EDUCATIONAL REVIEW

OCTOBER, 1891.

I.

THE PLACE OF SCHOOLS OF TECHNOLOGY IN AMERICAN EDUCATION.

Among the vast changes in the spirit and life of our country, in the arts, the industries, the ideas, the aspirations of the American people, which were brought about by, or which coincided with, the great struggle from 1861-65, none is more remarkable than the rapid development of schools of applied science and technology. It is not my purpose to name even the most important of these, or to attempt to divide among them the honor of what they have, as a whole, achieved. I shall confine myself to accounting, as far as I may, for the rapidity with which these schools have spread over the land, and to estimating their place in the educational system of the future.

The nearest and easiest thing to say regarding the growth of scientific and technical schools, since the fortunate conclusion of the civil war, is that the industrial development of the country had reached the point where it had become necessary that the enterprises into which our labor and capital were to be put should be organized and directed with much more of skill and scientific knowledge than had been applied to our earlier efforts at manufactures and transportation; and so, in the fullness of time, scientific and technical schools came. In this view there is much of truth. The vaster enterprises of these later days, the ever increasing possibilities of modern commerce and industry, the intensifying severity of competition due to quickened communication, fast mails, cheap

freights, and ocean cables, had indeed created an urgent want for greater technical skill and more highly trained intelligence. The old wasteful ways of dealing with materials, the rule-of-thumb methods of construction, the haphazard administration characteristic of our earlier industrial efforts, could not have been continued without greatly retarding the national development and without irreparable loss in the result. But not, at the time spoken of, had this want become one of which our people were generally conscious; much less had it created a demand for such institutions which would of itself have sufficed to bring them into existence. The establishment of scientific and technical schools in the United States was to constitute a striking instance of the principle that, in some things, supply must create demand.

Economists and people generally are so much accustomed to think of the more usual condition, in which demand creates supply, that they often forget, indeed, to many it never occurs, that there is another large class of cases, and these by far the most important of all, in which the opposite rule obtains. In the lower ranges of life, in matters of clothing, food, and shelter, and indeed in holding on to whatever advances civilization has once fairly and fully made, whether in material or in higher things, the conscious wants of humanity will, in all ordinary cases, suffice to secure the due supply, without any organized public or private effort other than that originating in personal interest. But in all things high and fine, and generally also in every advance which material civilization is to make, there must be a better intelligence than that of the market, which shall apprehend, not what the people want, but what they ought to want. There must be disinterested efforts, on the part of the natural leaders of society, which shall secure, at whatever sacrifice, such a demonstration of the merits. and advantages of the yet unknown thing, such a supply of the new good, as shall create the demand for it. It will not be until that want has been fairly and fully wrought into the public consciousness that the supply may thereafter be left to take care of itself.

The American schools of technology illustrate, in an eminent degree, the law of human progress which I have stated. These schools did not come into existence in obedience to a demand for them. They were created through the foresight, the unselfish devotion, the strenuous endeavor, of a few rich men, and of many very poor men, known as professors of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and geology. At the time they came into existence there was a smaller demand for technically trained men than there is to-day, when for twentyfive years these schools have been pouring out their hundreds of graduates annually. That demand has been created by first furnishing the supply; by showing what young men properly educated and highly trained can do in organizing and directing the forces of American industry.

That these schools-in spite of the fact that they had everything to do at once and little to do it with; in spite of the fact that they had no traditions to govern them, and had, indeed, the whole philosophy of their subject to evoke, a priori; in spite of general public indifference and even of much contempt-have done their work exceedingly well, even from the first, is fairly implied in the foregoing statement. It is truly remarkable that, with so little to go by and so much to do, all at once, out of such scanty means, there should have been so little waste of effort, so little done injudiciously, so few steps taken that needed to be retraced.

Credit should also be given to the Congress of the United States for the act which was passed July 2, 1862, under the enlightened leadership of the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, making generous provision for the establishment, in the several States, of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts. Most of this provision was, it is true, devoted to the creation of agricultural schools, regarding which the scope of this paper does not require me to speak; and, indeed, regarding which I should scarcely presume to express an opinion; yet the part which was assigned to the promotion of the mechanic arts proved to be a most valuable and timely re-enforcement of the American system of technological schools.

But no one who thoroughly believes in the mission of schools of this class can be content merely to assert that the full time had come in the economic evolution of the nation when such schools were imperatively needed for the promotion of our industries, and that the institutions thus called into being have done this, their primary work, with triumphant success. I go far beyond this, and assert for these schools that they have come to form a most important part of the proper educational system of the country, and that they are to-day doing a work in the intellectual development of our people which is not surpassed, if indeed it be equaled, by that of the classical colleges. No statement less broad and strong than this would begin to do justice to the view I take of what these schools are now doing, and are in an increasing measure to do for the manhood and citizenship of the country. I believe that in the schools of applied science and technology, as they are carried on to-day in the United States,-involving the thorough and most scholarly study of principles directed immediately upon useful arts, and rising, in their higher grades, into original investigation and research,—is to be found almost the perfection of education for young men. Too long have we submitted to be considered as furnishing something which is, indeed, more immediately and practically useful than a so-called liberal education, but which is, after all, less noble and fine. Too long have our schools of applied science and technology been popularly regarded as affording an inferior substitute for classical colleges to those who could not afford to go to college, then take a course in a medical or law school, and then wait for professional practice. Too long have the graduates of such schools been spoken of as though they had acquired the arts of livelihood at some sacrifice of mental development, intellectual culture, and grace of life. For me, if I did not believe that the graduates of the institution over which I have the honor to preside were better educated men, in all which the term educated man implies, than the average graduate of the ordinary college, I would not consent to hold my position for another day. It is true that

something of form and style may be sacrificed in the earnest, direct, and laborious endeavors of the student of science; but that all the essentials of intellect and character are less fully or less happily achieved through such a course of study, let no man, connected with such an institution, for a moment concede!

That mind and manhood alike are served in a pre-eminent degree by the systematic study of chemistry, physics, and natural history has passed beyond dispute. The haste with which the colleges themselves are throwing over many of their traditional subjects to make room for these comparatively new studies, shows how general has become the appreciation of the virtue of these, when combined with laboratory methods, as means of intellectual and moral training.

I have spoken of the characteristic studies of the new schools as the best of all available means of both moral and intellectual training. I believe this claim to be none too broad.

I. The sincerity of purpose and the intellectual honesty which are bred in the laboratory of chemistry and physics stand in strong contrast with the dangerous tendencies to plausibility, sophistry, casuistry, and self-delusion which so insidiously beset the pursuit of metaphysics, dialectics, and rhetoric, according to the traditions of the schools. Much of the training given in college in my boyhood was, it is not too much to say, directed straight upon the arts which go to make the worse appear the better reason. It was always an added. feather in the cap of the young disputant that he had won a debate in a cause in which he did not believe. Surely, in these more enlightened days, it is not needful to say that this is perilous practice, if, indeed, it is not always and necessarily pernicious. Even where the element of purposed and boasted self-stultification was absent, there was a dangerous and a mischievous exaltation of the form above the substance of the student's work, which made it better to be brilliant than to be sound.

Contrast with this the moral and intellectual influence of the studies and exercises I am considering. The student of