they excel engineering subjects as tools for sharpening the intellect, or that they have the slightest bearing upon the professional training of an engineer, or any legitimate place in an engineering course, is emphatically denied. If the engineering faculty deems a knowledge of such subjects essential, it should demand it as an entrance requirement of the engineering college. To include them as a part of a technical course is as illogical and unseemly as to demand that law students pursue a course on pumps, or medical students one on roof-trusses, or theological students one on thermo-dynamics. The engineering faculty, and they alone, are the parties competent to formulate the list of studies for engineering students, and their decision in such matters must be final, if engineering courses are to be freed from driftwood and barnacles. III. THE NATURAL SEQUENCE OF STUDIES MUST BE OBSERVED. It is objected by many (1) that under the elective system the student will receive only a disorganized course, and (2) he will finally graduate with a training which is insufficient, because it lacks both depth and comprehensiveness. Neither objection is sound, if the course is in competent hands. The professor of each branch unquestionably knows what subjects a student must have mastered in order to profit from his own instruction; hence, if these are rigidly demanded, his students must necessarily have received a systematic and thorough training in everything having a real bearing on any work they elect to take up. Strict observance of the sequence of studies will, with mathe matical certainty, force each student to go thoroughly over every subject preparatory to every other subject elected; hence a disorganized course becomes impossible. It thus appears that, by this system, depth is not sacrificed, but rather increased. Lack of comprehensiveness is easily and effectively guarded against, by demanding for graduation as many courses as a good student can successfully carry in the time usually available for a college course. Indeed, if the natural sequence of studies be rigidly observed, it is advantageous and perfectly feasible to throw down the artificial barriers that have grown up between the different branches of engineering, and thereby allow the students to enter upon a general engineering training, without any sacrifice of thorough work, or any friction between various departments. Students can select courses in harmony with their dispositions and abilities; the differentiation will take place naturally. While the degree will not mean that all have taken the same studies, it will mean that every study has been prosecuted with success (which is never the case with a rigid or optional system). Further, it will mean that the student has received a better training for his life work than can be given under any rigid or optional system. Quality, not quantity, is the distinguishing feature of this plan. There is no reason whatever why the elective system should be confined to engineering colleges alone among professional institutions. If the sequence of studies, which is to the elective system what the keystone is to an arch, is rigidly observed, the system can with advantage be introduced into Law, Medical, Theological or other professional colleges. IV. THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM CLEARLY SHOWS UP INFERIOR TEACHING, SUPERFLUOUS SUBJECTS AND INCOMPETENT PROFESSORS. As each professor rigidly demands proficiency in all branches preparatory to his subjects, every student in a class must in a measure serve as an exponent of the ability, thoroughness or honesty of such other professors as have had charge of his previous studies. Any evidence of general inferiority in training in any one subject is quickly detected, and the remedy should be promptly applied. Everyone who has had any experience under the rigid system knows fully that the range and nature of subjects in such courses are so broad that no pupil is endowed with sufficient talent to excel in all these studies, while the majority of students attain only a medium standing in various subjects. Excellence in some branches is therefore considered to atone for deficiency in others, and the student is passed. Such a procedure is neither necessary nor permissible under the elective system, and if resorted to cannot fail to expose the instructor responsible for it. Should a professor introduce courses foreign to the work of the school, the fact is quickly made apparent, because no other professor prescribes such courses as preparatory to his own, nor do the students elect them. Hence, this system does away completely with all padded courses, incompetent instruction, or irrelevant matters given merely to fill in a certain amount of time. It makes such instruction serve as a check on the proficiency of the others, produces a coördinate system of studies, and renders possible educational results which under the old systems would demand a much larger faculty. V. THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM IS THE ONLY ONE WHICH ENTS, WHICH MUST ALWAYS EXIST BE- OF THE STUDENT BODY. The province of an educational course is to develop and sharpen the intellect; it cannot create brains, nor can it by any method whatever eliminate those differences in men which are implanted in them by the Author of Nature. It is difficult to understand why the attempt should be made to perpetuate an educational bed of Procrustes; for the writer maintains that this very thing is attempted when, contrary to the teachings of Nature, it is insisted that students be divided up into arbitrary classes, every member of which must be forced to go through exactly the same scheme of studies without reference to his natural tastes and abilities. The results of this procedure are too well known to need further comment here. Under the elective system the student selects that work for which he has been properly endowed by nature; he takes far greater interest in it, and the results are deep and permanent. So marked is this that no instructor in the Michigan Mining School now hesitates to demand of his men far higher and better work than even the most sanguine could ever hope to get under the old rigid system. Even if the elective system does demand higher work in each branch, and a more proficient preparation for each study, the student himself readily sees the object and justice of each requirement, and cheerfully accepts an obligation which carries with it freedom in choice of studies and avoidance of those non-essential. All this acts like oil upon the machinery, and enables the product to be turned out with little noise, friction and wear and tear. It is frequently urged that a student is not competent to draw up a proper list of electives. If this statement be true, does it not carry with it the inevitable conclusion that he is even less able to select his studies for four years, before he has had even a day's experience in the course? Is not this exactly what he is required to do, when he is held to a rigid or optional system? But experience shows that this statement has no basis in fact. The natural sequence of studies guides the pupil when making his selection, and, assisted by advice from his teachers, which is always freely given, he rarely goes astray, unless his abilities and tastes are misjudged. This rarely happens and the mistake is easily remedied. No such means of rectifying even slight mistakes exists under a rigid or optional system. It is necessary to take the "system" and take all of it, or to take nothing. It may not be amiss to call attention to an exactly parallel case in actual engineering practice. Those engaged in electrical work know that a comparatively short time ago every electrical plant, from dynamo to lamps, was a representation of some "system," and it is likewise known that not one of those systems was free from many defects in details. |