REPORTS OF THE MOSELY COMMISSION. MR. RIPPER, professor of engineering in University College, Sheffield, dwells particularly upon the advantage which this country possesses over England in the "senior and better trained type of student in the technical colleges." The students of the technical colleges in America, being from 18 to 25 or 26 years of age, and having received a high school and in some cases a college education, it is possible to do much superior work with them than with younger boys. The younger student has generally not received the necessary mathematical training to enable him to do advanced work, he has not a sufficient sense of responsibility in approaching his work, and he does not realize the importance of the issues with which he is dealing, nor the necessity for the strictest accuracy in his work. On the other hand, with a senior type of student there is more strenuous application and earnestness, the work is handled in a different spirit, and very much sounder and more thorough training may be given. In America at the present time the colleges are filled with students of a senior type, who are receiving an advanced and thoroughly sound training, and it is business concerns led by these men with which the British manufacturer will have to compete. The question for our country to ask itself is: Are we preparing the British youth of to-day to compete successfully with his commercial rival? It must be confessed that, so far as the study of science as applied to industry is concerned, our position at present is inferior to that of America. Mr. Ripper gives details of the system of training apprentices adopted by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, but expresses the opinion that the "general practical training obtained by the apprentice in British workshops is unequaled in any other country." DR. MAGNUS MACLEAN, professor of electrical engineering in the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, was particularly impressed with the attitude of employers in this country toward technically trained students. In Britain [he says], owing partly to class and caste distinctions which do not hold to the same extent across the Atlantic, the impression has got abroad that education only spoils the common workman and unfits him for his industrial position. Manufacturers and managers generally seem to look with disfavor upon highly educated youths At least, they give no preference or encouragement to this class and college men. over their more ignorant rivals, and consequently the youths themselves, finding no advantage in remaining long at school or college, leave early, ignoring the benefits of a knowledge and training which seem to carry them no further forward in the actual business and trade of life. The attitude in the States I found to be exactly the opposite of this. So far from possible, convinced that the increase disparaging education, the American regards it as the chief national asset, and strains every nerve to render it as widely diffused as of intelligence thus fostered will be a common gain. The educated youth will not only make a better citizen, but he will outstrip his more ignorant fellow in industrial efficiency, and in the long run leave him far behind. The conditions of American life have not permitted her people to ignore so obvious a fact. There are circumstances and forces, as I have indicated, which have thrust upon them more peremptorily than upon us recognition of the value and necessity of education. Besides the economic fact that the development of the material resources of the country demands the best available intelligence and skill, there are the social and political factors. The nation is a democracy very pronounced in its view of personal rights and personal liberty, and if it is to govern itself wisely, it must make sure, as far as possible, that its members, drawn as they are from all nationalities, are sufficiently welded together and enlightened to make intelligent and safe use of their voting privileges. Widespread popular ignorance would be a constant menace and danger to the stability of the State, as well as to the industrial interests. In consequence of this more enlightened view of education, manufacturers and employers of labor are more ready to recognize the superiority of the trained student over the untrained artisan, and are everywhere eager to get technically trained men to direct their work; they show their interest in, and appreciation of, learning by founding and equipping institutes and colleges for the technical training of young men in the various industries, and they further encourage all such institutions by giving the college-trained youths a preference over those who are merely shop trained. "In all departments where high-class work is done," said one employer, "we pay good wages, and are always anxious to get technical men. They are broader minded and have a wider mental grasp than the man who left school at the age of 16 to learn his trade in a shop. In technical or any other kind of work, the young man who has been trained in a technical school very soon overtakes and outstrips the man who has had practical experience only. Their remuneration at first is no greater than that of the others who do similar work, but in almost all cases it increases more rapidly, and there is practically no limit to their promotion, while the man without technical education, unless in exceptional cases, finds his field of operations greatly restricted." I was told on several occasions that ten years ago manufacturers would not take college men; now they prefer them, because they can tackle new problems. Manufacturing processes are constantly developing, and there is room for men with new ideas. The cost of construction and commercial value of a machine must be taken into consideration when it is being designed, and the man whose technical training has been supplemented by practical experience in the shop is better fitted to handle these questions than one who has had only a shop training." Finally is noticed here the profound impression made upon different members of the Commission by what is being done in America for higher agricultural education. The policy of the land-grant colleges and the experimental stations is described at length and the relation of the latter to the Agricultural Department at Washington enthusiastically commended. * * The most striking illustrations of American organizing ability (says Professor Armstrong) are to be met with at Washington. So far as I am aware, there is nothing anywhere to compare with the way in which science is being utilized in the service of the State by the United States Department of Agriculture, which is located in the capital. * The Department is not merely an office-it is also a busy hive of research. A large number of laboratories are attached to it, in which investigations are being carried on, bearing, in one way or another, on problems in agriculture. Much research work is also done in the State Experiment Stations; in the main, however, these serve to bring under the notice of farmers the importance of science to agriculture by demonstrating the value of methods of cultivation, manures, etc. There is no question that the research work done under the auspices of the Agricultural Department and in the experiment stations is of the very greatest value and is contributing most materially to the development of agricultural industry. To take only one illustration, whereas, in 1884, the amount of sugar made from sugar beet was only about 300 tons, the beet crop of the past year is estimated to yield 400,000 tons, the amount of sugar made in the United States from the sugar cane being only about 300,000 tons. This extraordinary increase, I believe, is due practically entirely to the influence exercised from Washington. * * * The Department is undoubtedly exercising an extraordinary influence on the education of farmers by distributing literature among them and by encouraging and helping them in every possible way; indeed, it is certain that, by one means or another, the American farmer is gradually being led to see that science is indispensable to agriculture. Professor Armstrong describes also at some length the work that is being carried on in New York State under the direction of Professor Bailey, the director of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University, Ithaca, by means of circular letters issued to farmers, by plans for the improvement of school playgrounds, and by the "formal organization of junior naturalist clubs in schools throughout the State." SPIRIT OF AMERICAN SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION. The reports on higher education in America, as represented in universities, must be passed over here with mere mention. They are, however, among the most suggestive reports in the collection, because of their constant reference to the conditions of university education in Great Britain and their emphasis upon what may be called the American type as represented in State universities like those of Michigan and Wisconsin. Considering the whole range of their observations it appears that our foreign critics were more deeply impressed with the spirit in which our schools and higher institutions are maintained and conducted than with their actual methods and scholastic results. This survey may, therefore, well close with extracts from the reports of two members who most fully reflect this general impression. The REV. T. L. PAPILLON, REPORTS OF THE MOSELY COMMISSION. M. A., formerly fellow and tutor of New College, Oxford, concludes a very comprehen- To sum up what has struck me most forcibly in a short and imperfect survey of a JOHN RHYS, Esq., professor of Celtic and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, shows a keen appreciation of the democratic spirit of our institutions, of their spontaneous energy and their flexibility. While pointing out many defects noticed by him in the class exercises at which he was present, he finds much to commend even in this respect. "The average of the teaching," he says, "was good, and some of it I should call excellent." I was greatly impressed by the deliberate manner in which it was carried on with nothing to hamper the teacher in his work or incite him to undue hurry. So I am convinced that what American education has already achieved is but a very inadequate earnest of what it is going to do. The machinery is there in perfect order, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, more and more thoroughness will be secured in the working of it, and the crudeness occasionally to be detected will be eliminated. An American who understands the character of his countrymen well places to the credit of that character alertness and adaptability, and against it a lack of thoroughness; but that lack must be a far greater and deeper one than I take it to be if American educationists do not succeed in making an impression on it by improvements in the direction which I have indicated, and that in the immediate future. be 10 CHAPTER III. STATEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED TO EXECUTE INCLUDING LIST OF STATE COMMITTEES OF SELECTION, THE EXAM- The educational provisions of the will of Cecil Rhodes were given in the Annual Report of this office for 1901, Volume 2, chapter 47 (pp. 2447-2450). The sections more immediately relating to the American scholarships are as follows: * * * Whereas I also desire to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world, and to encourage in the students from the United States of North America, who will benefit from the American scholarships to be established, for the reason above given, at the University of Oxford under this my will, an attachment to the country from which they have sprung, but without, I hope, withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth: Now, therefore, I direct my trustees as soon as may be after my death, and either simultaneously or gradually, as they shall find convenient, and, if gradually, then in such order as they shall think fit, to establish for male students the scholarships hereinafter directed to be established, each of which shall be of the yearly value of £300 and be tenable at any college in the University of Oxford for three consecutive academical years. * * * I further direct my trustees to establish additional scholarships sufficient in number for the appropriation in the next following clause hereof directed, and those scholarships I sometimes hereinafter refer to as "the American scholarships." I appropriate two of the American scholarships to each of the present States and Territories of the United States of North America, provided that if any of the said Territories shall in my lifetime be admitted as a State the scholarships appropriated to such Territory shall be appropriated to such State, and that my trustees may, in their uncontrolled discretion, withhold for such time as they shall think fit the appropriation of scholarships to any Territory. I direct that of the two scholarships appropriated to a State or Territory not more than one shall be filled up in any year, so that at no time shall more than two scholarships be held for the same State or Territory. CONDITIONS. My desire being that the students who shall be elected to the scholarships shall not be merely bookworms, I direct that in the election of a student to a scholarship regard shall be had to (1) his literary and scholastic attainments; (2) his fondness of and success in many outdoor sports, such as cricket, football, and the like; (3) his qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for the protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness, and fellowship; and (4) his exhibition during school days of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates, for those latter attributes will be likely in after life to guide him to esteem the performance of public duties as his highest aim. As mere suggestions for the guidance of those who will have the choice of students for the scholarships, I record that (1) my ideal qualified student would combine these four qualifications in the proportion of three-tenths for the first, two-tenths for the second, three-tenths for the third, and two-tenths for the fourth qualification, so that, according to my ideas, if the maximum number of marks for any scholarship were 200 they would be apportioned as 41 |