[103] Waldstein: _Essays on the Art of Pheidias_, Cambridge University
Press. 1885, pages 95 et seq.
[104] _New Princeton Review_, II, 29.
[105] _The American Magazine of Art_, Vol. 8, No. 5, page 177.
[106] Woodward, W. "Art Education in the Colleges," _Art Education in
the Public Schools of the United States_, edited by J. P. Haney;
American Art Annual, New York, 1908.
Ankeney, J. S., Woodward, W., Lake, E. J., "Final Report of the
Committee on the Condition of Art Instruction in Colleges and
Universities." _Seventeenth Annual Report of the Western Drawing and
Manual Training Association._ Minneapolis, 1910.
Kelley, C. F., "Art Education." _Report of the Commissioner of
Education_, Vol. I, Chap. XV. Washington, D. C., 1915.
Smith, E. B., _The Study of the History of Art in the Colleges and
Universities of the United States._ University Press, Princeton, 1912.
[107] _Nineteenth Annual Report, Western Drawing and Manual Training
Association_, Cincinnati, 1912, page 19.
[108] Robinson, D. M., "Reproductions of Classical Art," _Art and
Archaeology_, Vol. V, No. 4, pages 221-234.
[109] Rotary art exhibitions for educational purposes are
arranged by the American Federation of Arts, 1741, New York Avenue,
Washington, D. C.
PART SIX
VOCATIONAL SUBJECTS
CHAPTER
XXV THE TEACHING OF ENGINEERING SUBJECTS
_Ira O. Baker_
XXVI THE TEACHING OF MECHANICAL DRAWING
_J. D. Phillips and H. D. Orth_
XXVII THE TEACHING OF JOURNALISM
_Talcott Williams_
XXVIII BUSINESS EDUCATION
_Frederick B. Robinson_
XXV
THE TEACHING OF ENGINEERING SUBJECTS
Each of the preceding chapters of this volume treats of a subject
which is substantially a unit in method and content; but the subjects
assigned to this chapter include a variety of topics which are quite
diverse in scope and character. For example, such subjects as German
and physics represent the work of single collegiate departments; while
engineering subjects represent substantially the entire work of an
engineering college, of which there are many in this country, each
having a thousand or more students. It is necessary, then, to inquire
as to the scope of this chapter.
I. SCOPE OF THIS CHAPTER
=Contents of engineering curricula=
The contents of the representative four-year engineering curriculum of
the leading institutions may be classified about as in the table on
page 502. In addition to the subjects listed, most institutions
require freshmen to take gymnasium practice and lectures on hygiene,
and many colleges require freshmen, and some also sophomores, to take
military drill and tactics. Formerly many institutions required all
engineering freshmen to take elementary shop work; but at present in
most institutions this practice has been discontinued, owing to the
establishment of manual-training high schools and to the development
of other engineering subjects.
The order of the subjects varies somewhat in the different
institutions. For example, instead of as in the table on page 502,
rhetoric may be given in the sophomore year and language in the first.
Again, in some institutions a little technical work is given in the
freshman year. Further, the total number of semester-hours varies
somewhat among the different institutions. However, the table is
believed to be fairly representative.
CONTENTS OF ENGINEERING CURRICULA
The unit is a semester-hour; i.e., five class-periods a week for half
a year.
--------------------------------------+-----------------------+--------
| COLLEGIATE YEAR |
GENERAL SUBJECT +-----+-----+-----+-----+ TOTAL
| I | II | III | IV |
--------------------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+--------
Mechanical drawing and descriptive | | | | |
geometry | 10 | ... | ... | ... | 10
| | | | |
Rhetoric | 6 | ... | ... | ... | 6
| | | | |
Modern language | ... | 8 | ... | ... | 8
| | | | |
Pure mathematics | 10 | 8 | ... | ... | 18
| | | | |
Science--physical and social | 10 | 9 | 6 | 4 | 29
| | | | |
Theoretical and applied mechanics | ... | 3 | 10 | ... | 13
| | | | |
Technical engineering | ... | 8 | 20 | 32 | 60
| ----| ----| ----| ----| ----
Total | 36 | 36 | 36 | 36 | 144
--------------------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+--------
=The different engineering curricula=
Below is a list of the principal four-year curricula offered by the
engineering colleges of this country. The list contains forty
different engineering curricula. No one institution offers all of
these, but some of the larger and better equipped offer fifteen or
sixteen different curricula for which a degree is given.
1. _Architecture_ (which is usually classified as an engineering
subject): general architecture; architectural design; architectural
construction.
2. _Ceramics engineering:_ general ceramics and ceramics engineering;
ceramics; ceramics engineering.
3. _Chemical engineering_: general chemical engineering; metallurgical
engineering; gas engineering; pulp and paper engineering;
electro-chemical engineering.
4. _Civil engineering_: general civil engineering; railway civil
engineering; municipal engineering; structural engineering;
topographic or geodetic engineering; hydraulic engineering; irrigation
engineering; highway engineering.
5. _Electrical engineering_: general electrical engineering; telephone
engineering; electrical design; power-plant design; electrical railway
engineering.
6. _Marine engineering:_ general marine engineering; naval
architecture; marine engineering.
7. _Mechanical engineering:_ general mechanical engineering; steam
engineering; railway mechanical engineering; hydro-mechanical
engineering; machine design and construction; heating, ventilating,
and refrigerating; industrial engineering; automobile engineering;
aeronautical engineering.
8. _Mining engineering:_ general mining engineering; metallurgical
engineering; coal mining; ore mining.
The first engineering curriculum established was civil engineering,
which was so called to distinguish it from military engineering. At
first the course contained only a little technical work, but in course
of time specialized work was increased; and later courses were
established in mining and mechanical engineering, and more recently
followed specialized courses in architecture, electrical engineering,
marine engineering, chemical engineering, and ceramic engineering--about
in the order named. The order of the various special courses in the
several groups above is roughly that of their establishment.
=Number of engineering subjects=
In the preceding list are eight groups of curricula, each of which
contains about 60 semester-hours peculiar to itself; and, considering
only a single curriculum in each of the eight groups, there are 480
semester-hours of specialized work. In addition there are in the list
thirty-two subdivisions, each of which differs from the parent by at
least 10 semester-hours. Hence the total number of engineering
subjects offered is at least 800 semester-hours. It is safe to assume
that for administrative reasons, each 3 semester-hours on the average
represents a distinct title or topic, and that therefore the
engineering colleges of the country offer instruction in 267 different
engineering subjects.
However, the diversity is not so great as the preceding statement
seems to imply, since for convenience in program making and in
bookkeeping many subjects are listed under two or more heads. For
example, a subject which runs through two semesters will for
administrative reasons appear under two different heads in the above
computations. Again, the lecture or textbook work in a subject will
usually appear under one head and the laboratory work under a separate
title. Finally, some subjects which differ but little in character may
for convenience be listed under two different titles. If the subjects
that are subdivided for the above reasons were listed under a single
head, the number of topics would be reduced something like 20 to 25
per cent.
Therefore, the topics of engineering instruction which differ
materially in character number about 200. This, then, is the field
assigned to this chapter. Obviously it is impossible to consider the
several subjects separately.
II. DIFFERENTIATION IN ENGINEERING CURRICULA
For a considerable number of years there has been much discussion by
both college teachers and practicing engineers concerning
differentiation in engineering curricula; and the usual conclusion is
that undue differentiation is detrimental. But nevertheless
specialization has gone on comparatively rapidly and extensively--as
shown in the previous article. Since the degree of differentiation
determines in a large measure (1) the spirit with which a student does
his work, (2) the method of teaching that should be employed, and (3)
the results obtained, it will be wise briefly to consider the merits
of specialization. The arguments against specialization have been more
widely and more earnestly presented than those in favor of
specialization. The usual arguments pro and con may be summarized as
follows:
1. It is frequently claimed that the undergraduate is incapable of
wisely choosing a specialty, and that hence specialization should come
after a four-year course,--i.e., in the graduate school or by
self-instruction after graduation. But the parents and friends of a
student usually help him in deciding upon a profession or on a
special line of study, and therefore it is not likely that a very
serious mistake will be made. Of necessity a decision must be made
whether or not to seek a college education; and a decision must also
be made between the great fields of knowledge,--liberal arts,
agriculture, engineering, etc. If the student decides to take any
branch of engineering, he usually has his whole freshman year in which
to make a further specialization. At the end of the sophomore year the
specialization has not gone very far; and therefore if the student
finds he has made a mistake, it is not difficult to change.
2. "The undergraduate seldom knows the field of his future employment,
and hence does not have the data necessary for an intelligent
decision." The young man will never have all of the data for such a
decision until he has actually worked in that field for a time, and
there is no reason why he should not make a decision and try some
particular line of preparation.
3. Some opponents of specialization claim that the more general the
engineering training, the easier to obtain employment after
graduation; but this is not in harmony with the facts. The opposite is
more nearly true. For example, who ever heard of a practicing engineer
preferring a liberal arts student to a civil engineering student as a
rodman?
4. Specialized courses require that the college should have larger
equipment and a more versatile staff. The larger institutions can
prepare for specialized sections nearly as easily and cheaply as for
duplicate sections; and institutions having only a few students or
meager financial support should not offer highly specialized courses.
5. The opponents of specialization claim that to be a successful
specialist one should have a broad training, and that therefore the
broader the curriculum the better. It is true that to be a successful
specialist requires a considerable breadth of knowledge, but that does
not prove that the student should be required to get all of his
general knowledge before he gives attention to matters peculiar to
his specialty. No engineer can be reasonably successful in any field
with only the knowledge obtained in college, whether that be general
or special.
6. It is claimed that specialization should be postponed to a fifth
year. It seems to have been settled by experience that four years is
about the right length of the college course for the average
engineering student, and that in that time he should test his fitness
and liking for his future work by studying some of the subjects
relating to his proposed specialized field.
7. The chief reason in favor of specialization is that the field of
knowledge is so vast that it is absolutely necessary for every college
student--engineering or otherwise--to specialize; and in engineering
this specialization is vitally important, since fundamental principles
can be taught most effectively in connection with their application to
specialized problems. In no other way is it possible to invest
theoretical principles with definite meaning to the student, and by
this process it is possible to transform abstract theory into glowing
realities which under a competent teacher arouse the student's
interest and even his enthusiasm.
8. Specialization in engineering curricula is a natural outgrowth of
the evolution of engineering knowledge, and is in harmony with sound
principles of teaching. For example, all engineering students should
have a certain amount of mechanical drawing; but the best results will
be obtained if the civil engineer, after a study of the elementary
principles, continues his practice in drawing by making maps, while
the mechanical engineer continues his by making details of machinery.
Both will do their work with more zest and much more efficiency than
if both were compelled to make drawings which meant nothing to them
except practice in the art of drawing. Similar illustration can be
found throughout any well-arranged engineering curriculum. A vitally
essential element in any educational diet is that the subject shall
not pall upon the appetite of the student. He should go to every
intellectual meal with a hearty gusto. The specialized course appeals
more strongly to the ambition of the student than a general course.
The engineering student selects a specialized course because he has an
ambition to become an architect, a chemical engineer, a civil
engineer, or perhaps a bridge engineer, a highway engineer, a
mechanical engineer, or perhaps a heating engineer or an automobile
engineer; and having an opportunity to study subjects in which he is
specially interested, he works with zest and usually accomplishes much
more than a student who is pursuing a course of study only remotely,
if at all, related to the field of his proposed activities after
leaving college. Further, the more specialized the course, the greater
the energy with which the student will work.
Many of those who have discussed specialization seem to assume that
the only, or at least the chief, purpose of an engineering education
is to give technical information, and that specialization is
synonymous with superficiality. From this point of view the aim of a
college education is to give a student information useful in his
future work, and the inevitable result is that the student has neither
the intellectual power nor the technical knowledge to enable him to
render efficient service in any position in which he will work
whole-heartedly. The weakness and superficiality of such a student, it
is usually said, is due to excessive specialization, while in reality
it is primarily due to wrong methods of teaching. Within reasonable
limits specialization has little or nothing to do with the result; and
under certain conditions, as previously stated, specialization helps
rather than hinders intellectual development. If a subject has real
educational value and is so taught as to train a student to see, to
analyze, to discriminate, to describe, the more the specialization the
better; but if a subject is taught chiefly to give unrelated
information about details of practice, the more the specialization the
less the educational value.
10. Experience has conclusively shown that an engineering student is
very likely to slight a general subject in favor of a simultaneous
technical or specialized subject. This fact, together with the
necessity of a fixed sequence in technical engineering subjects, makes
it practically impossible to secure any reasonable work in most
general subjects when a student is at the same time carrying one or
more technical studies. For these reasons it is necessary to make the
later years of the curriculum nearly wholly technical, which makes
specialization possible, if it does not invite it.
III. AIM OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION
=Disciplinary values of engineering subjects=
The three elements of engineering education, as indeed of all
education, should be development, training, and information. The first
is the attainment of intellectual power, the capacity for abstract
conception and reasoning. The second includes the formation of correct
habits of thought and methods of work; the cultivation of the ability
to observe closely, to reason correctly, to write and speak clearly;
and the training of the hand to execute. The third includes the
acquisition of the thoughts and experiences of others, and of the
truths of nature. The development of the mental faculties is by far
the most important, since it alone confers that "power which masters
all it touches, which can adapt old forms to new uses, or create new
and better means of reaching old ends." Without this power the
engineer cannot hope to practice his profession with any chance of
success. The formation of correct habits of thinking and working,
habits of observing, of classifying, of investigating, of
discriminating, of proving instead of guessing, of weighing evidence,
of patient perseverance, and of doing thoroughly honest work, is a
method of using that power efficiently. The accumulation of facts is
the least important. The power to acquire information and the
knowledge of how to use it is of far greater value than any number of
the most useful facts. The value of an education does not consist in
the number of facts acquired, but in the ability to discover facts by
personal observation and investigation and in the power to use these
facts in deducing new conclusions and establishing fundamental
principles. There is no comparison between the value of a ton of
horseshoe nails and the ability to make a single nail.
=Utilitarian aim of the engineering subjects: information and training=
The engineering student usually desires to reverse the above order and
assumes that the acquisition of information, especially that directly
useful in his proposed profession, is the most valuable element of an
education; and unfortunately some instructors seem to make the same
mistake. The truth is that methods of construction, details of
practice, mechanical appliances, prices of materials and labor, change
so rapidly that it is useless to teach many such matters. However
important such items are to the practicing engineer, they are of
little or no use to the student; for later, when he does have need of
them, methods, machines, and prices have changed so much that the
information he acquired in college will probably be worse than
useless. Technical details are learned of necessity in practice, and
more easily then than in college; whereas in practice fundamental
principles are learned with difficulty, if at all. A man ignorant of
principles does not usually realize his own ignorance and limitations,
or rather he is unaware of the existence of unknown principles. The
engineering college should teach the principles upon which sound
engineering practice is based, but should not attempt to teach the
details of practice any further than is necessary to give zest and
reality to the instruction and to give an intelligent understanding of
the uses to be made of fundamental principles.
As evidence that technical information is not essential for success in
an engineering profession, attention is called to the fact that a
considerable number of men who took a course in one of the major
divisions of engineering have practiced in another branch with
reasonable success. The only collegiate training one of the most
distinguished American engineers of the last generation had was a
general literary course followed by a law course. Further, a
considerable number have successfully practiced engineering, after
only a general college education, and this in recent years when
engineering curricula have become widely differentiated. Examples in
other lines of business could be cited to show that a knowledge of
technical details is not the most important element in a preparation
for a profession or for business. The all-important thing is that the
engineering student shall acquire the power to observe closely, to
reason correctly, to state clearly, that he shall be able to extract
information from books certainly and rapidly, and that he shall
cultivate his judgment, initiative, and self-reliance. A student may
have any amount of technical information, but if he seriously lacks
any of the qualities just enumerated, he cannot attain to any
considerable professional success. However, if he has these qualities
to a fair degree, he can speedily acquire sufficient technical details
to enable him to succeed fairly well.
The chief aim of the engineering college should be to develop the
intellectual power that will enable the student not only to acquire
quickly the details of practice, but will also enable him ultimately
to establish precedents and determine the practice of his times.
Incidentally the engineering college should seek to expand the horizon
and widen the sympathy of its students. In college classes there will
be those who are either unable or unwilling to attain the highest
educational ideals, and who will become only the hewers of wood and
drawers of water of the engineering profession; but a setting before
them of the highest ideals and even an ineffective training in methods
of work will prepare them the better to fill mediocre positions.
The nearly universal engineering college course requires four years.
The field properly belonging to even a specialized curriculum is so
wide and the importance of a proper preparation of the engineers of
the future is so great as appropriately to require more than four
years of time; but the consensus of opinion is that for various
reasons only four years are available for undergraduate work--the
only kind here under consideration. Hence it is of vital importance
that the highest ideals shall be set before the engineering students
and that the methods of instruction employed shall be the best
attainable.
IV. METHODS OF TEACHING
Instruction in technical engineering subjects is given by lectures,
recitations from textbooks, assigned reading, laboratory work,
surveying, field-practice, problems in design, memoirs, and
examinations. Each of these will be briefly considered.
=Lecture system=
The term "lecture system" will be used to designate that method of
instruction in which knowledge is presented by the instructor without
immediate questioning of, or discussion by, the student. In the early
history of engineering education, when instruction in technical
engineering subjects was beginning to be differentiated from other
branches of education, the lecture was the only means of acquainting
the student with either the principles or details of engineering
practice, since textbooks were then few and unsatisfactory. But at
present, when there are so many fields of technical knowledge in which
there are excellent books, the lecture system is indefensible as a
means either of communicating knowledge or of developing intellectual
strength.
It is a waste of the student's time to present orally that which can
be found in print. At best the lecturer can present only about one
third as much as a student could read in the same time; and, besides,
the student can understand what he reads better than what he hears,
since he can go more slowly over that which he does not understand.
The lecturer moves along approximately uniformly, while some students
fail to understand one part, and others would like to pause over some
other portion. A poor textbook is usually better than a good lecturer.
It is a fundamental principle of pedagogy that there can be no
development without the activity of the learner's mind; and hence
with the lecture system it is customary to require the student to take
notes, and subsequently submit himself to a quiz or present his
lecture notes carefully written up. If the student is required to take
notes, either for future study or to be submitted, his whole time and
attention are engrossed in writing; and at the close of the lecture,
if it has covered any considerable ground, the student has only a
vague idea of what has been said. Further, the notes are probably so
incomplete as to afford inadequate material for future study.
If the subject matter is really new and not found in print, the
lecture should be reproduced for the student's use. It is more
economical and more effective for the student to pay his share of the
cost of printing, than to spend his time in making imperfect notes and
perhaps ultimately writing them out more fully.
The lecture system is less suitable for giving instruction in
engineering subjects than in general subjects, such for example as
history, sociology, and economics, since technical engineering
subjects usually include principles and more or less numerical data
that must be stated briefly and clearly.
If a student has had an opportunity to study a subject from either a
textbook or a printed copy of the lecture notes, then comments by the
teacher explaining some difficult point, or describing some later
development, or showing some other application or consequence of the
principle, may be both instructive and inspiring; but the main work of
teaching engineering subjects should be from carefully prepared
textbooks. However, an occasional formal lecture by an instructor or a
practicing engineer upon some subject already studied from a textbook
can be a means of valuable instruction and real inspiration, provided
the lecture is well prepared and properly presented.
In the preceding discussion the term "lecture" has been employed as
meaning a formal presentation of information; but there is another
form of lecture, a demonstration lecture, which consists of an
explanation and discussion by the instructor of an experiment
conducted before the class. The prime purpose of the experiment and
the demonstration lecture is to explain and fix in mind general
principles. This form of lecture is an excellent method of giving
information; and if the student is questioned as to the facts
disclosed and is required to discuss the principles established, it is
an effective means of training the student to observe, to analyze, and
to describe.
=Recitation system=
This system of instruction consists in assigning a lesson upon which
the student subsequently recites. In subjects involving mathematical
work, the recitation may consist of the presentation of the solution
of examples or problems; but in engineering subjects the recitation
usually consists either of answers to questions or of the discussion
of a topic.
The question may be either a "fact" question or a "thought" question.
If the main purpose is to give information, the "fact" question is
used, the object being to determine whether the student has acquired a
particular item of information. Not infrequently, even in college
teaching, the question can be answered by a single word or a short
sentence; and usually such a question, even if it does not itself
suggest the answer, requires a minimum of mental effort on the part of
the student. This method determines only whether the student has
acquired a number of unrelated facts, and does not insure that he has
any knowledge of their relation to each other or to other facts he may
know, nor does it test his ability to use these facts in deducing
conclusions or establishing principles. Apparently this method of
conducting a recitation, or quiz as it is often called, is far too
common in teaching engineering subjects. It is the result chiefly of
the mistaken belief that the purpose of technical teaching is to give
information.
The "thought" question is one which requires the student to reflect
upon the facts stated in the book and to draw his own conclusions.
This method is intermediate between the "fact" question and the
topical discussion; it is not so suitable to college students as to
younger ones, and is not so easily applied in engineering subjects as
in more general subjects such as history, economics, or social
science. It will not be considered further.
The topical recitation consists in calling upon the student to state
what he knows upon a given topic. This method not only tests the
student's knowledge of facts, but also trains him in arranging his
facts in logical order and in presenting them in clear, correct, and
forceful language. (1) One advantage of this method of conducting the
recitation is that it stimulates the student to acquire a proper
method of attacking the assigned lesson. Many college students know
little or nothing concerning the art of studying. Apparently, they
simply read the lesson over without attempting to weigh the relative
importance of the several statements and without attempting to
skeletonize or summarize the text. The ability to acquire quickly and
easily the essential statements of a printed page is an accomplishment
which will be valuable in any walk of life. In other words, this
method of conducting a recitation forces the student to adopt the
better method of study. (2) A second advantage of the topical
recitation is that it trains the student in expressing his ideas. It
is generally conceded that the engineering-college graduate is
deficient in his ability to use good English, which is evidence that
either the topical recitation is not usually employed, or good English
is not insisted upon, or perhaps both. (3) A third advantage of the
topical recitation is that it trains the student in judgment and
discrimination--two elements essential in the practical work of all
engineers.
Apparently many college teachers think it more creditable to deliver
lectures than to conduct recitations. The formal lecture is an
inefficient means of either conveying information or developing
intellectual power, and hence no one should take pride in it. The
textbook and quiz method of conducting a recitation is more effective
than the lecture system, but is by no means an ideal method of either
imparting information or giving intellectual training. Neither of
these methods is worthy of a conscientious teacher. The textbook and
topical recitation affords an excellent opportunity to teach the
student to analyze, to observe, to discriminate, to train him in the
use of clear and correct language, and in the presentation of his
thoughts in logical order--an object worthy of any teacher and an
opportunity to employ the highest ability of any person. In the
conduct of such a recitation in engineering subjects, there is
abundant opportunity to supplement the textbook by calling attention
to new discoveries and other applications, and to introduce
interesting historic references. It is often instructive to discuss
differences in construction which depend upon differences in physical
conditions or in preferences of the constructor, and such discussions
afford excellent opportunities to train the student in discovering the
causes of the differences and in weighing evidence, all of which helps
to develop his powers of observation and analysis and above all to
cultivate his judgment. If a teacher is truly interested in his work,
such a recitation gives opportunity for an interchange of thoughts
between the student and teacher that may be made of great value to the
former and of real interest to the latter. The conduct of such a
recitation should be much more inspiring to the teacher than the
repetition of a formal lecture which at best can have only little
instructional value.
=Suggestions for increasing effectiveness of the recitation=
The recitation is such an important method of instruction that it is
believed a few suggestions as to its conduct may be permissible,
although a discussion of methods of teaching does not properly belong
in this chapter. (1) The students should not be called upon in any
regular order. (2) If at all possible, each student should be called
upon during each recitation. (3) The question or topic should be
stated, and then after a brief pause a particular student should be
called upon to recite. (4) The question or topic should not be
repeated. (5) The student should not be helped. (6) The question
should be so definite as to admit of only one answer. (7) "Fact"
questions and topical discussions should be interspersed. (8)
Irrelevant discussion should be eliminated. (9) The thoughtful
attention of the entire class and an opportunity for all to
participate may be secured by interrupting a topical discussion and
asking another to continue it. (10) Clear, correct and concise answers
should be insisted upon. (11) In topical discussions the facts should
be stated in a logical order. (12) Commend any exceptionally good
answer.
=Assigned reading=
A student is sometimes required to read an assigned chapter in a book
or some particular article in a technical journal as a supplement to a
lecture or a textbook. Sometimes the whole class has the same
assignment, and sometimes different students have different
assignments. Each student should be quizzed on his reading, or should
be required to give a summary of it. The method of instruction by
assigned reading is most appropriate when the lecture presentation or
textbook is comparatively brief. This method is only sparingly
permissible with an adequate textbook.
=Laboratory work=
The chief purpose of laboratory work is to illustrate the principles
of the textbook and thereby fix them in the student's mind. The
manipulation of the apparatus and the making of the observations is
valuable training for the hand and the eye, and the computation of the
results familiarizes the student with the limitations of mathematical
processes. The interpretation of the meaning of the results cultivates
the student's judgment and power of discrimination, and the writing up
of the report should give valuable experience in orderly and concise
statement. Sometimes the student is not required to interpret the
meaning or to discuss the accuracy of his results, and sometimes he is
provided with a tabular form in which he inserts his observed data
without consideration of any other reason for securing the particular
information. He should not be provided with a sample report nor with a
tabular form, but should be required to plan his own method of
presentation, determine for himself what matter shall be in tabular
form and what in narrative form, and plan his own illustrations. Of
course, he should be required to keep neat, accurate, and reasonably
full notes of the laboratory work, and should be held to a high
standard of clearness, conciseness, and correctness in his final
report. Providing the student with tabular forms and sample reports
may lessen the teacher's labors and improve the appearance of the
report, but such practice greatly decreases the educational value to
the student.
=Surveying field-practice.=
In its aims surveying field-practice is substantially the same as
engineering laboratory work, and all the preceding remarks concerning
laboratory work apply equally well also to surveying practice.
Ordinarily the latter has a higher educational value than the former
in that the method of attack, at least in minor details, is left to
the student's initiative, and also in that the difficulties or
obstacles encountered require the student to exercise his own
resourcefulness. The cultivation of initiative and self-reliance is of
the highest engineering as well as educational value. Further, in the
better institutions the instructor in surveying usually knows the
result the student should obtain, and consequently the latter has a
greater stimulus to secure accuracy than occurs in most laboratory
work. Finally, the students, at least the civil engineering ones,
always feel that surveying is highly practical, and hence are
unusually enthusiastic in their work.
=Design.=
When properly taught an exercise in design has the highest educational
value; and, besides, the student is usually easily interested, since
he is likely to regard such work as highly practical and therefore to
give it his best efforts. Instruction in design should accomplish two
purposes; viz., (1) familiarize the student with the application of
principles, and (2) train him in initiative. Different subjects
necessarily have these elements in different degrees, and any
particular subject may be so taught as specially to emphasize one or
the other of these objects.
Sometimes a problem in design is little more than the following of an
outline or example in the textbook and substituting values in
formulas. The design of an ordinary short-span steel truss bridge, as
ordinarily taught, is an example of this method of instruction.
Another example is the design of a residence for which no
predetermined limiting conditions are laid down and which does not
differ materially from those found in the surrounding community or
illustrated in the textbook or the architectural magazine. Such work
illustrates and enforces theory, gives the student some knowledge of
the materials and processes of construction, and also trains him in
drafting; but it does not give him much intellectual exercise nor
develop his mental fiber, although it may prepare him to take a place
as a routine worker in his profession. Such instruction emphasizes
utilitarian training but neglects intellectual development, mental
vigor, and breadth of view.
The exercise in design which has the highest educational value is one
in which the student must discover for himself the conditions to be
fulfilled, the method of treatment to be employed, the materials to be
used, and the details to be adopted. An example of this form of
problem is the design of a bridge for a particular river crossing,
without any limitations as to materials of construction, type of
structure, time of construction, etc., except such as are inherent in
the problem and which the student must determine for himself. A better
example is the architectural design of a building to be erected in a
given locality to serve some particular purpose, with no limitations
except perhaps cost or architectural style.
Experience of several teachers with a considerable number of students
during each of several years conclusively shows that students who have
had only comparatively little of the design work mentioned in the
preceding paragraph greatly exceed other students having the same
preparation except this form of design work, in mental vigor, breadth
of view, intellectual power, and initiative. This difference in
capacity is certainly observable in subsequent college work, and is
apparently quite effective after graduation.
=Examinations=
The term "examination" will be used as including the comparatively
brief and informal quizzes held at intervals during the progress of
the work and also the longer and more formal examinations held at the
end of the work. Usually the examination is regarded as a test to
determine the accuracy and extent of the student's information, which
form may be called a question-and-answer examination or quiz. A more
desirable form of examination is one which requires the student to
survey his information on a particular topic, and to summarize the
same or to state his own conclusions concerning either the relative
importance of the different items or his interpretation of the meaning
or application of the facts. Such an examination could be called a
"topical examination." The remarks in the earlier part of this chapter
concerning the relative merits of the question-and-answer and the
topical recitation apply also with equal force to these two forms of
examinations. However, the topical examination can be made of greater
educational value than the topical recitation, since the student is
likely to be required to survey a wider field and organize a larger
mass of information, and also since the examination is usually written
and hence affords a better opportunity to secure accuracy and finish.
It is much easier for the instructor to prepare and grade the papers
for the question-and-answer examination than for the topical
examination, and perhaps this is one reason why the former is nearly
universally employed. Of course, the topical examination should not be
used except in connection with the topical recitation. Some executives
of public school systems require that at least a third, and others at
least a half, of all formal examinations shall be topical; and as the
examination papers and the grades thereon are subject to the
inspection of the executive, this requirement indirectly insures that
the teacher shall not neglect the topical recitation. Apparently a
somewhat similar requirement would be beneficial in college work.
=Memoir=
The term "memoir" is here employed to designate either a comparatively
brief report upon some topic assigned in connection with the daily
recitation or the graduating thesis.
The former is substantially a form of laboratory work in which the
library is the workroom and books the apparatus. This method of
instruction has several merits. It makes the student familiar with
books and periodicals and with the method of extracting information
from them. It stimulates his interest in a wider knowledge than that
obtained only from the textbook or the instructor's lectures. It is
valuable as an exercise in English composition, particularly if the
student is held to an orderly form of presentation and to good
English, and is not permitted simply to make extracts. The value to be
obtained from such literary report depends, of course, upon the time
devoted to it, and also upon whether the instructor tells the student
of the articles to be read or requires him to find the sources of
information for himself.
=Thesis=
The thesis may be a description of some original design, or a critical
review of some engineering construction, or an account of an
experimental investigation. The thesis differs from other subjects in
the college curriculum in that in the latter the student is expected
simply to follow the directions of the instructor, to study specified
lessons and recite thereon, to solve the problems assigned, and to
read the articles recommended; while the preparation of the thesis is
intended to develop the student's ability to do independent work.
There is comparatively little in the ordinary college curriculum to
stimulate the student's power of initiative, but in his thesis work he
is required to take the lead in devising ways and means. The power of
self-direction, the ability to invent methods of attack, the capacity
to foresee the probable results of experiments, and the ability to
interpret correctly the results of experiments is of vital importance
in the future of any engineering student. Within certain limits the
thesis is a test of the present attainments of the student and also a
prophecy of his future success. Therefore, the preparation of a thesis
is of the very highest educational possibility. Unfortunately many
students are too poorly prepared, or too lacking in ambition, or too
deficient in self-reliance and initiative to make it feasible for
them to undertake the independent work required in a thesis. Such
students should take instead work under direction. Further, it is
unfortunate that, for administrative reasons, the requirement of a
thesis for graduation is made less frequently now than formerly. The
increase in number of students has made it practically impossible to
require a thesis of all graduates, because of the difficulty of
providing adequate facilities and of supervising the work. Again, it
is difficult to administer a requirement that only part of the seniors
shall prepare a thesis. Consequently the result is that at present
only a very few undergraduate engineering students prepare theses.
=Graduate work=
All of the preceding discussion applies only to undergraduate work.
Only comparatively few engineering students take graduate work. A few
institutions have enough such students to justify, for administrative
reasons, the organization of classes in graduate work, but usually
such classes are conducted upon principles quite different from those
employed for undergraduates. No textbooks in the ordinary sense are
used. Often the student is assigned an experimental or other
investigation, and is expected to work almost independently of the
teacher, the chief function of the latter being to criticize the
methods proposed and to review the results obtained. Such work under
the guidance of a competent teacher is a most valuable means for
mental development, training, and inspiration.
IRA O. BAKER
_University of Illinois_
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Below is a list of the principal articles relating to engineering
education, arranged approximately in chronological order.
1. The annual _Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of
Engineering Education_, from 1913 to date, contain many valuable
articles on various phases of engineering education. Each volume
consists of 200 to 300 8vo pages. The society has no permanent
address. All business is conducted by the secretary, whose address at
present is University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The more important papers of the above _Proceedings_ which are closely
related to the subject of this chapter are included in the list below.
Many of the articles relate to the teaching of a particular branch of
engineering, and hence are not mentioned in the following list.
2. "Methods of Teaching Engineering: By Textbook, by Lecturing, by
Design, by Laboratory, by Memoir." Professor C. F. Allen,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An excellent presentation, and
discussion by others. _Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of
Engineering Education_, Vol. VII, pages 29-54.
3. "Two Kinds of Education for Engineers." Dean J. B. Johnson,
University of Wisconsin. An address to the students of the College of
Engineering of the University of Wisconsin, 1901. Pamphlet published
by the author; 15 8vo pages. Reprinted in _Addresses of Engineering
Students_, edited by Waddell and Harrington, pages 25-35.
4. "Potency of Engineering Schools and Their Imperfections." Professor
D. C. Jackson, University of Wisconsin. An address presented at the
Quarto-Centennial Celebration of the University of Colorado, 1902.
_Proceedings_ of that celebration, pages 53-65.
5. "Technical and Pedagogic Value of Examinations." Professor Henry H.
Norris, Cornell University. A discussion of the general subject,
containing examples of questions in a topical examination in an
electrical engineering subject. Discussed at length by several others.
_Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering
Education._ Vol. XV, pages 605-618.
6. "Limitations of Efficiency in Engineering Education." Professor
George F. Swain, Harvard University. An address at the opening of the
General Engineering Building of Union University, 1910. A discussion
of various limitations and defects in engineering education. Pamphlet
published by Union University; 28 small 8vo pages. Reprinted in
_Addresses of Engineering Students_, edited by Waddell and Harrington,
pages 231-252.
7. "The Good Engineering Teacher: His Personality and Training."
Professor William T. Magruder, Ohio State University. An inspiring
and instructive presidential address. _Proceedings of the Society for
the Promotion of Engineering Education_, Vol. XXI, pages 27-38.
8. "Hydraulic Engineering Education." D. W. Mead, University of
Wisconsin. An interesting discussion of the elements an engineer
should acquire in his education. The article is instructive, and is
broader than its title; but it contains nothing directly on methods of
teaching engineering subjects. _Bulletin of the Society for the
Promotion of Engineering Education_, Vol. IV, No. 5, 1914, pages
185-198.
9. "Some Considerations Regarding Engineering Education in America."
Professor G. F. Swain, Harvard University. A paper presented at the
International Engineering Congress in 1915 in San Francisco,
California. A brief presentation of the early history of engineering
education in America, and an inquiry as to the effectiveness of
present methods. _Transactions of International Engineering Congress_,
Miscellany, San Francisco, 1915, pages 324-330; discussion, pages
340-348.
10. "Technical Education for the Professions of Applied Science,"
President Ira N. Hollis, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A discussion
of the methods and scope of engineering education, and of the contents
of a few representative engineering curricula. _Transactions
International Engineering Congress_, San Francisco, 1915, Miscellany,
pages 306-325.
11. "What is Best in Engineering Education." Professor H. H. Higbie,
president Tau Beta Pi Association. An elaborate inquiry among graduate
members of that association as to the value and relative importance of
the different subjects pursued in college, of the time given to each,
and of the methods employed in presenting them. Pamphlet published by
the Association, 107 8vo pages.
12. "Some Details in Engineering Education." Professor Henry S.
Jacoby, Cornell University. A president's address, containing many
interesting and instructive suggestions concerning various details of
teaching engineering subjects and the relations between students and
instructor. _Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of
Engineering Education_, Vol. XXIII, 15 pages.
13. "Report of Progress in the Study of Engineering Education."
Professor C. R. Mann. Several of the National Engineering Societies
requested the Carnegie Foundation to conduct a thorough investigation
of engineering education, and the Foundation committed the
investigation to Professor C. R. Mann. First Report of Progress,
_Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering
Education_, Vol. XXIII, pages 70-85; Second Report, Bulletin, same,
November, 1916, pages 125-144; Final Report: A Study of Engineering
Education by Charles Riborg Mann, _Bulletin Number 11, Carnegie
Foundation for Advancement of Teaching_, 1918.
14. "Relation of Mathematical Training to the Engineering Profession."
H. D. Gaylord, Secretary of the Association of Teachers of
Mathematics in New England, and Professor Paul H. Hanus, Harvard
University. An elaborate inquiry as to the opinion of practicing
engineers concerning the importance of mathematics in the work of the
engineer. _Bulletin of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering
Education_, October, 1916, pages 54-72.
15. "Does Present-Day Engineering College Education Produce Accuracy
and Thoroughness?" Professor D. W. Mead, University of Wisconsin, and
Professor G. F. Swain, Harvard University. An animated discussion as
to the effectiveness of a collegiate engineering education.
_Engineering Record_, Vol. 73 (May 6, 1916), pages 607-609.
16. "Teach Engineering Students Fundamental Principles." Professor D.
S. Jacobus, Stevens Institute. Address of the retiring president of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. A clear and forceful
discussion of general methods of studying and teaching, and of the
choice of subjects to be taught. _Engineering Record_, December 16,
1916, pages 739-740.
17. A considerable number of thoughtful articles on the general
subject of technical education appeared in the columns of _Mining and
Scientific Press_ (San Francisco, California) during the year 1916. In
the main these articles discuss general engineering education, and
give a little attention to mining engineering education.
18. Since the preceding was written there has appeared a little book,
the reading of which would be of great value to all engineering
students, entitled _How to Study_, by George Fillmore Swain, LL.D.,
Professor of Civil Engineering in Harvard University and in the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New
York City, 1917. 5 x 7-1/2 inches, paper, 63 pages, 25 cents.
XXVI
THE TEACHING OF MECHANICAL DRAWING
=Mechanical drawing a mode of expression=
Drawing is a mode of expression and is therefore a form of language.
As applied in the engineering field drawing is mechanical in character
and is used principally for the purpose of conveying information
relative to the construction of machines and structures. It seems
logical that the methods employed and the standards adopted in the
teaching of engineering drawing should be based on an analysis of
conditions found in the engineering world. In the best engineering
practice the technical standards of drawing are high, so high in fact
that they may be used as an ideal toward which to work in the
classroom. Examples of good draftsmanship selected from practice may
well serve to furnish standards for classroom work, both in technique
and methods of representation.
=Mechanical drawing disciplinary as well as practical in value=
Engineering drawing demands intellectual power quite as much as it
does skill of hand. The draftsman in conceiving and planning his
design visualizes his problem, makes calculations for it, and
graphically represents the results upon the drafting board. The
development of the details of his design makes it necessary that he be
a trained observer of forms. Since new designs frequently involve
modifications of old forms, in his efforts to recall old forms and
create new ones, he develops visual memory. If the requirements of a
successful draftsman or designer be taken as typical, it is evident
that the young engineer must develop, in addition to a technical
knowledge of the subject, and a certain degree of skill of hand, a
habit of quick and accurate observation and the ability to perceive
and retain mental images of forms.
Modern methods of instruction recognize both the motor and mental
factors involved in the production of engineering drawings. It is the
aim of the drawing courses in engineering colleges to familiarize the
student with the standards of technique and methods of representation
found in the best commercial practice; likewise to develop in him the
powers to visualize and reason, which are possessed by the commercial
draftsman and designers.
=Organization and content of courses in mechanical drawing=
The drawing courses of engineering curricula may be divided into two
groups: (1) _General courses_, in which the principles and methods of
representation are taught, together with such practice in drawing as
will develop a satisfactory technique. (2) _Technical courses_, the
aim of which is to assist the student to acquire technical knowledge
or training, drawing being used primarily for the purpose of
developing or testing a student's knowledge of the subject matter.
The general courses usually include an elementary course and a course
in descriptive geometry. These courses deal with the fundamental
principles and methods which have universal application in the
advanced and technical courses. While the courses of the two groups
may overlap, the general courses precede the courses of the technical
group. There is no general agreement as to the order in which the
subjects belonging to the general group should be given. Each of the
following orders is in use:
1. A course in descriptive geometry followed by an elementary
technical course.
2. An elementary course and a course in descriptive geometry given
simultaneously.
3. An elementary course followed by a course in descriptive geometry.
The _first plan_ is followed by a number of institutions which
conclude, because of the general practice of offering courses in
drawing in the secondary schools, that pupils entering college have a
knowledge of the fundamentals ordinarily included in an elementary
course. In other institutions it is held that the principles of
projection can be taught to students of college age in a course of
descriptive geometry without preliminary drill.
Where the _second plan_ is used, the courses are so correlated that
the instruction in the use of instruments given in an elementary
course is applied in solving problems in descriptive geometry, while
the principles of projection taught in descriptive geometry are
applied in the making of working drawings. This plan is followed by
several of the larger engineering colleges.
Under the _third plan_ the principles of projection are taught through
their applications in the form of working drawings. In this way the
principles may be taught in more elementary form than is possible in
any adequate treatment of descriptive geometry. The illustration of
the principles in a concrete way makes it possible for those who find
visualizing difficult, to develop that power before abstract
principles of projection are taken up in the descriptive geometry. The
skill of hand developed in the elementary course makes it possible to
give entire attention to a study of the principles in the course in
descriptive geometry. While excellent results are being obtained under
each of the three plans, this plan is the one most generally adopted.
The order of courses in the technical drawing groups is determined by
other considerations than those relating to drawing, such as
prerequisites in mathematics, strength of materials, etc.
=The elementary courses=
The elementary courses have undergone a number of important changes
during recent years. In those of the present day more attention than
formerly is given to the making of complete working drawings. In the
earlier courses the elements were taught in the form of exercises. In
the latter part of the courses the elements were combined in working
drawings. In the modern courses, however, there is a very marked
tendency to eliminate the exercise and make the applications of
elements in the form of working drawings throughout the course.
In the early type of course the theory of projection was taught by
using the synthetic method; i.e., by placing the emphasis first upon
the projection of points, then lines, surfaces, and finally
geometrical solids. In the modern type of course, however, this order
is reversed and the analytic method is used; i.e., solids in the
form of simple machine or structural parts are first represented, then
the principles of projection involved in the representation of their
surfaces, edges, and finally their corners are studied. In this type
of course the student works from the concrete to the abstract rather
than from the abstract to the concrete.
=Fundamentals of the elementary course=
_Geometrical constructions_, which were formerly given as exercises
and which served as a means of giving excellent practice in the use of
instruments, are now incorporated in working drawings and emphasized
in making views of objects. It is believed that in the applied form
these constructions offer the same opportunity for the training in
accuracy in the use of instruments that was had in the abstract
exercises, to which is added interest naturally secured by making
applications of elements in working drawings.
_Conventions_ are also taught in an applied form and are introduced as
the skill for executing them and the theory involved in their
construction are developed in the progress of the course.
The type of _freehand lettering_ most generally taught is that used in
practice; i.e., the single-stroke Gothic. The best commercial
drafting-room practice suggests the use of the vertical capitals for
titles and subtitles, and the inclined, lower case letters and
numerals for notes and dimensions.
The plan generally found to produce satisfactory results is to divide
the letters and numerals of the alphabet into groups containing four
or five letters and numerals on the basis of form and to concentrate
the attention of the student on these, one group at a time. The simple
forms are considered first, and enough practice is given to enable the
student to proportion the letters and numerals and make the strokes in
the proper order.
It is more natural to make inclined letters than vertical ones, and
they are therefore easier to execute. If both vertical and inclined
letters are taught, the instruction on the vertical should be given
first, as it is more difficult to make vertical strokes after becoming
accustomed to the inclined strokes.
_Freehand perspective sketching_ affords the most natural method of
representing objects in outline. It is of particular value in
interpreting orthographic drawing. The student who first draws a
perspective sketch of an object becomes so familiar with every detail
of it that he cannot fail to have a clearer mental image of its form
when he attempts to draw its orthographic views. It gives a valuable
training in coordinating the hand and eye in drawing freehand lines
and estimating proportions. It also serves as an intermediate step
between observing an object and drawing it orthographically.
_Freehand orthographic sketching_ is now quite commonly incorporated
in modern courses in mechanical drawing. Such sketches serve as a
preliminary step in the preparation of the mechanical drawing. They
correspond to the sketches made by the engineer or draftsman for
drafting-room or shop use. The experience of many instructors seems to
indicate that the early introduction of freehand perspective and
orthographic sketching in a course of mechanical drawing serves as a
means of developing that skill in freehand execution which is so
necessary in rendering the freehand features of a mechanical drawing.
When this type of skill is acquired before the mechanical work is
started, the mechanical and freehand technique may be simultaneously
developed.
The organization of an elementary course composed largely of a
progressive series of working drawings necessitates the giving of
considerable attention to the selection of problems involving the use
of the above-named fundamentals to make the course increasingly
difficult for the student. The drawing of views involves geometrical
constructions and conventions, while the dimensions, notes, and title
invoke the making of arrowheads, letters, and numerals. In such an
elementary course the student receives not only the training in the
fundamentals, but also in their application in working drawings which
furnish complete and accurate information in the desired form.
=Descriptive geometry=
The modern methods of teaching descriptive geometry apply the theory
of the subject to applications in problems taken from engineering
practice. The introduction of practical applications adds interest to
the subject and makes the theory more easily understood. The number of
applications should be as great as possible without interfering with
the development of the theory. Such a treatment of descriptive
geometry, following a thorough course in elementary drawing, should
make it possible to deal with abstract principles of projection with a
few well-chosen applications.
Descriptive geometry aids materially in developing the power of
visualization which is so essential to the training of the engineer.
The graphical applications of the subject in the solution of
engineering problems may be used as a means of testing the student's
ability to visualize.
There is now very little discussion relative to the advantages and
disadvantages of the first and third angle projection. Since the third
angle is generally used in the elementary course as well as in
engineering practice, it seems logical that it should be emphasized in
descriptive geometry. Recent textbooks on this subject confirm the
tendency toward the use of the third angle.
The use of the third angle presents new difficulties, such as that of
locating the positions of magnitudes in space in relation to their
projections. Magnitudes must be located behind or below the drawing
surface. To obviate such difficulties, some instructors demonstrate
principles by first angle constructions. Others invert surfaces which
in the first angle have their bases in the horizontal plane. This
undesirable device may be overcome by using a second horizontal plane
in the third angle. Such means of demonstration may be avoided
altogether by considering the space relations of magnitude to one
another instead of relating them to the planes of projection. This
method centers the attention of the student on the relation of
magnitudes represented and develops visualization. It has been found
to give excellent results in both elementary drawing and descriptive
geometry.
To bring the teaching of descriptive geometry into closer harmony with
its application in practice, auxiliary views are frequently used
instead of the method of rotations.
Briefly, then, it appears that the modern course in descriptive
geometry should contain enough applications to hold the interest of
the student and to test his power of visualization; that the third
angle should be emphasized, and some use should be made of auxiliary
views. Above all, the development of visualizing ability should be
considered one of the chief aims of the course.
=Methods of instruction in general courses=
In teaching drawing and descriptive geometry, lectures,
demonstrations, and individual instruction each have a place.
Principles can best be presented in the form of lectures. The manual
part of the work can be presented most effectively by means of
demonstrations. The instructor should illustrate the proper use of
instruments and materials by actually going through the process
himself, calling attention to important points and explaining each
step as he proceeds. Individual instruction given at the student's
desk is a vital factor in teaching drawing, as it offers the best
means of clearing up erroneous impressions and ministering to the
needs of the individual student.
Frequent recitations and quizzes serve the purpose of keeping the
instructor informed as to the effectiveness of his instruction and as
a means by which the student can measure his own progress and grasp
upon the subject.
=Methods of instruction in technical drawing courses=
Those drawing courses which have for their primary object the teaching
of technical subject matter make use of the drawings as an instrument
to record facts and to test the student's knowledge of principles and
methods.
In the technical courses it should be possible to assume a knowledge
of the material given in the general courses. Some effort is usually
necessary, however, to maintain the standards already established. The
effort thus expended should result in improving technique and
increased speed.
=The four-year drawing course=
In an institution where drawing courses are given throughout the four
years, much can be done by organization and cooperation to make the
time spent by the student productive of the best results. More time
than can usually be secured for the general courses is necessary to
develop skill that will be comparable with that found in practice. The
conditions in technical drawing courses approximate those in practice.
They apply methods taught in the general courses. The limited time,
frequently less than 300 clock hours, devoted to the general courses
makes it desirable that advantage be taken in the technical courses
for further development of technique and skill. In a number of
institutions all work in drawing is so organized as to form a single
drawing unit. This plan calls for cooperation on the part of all
drawing teachers in the institution. The results obtained by this
method seem amply to justify the effort put forth.
=Conclusion=
The final test in any course or group of drawing courses may be
measured by the student's ability to solve problems met with in
engineering practice. Measured upon this basis, the newer types of
courses discussed herein, those founded upon the analytic method and
developed largely as a progressive series of working drawings, seem to
be meeting with better results than did those of the older type in
which the synthetic method predominated and in which abstract problems
were principally used.
While the college man is not fitting himself to become a draftsman, it
is quite true that many start their engineering careers in the
drafting office. Those who think well and are proficient in expressing
their thoughts through the medium of drawing are most apt to attract
attention which places them in line for higher positions.
Those who do not enter the engineering field through the drafting
office will find the cultural and disciplinary training and the habits
of precision and neatness instilled by a good course in drawing of
great value.
J. D. PHILLIPS and H. D. ORTH
_University of Wisconsin_
XXVII
THE TEACHING OF JOURNALISM
The education of the journalist or newspaper man has been brought into
being by the evolution of the newspaper during the last half century.
Addison's _Spectator_ two centuries ago counted almost wholly on the
original and individual expression of opinion. It had nothing beyond a
few advertisements. The news sheet of the day was as wholly personal,
a billboard of news and advertisements with contributed opinion in
signed articles. A century ago, nearly half the space in a daily went
to such communications. In the four-page and the eight-page newspaper
of sixty to eighty years ago, taking all forms of opinions,--leaders
contributed, political correspondence from capitals, state and
federal, and criticism,--about one fourth of the space went to
utterance editorial in character. The news filled as much more,
running to a larger or smaller share as advertisements varied. The
news was little edited. The telegraph down to 1880 was taken, not as
it came, but more nearly so than today. In an eight-page New York
paper between 1865 and 1875, a news editor with one assistant and a
city editor with one assistant easily handled city, telegraph, and
other copy. None of it had the intensive treatment of today. It was
not until 1875 that telegraph and news began to be sharply edited, the
New York Sun and the Springfield _Republican_ leading. Between 1875
and 1895, the daily paper doubled in size, and the Sunday paper
quadrupled and quintupled. The relative share taken by editorial and
critical matter remained about the same in amount, grew more varied in
character, but dropped from 25 per cent of the total space in a
four-page newspaper to 3 to 5 per cent in the dailies with sixteen to
twenty pages, and the news required from three to five times as many
persons to handle it. The circulation of individual papers in our
large cities doubled and quadrupled, and the weekly expenditure of a
New York paper rose from $10,000 a week to thrice that. These rough,
general statements, varying with different newspapers as well as issue
by issue in the same newspaper, represent a still greater change in
the character of the subjects covered.
When the newspaper was issued in communities, of a simple
organization, in production, transportation, and distribution, the
newspaper had some advertising, some news, and personal expression of
opinion--political-partisan for the most part, critical in small part.
This opinion was chiefly, though even then not wholly, expressed by a
single personality, sometimes dominant, able, unselfish, and in nature
a social prophet, but in most instances weak, time-serving, and
self-seeking, and partisan, with one eye on advertising, official
preferred, and the other on profits, public office, and other
contingent personal results.
In the complex society today, classified, stratified, organized, and
differentiated, the newspaper is a complex representation of this
life. The railroad is a far more important social agency than the
stagecoach. It carries more people; it offers the community more; but
the individual passenger counted for more in the eye of the traveling
public in the stagecoach than today in the railroad train; but nobody
would pretend to say that the railroad president was less important
than the head of a stage line, Mr. A. J. Cassatt, President of the
Pennsylvania Railroad and builder of its terminal, than John E.
Reeside, the head of the express stage line from New York to
Philadelphia, who beat all previous records in speed and stages.
The newspaper-complex, representing all society, still expressing the
opinion of society, not merely on politics but on all the range of
life, creating, developing, and modifying this opinion, publishes news
which has been standardized by cooperative news-gathering
associations, local, national, and international. In the daily of
today "politics" is but a part and a decreasing part, and a world of
new topics has come into pages which require technical skill, the
well-equipped mind, a wide information, and knowledge of the
condition of the newspaper. The early reporter who once gathered the
city news and turned it in to be put into type and made up by the
foreman,--often also, owner and publisher,--in a sheet as big as a
pocket-handkerchief, is as far removed from the men who share in the
big modern daily, as far as is the modern railroad man from the rough,
tough individual proprietor and driver of the stagecoach, though the
driver of the latter was often a most original character, and a
well-known figure on the highway as railroad men are not.
=Evolution of the profession of journalism=
As this change in the American newspaper came between 1860 and 1880,
the public demand came for the vocational training of the journalist
and experiments in obtaining it began. When Charles A. Dana bought the
New York _Sun_ in 1868, he made up his staff, managing editor, news
editor, city editor, Albany correspondent and political man, from
among the printers he had known on the New York _Tribune_. In ten
years these were succeeded by college graduates, and the _Sun_ became
a paper whose writing staff, as a whole, had college training, nearly
all men from the colleges.
College men were in American journalism from its early beginnings;
but, speaking in a broad sense, the American newspaper drew most of
its staff in the eighteenth century and in the first half of the
nineteenth century from among men who had the rough but effective
training of the composing room, with the common school as a beginning.
When the high school developed from 1860 on, it began to furnish a
large number of journalists, particularly in Philadelphia, where the
Central High School manned many papers. By 1880, college men began to
appear in a steadily growing proportion, so far as the general writing
staff was concerned. If one counted the men at the top, they were in a
small proportion. In journalism, as in all arts of expression, a
special and supreme gift will probably always make up for lack of
special training.
Between 1890 and 1900, the American newspaper as it is today was
fairly launched, and Joseph Pulitzer, the ablest man in dealing with
the journalism of and for the many, was the first conspicuous figure
in the newspaper world to see that the time had come for the
professional training of the journalist, the term he preferred to
"newspaper men." Neither the calling nor the public were ready when he
made his first proposal, and with singular nobility of soul and sad
disappointment of heart he determined to pledge his great gift of
$2,000,000, paying $1,000,000 of it to Columbia University before his
death and providing that the School of Journalism, to which he
furnished building and endowment, should be operated within a year
after his death. This came October 29, 1911, and the school opened the
following year.
=Journalism today requires general and technical training=
The discussion of the education of the journalist has been in progress
for twoscore years. In 1870 Whitelaw Reid published his address on the
"School of Journalism" and urged systematic training, for which in the
bitter personal newspaper of the day he was ridiculed as "the young
professor of journalism." In 1885, Mr. Charles E. Fitch, but just gone
after long newspaper service, delivered a course of lectures on the
training of the journalist, at Cornell University. Two years later Mr.
Brainerd Smith, before and after of the New York _Sun_, then professor
of elocution in the same university, began training in the work of the
newspaper in his class in composition, sending out his class on
assignments and outlining possible occurrences which the class wrote
out. This experiment was abruptly closed by Mr. Henry W. Sage,
Chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees, because the newspapers of
Minneapolis inclined to treat the university as important, chiefly
because it taught "journalism." Mr. Fred Newton Scott, professor of
rhetoric in the University of Michigan in 1893, began, with less
newspaper notice, training in newspaper English, continuing to the
present time his happy success in teaching style to his students.
In 1908, Mr. Walter Williams, for twenty-four years editor, first of
the Boonville _Advertiser_, and then of the Columbia, Missouri,
_Herald_, became dean of the first school of journalism opened in the
same year by the University of Missouri. This example was followed
under the direction of Willard G. Bleyer in the University of
Wisconsin. By 1911, nearly a score of colleges, universities, and
technical schools were giving courses in journalism.
By 1916, the directory of teachers of journalism compiled by Mr. Carl
F. Getz, of the University of Ohio, showed 107 universities and
colleges which gave courses in journalism, 28 state universities, 17
state colleges and schools of journalism, and 62 colleges, endowed,
denominational, or municipal.
The teachers who offered courses in journalism numbered 127. Of these,
25 were in trade, industrial, and agricultural schools, their courses
dealing with aspects of writing demanded in the fields to which the
institution devoted its work. The number of students in all these
institutions numbered about 5000. This gave about 1200 students a
year, who had completed their studies and gone out with a degree
recording college or technical work in which training in journalism
played its part. With about 40,000 men and women who were
"journalists" in the country at this time, there are probably--the
estimate is little better than a guess--about 3000 posts becoming
vacant each year, in all branches of periodical work, monthly, weekly,
and daily.
The various training in journalism now offered stands ready to furnish
a little less than half this demand. I judge it actually supplies
yearly somewhat less than a fourth of the new men and women entering
the calling, say about 750 in all. As in all professional schools, a
number never enter the practice of the calling for which they are
presumably prepared and still larger numbers leave it after a short
trial. In addition, training for the work of the journalist opens the
door to much publicity work, to some teaching, and to a wide range of
business posts where writing is needed. No account also has been made
here of the wide range of miscellaneous courses in advertising
provided by universities, colleges and schools of journalism by
advertising clubs, by private schools, and by teachers, local,
lecturing and peripatetic. It will take at least ten years more before
those who have systematic teaching in journalism will be numerous
enough to color the life of the office of the magazine or newspaper,
and a generation before they are in the majority.
=Development of courses and schools of journalism=
But numbers are not the only gauge of the influence of professional
study on the calling itself. The mere presence, the work, the
activities, and the influence of professional schools raise the
standards of a calling. Those in its work begin to see their daily
task from the standpoint which training implies. Since the
overwhelming majority of newspaper men believe in their calling, love
it, rejoice in it, regret its defects, and honor its achievements,
they begin consciously to try to show how good a newspaper can be made
with nothing but the tuition of the office. Inaccuracy, carelessness,
bad taste, and dubious ethics present themselves at a different angle
when judged in the light of a calling for which colleges and
universities furnish training. A corporate spirit and a corporate
standard are felt more strongly, and men who have learned all they
know in a newspaper office have a just, noble, and often successful
determination to advance these standards and endeavor to equal in
advance anything the school can accomplish. This affects both those
who have had college training and those who come to their work as
newspaper men with only the education of the public schools, high or
elementary. More than 1000 letters have been received by the School of
Journalism in Columbia University, since it was opened, asking advice
as to the reading and study which could aid a man or woman unable to
leave the newspaper office to study to improve their work. College
graduates, in particular on newspapers, begin systematic study on
their own account, aware of an approaching competition. Definite
standards in newspaper writing and in diction begin to be recognized
and practiced in the office, and slips in either meet a more severe
criticism.
Newspaper associations of all orders play their part in this
spontaneous training. Advertising clubs and their great annual
gatherings have censored the periodic publicity of the advertising
column as no other agency whatever could possibly have done. How far
this educating influence has transformed this share of the American
periodical in all its fields only those can realize who have studied
past advertisements. Every state has its editorial association. These
draw together more men from the weeklies and the dailies in cities
under 50,000 of population than from cities of more than 500,000.
These associations thirty years ago were little more than social. They
have come to be educational agencies of the first importance. They
create and assert new norms of conduct and composition. The papers
read are normally didactic. All men try to be what they assert they
are. From the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, bringing
together nearly 1000 of our leading newspapers to meetings of the
weeklies of a county, a region in a state, a whole state, sections
like New England or the Southern States of particular classes of
periodicals, these various organizations are rapidly instituting a
machinery, and breathing a spirit whose work is a valid factor in the
education of the newspaper man. Not the least influence which the
schools of journalism exert on the active work of the calling is
through these associations, particularly in the states west of the
Mississippi where, at the present stage of journalism in this region,
state universities can through schools of journalism bring newspapers
together at a "newspaper week."
=Journalism raised to dignity of a profession by schools of journalism=
The rapid growth in students registered in "journalism" courses did
not gauge the demand for professional teaching in the craft of the
newspaper or the magazine. A large share of the "journalism" taught
consisted simply in teaching newspaper English. The college course has
been nowhere so vehemently and vigorously attacked as in the training
it gave in writing English. Few were satisfied with it, least of all
those who taught it. At least one college professor, whose method and
textbooks were launched thirty years ago, has recanted all his early
work in teaching composition and pronounced it valueless or worse. The
college graduate, after courses in English composition (at least one
in the freshman year and often two or three more), in many instances
found himself unable to write a business letter, describe a plan
projected in business affairs, compose advertisements, or narrate a
current event. This was not invariably the case, but it occurred often
enough to be noted. Books, pamphlets, and papers multiplied on this
lack of training for practical writing in college composition courses.
The world of education discovered, what the newspapers had found by
experience, that the style of expression successful in literature did
not bring results in man's daily task of reaching his fellow man on
the homely and direct issues of daily life. In literature, genius is
seeking to express itself. In the newspaper and in business, the
writer is trying--and only trying--to express and interpret his
subject so as to reach the other and contemporary man. If he does
this, he wins. If not, he fails. Genius can, should be, careless of
the immediate audience, and wait for the final and ultimate response.
No newspaper article and no advertisement can. For them, style is only
a means. In letters, form is final. The verdict of posterity and not
of the yearly subscriber or daily purchaser is decisive.
=Journalistic writing demands a distinctive style and calls for immediate
response=
In the high school and college, from 1910 on, there came courses in
English which turned to the newspaper for methods and means of
expression, and were called "courses in journalism." They were really
courses in the English of the newspaper, besprinkled with lectures on
the diction of the newspaper and the use of words--futile efforts,
through lists of words that must not be used, to give a sound rule of
the selection of language by the writer, and, above all, attempts to
secure simple, direct, incisive narrative and discussion. These are
all useful in their place and work. They prepare a man for some of the
first steps of the newspaper office, particularly in the swift,
mechanical routine and technique of "copy," indispensable where what
is copy now is on the street for sale within an hour.
Where an instructor has himself the gift of style and the capacity to
impart it, where he is himself a man who sells his stuff and knows
what stuff will sell, where he has taste and inspiring, effective
teaching power, a course in newspaper English may carry a man far in
acquiring command of his powers of expression to their profitable use.
These "courses in journalism" sometimes run for only a single
semester. Many run for the normal span of three hours a week through a
year. Sometimes there are two in succession, the second assuming the
task of teaching work which a newspaper beginner usually reaches in
from three to five years: the special article, the supplement, study
of a subject, the "feature" story, criticism, and the editorial. When
these courses are based on assignments which lead a man to go out and
get the facts on which he writes, they furnish a certain share of
training in the art of reporting. Where this is done in a college town
and a college community, however, the work is a far remove from that
where the reporter must dive and wrestle in the seething tide of a
great city, to return with news wrested from its native bed.
=Courses in "newspaper English"=
Newspaper English has its great and widest value to the man who wishes
to learn how he can affect the other man. A course in it is certain,
if the instruction is effective, to leave a student better able to
express himself in the normal needs of life. This work is taken by
many students as part of the effective training of college life, with
no expectation of entering active newspaper work. The demand for
publicity work in all business fields, and its value to the social
worker, the teacher, and the clergyman, lead others to this
specialized training. In at least one of our state universities, half
those who take the courses in journalism do not look to the newspaper
in the future. The curriculum is often so arranged that in a four-year
college course it will be practicable to combine these courses in
newspaper English with the parts of work offered, required for, or
preparatory to the three learned professions, social service,
business, and the applied sciences. Such an arrangement of studies
frankly recognizes the value in general education and after life of
training in the direct expression the newspaper uses. In no long time
every college will have at least one such course in its English
department.
But this course in direct writing stands alone, without any systematic
training in journalism; it should not be called a course in journalism
any more than a course in political science dealing with law, or a
course in physiology or hygiene, can be called courses in law or
medicine, because they cover material used in schools of law or
schools of medicine. It is an advantage for any educated man to learn
to write clearly, simply, to the point; to put the purpose, object,
and force of an article at the beginning, and to be as much like
Daniel Defoe and Franklin, and as little like Walter Pater or Samuel
Johnson, as possible; it is well for him to have a general view of the
newspaper and its needs; it is a mistake to leave him with the
impression that he has the training journalism demands. He is no
better off at this point than any college graduate who has picked up
for himself, by nature or through practice and imitation, the direct
newspaper method.
=Functions of a school of journalism: To select as well as to train=
President Eliot, when the organization of a school of journalism came
before him, cast his august and misleading influence for the view that
a college education was enough training for newspaper work. Many still
believe this. In more than one city-room today college men are
challenging the right of the graduates of a school of journalism to
look on themselves as better fitted for the newspaper office than
those who are graduates of a good college. If the training of the
school has done no more than graft some copy-writing and some
copy-editing on the usual curriculum, they are right. If the coming
journalist has got his training in classes, half of whose number had
no professional interest in the course offered, the claim for the
college course may be found to be well based. Men teach each other in
the classroom. A common professional purpose creates common
professional ideals and common professional aims as no training can,
given without this, though it deal with identically the same
subjects.
The training of the journalist will at this point go through the same
course as the training of other callings. The palpable thing about
law, the objective fact it presents first to the layman, is procedure
and form. This began legal education. A man entered a law office. He
ran errands and served papers which taught him how suits were opened.
A bright New York office boy in a law firm will know how many days can
pass before some steps must be taken or be too late, better than the
graduate of a law school. The law students in an office once endlessly
copied forms and learned that phase of law. For generations men "eat
their dinners" at the Inns of Court and learned no more. The law
itself they learned through practice, at the expense of their clients.
Anatomy was the obvious thing about medicine when Vesalius, of the
strong head and weak heart, cleaned away the superstitions of part of
the medical art and discovered a new world at twenty-eight. The
medical training of even seventy years ago, twenty years after
cellular pathology had dawned, held wearisome hours of dissection now
known to be a waste. It is the functions of the body and its organs
which we now know to be the more important, and not the bones,
muscles, nerves, and organs considered as mere mechanism.
The classroom is the patent thing about instruction. The normal
schools lavished time on the tricks of teaching until flocks of
instructors in the high schools and colleges could not inaccurately be
divided into those who could teach and knew nothing and those who knew
something and could not teach. Our colleges early thought they could
weave in Hebrew and theology, and send out clergymen, and later tried
to give the doctor a foundation on which eighteen subsequent months
could graft all he needed of medicine.
Reporting is the obvious aspect of journalism which the ignorant
layman sees. Many hold the erroneous view that the end of a school of
journalism is to train reporters. Reporting is not journalism. It is
the open door to the newspaper office, partly because there are very
few reporters of many years' service. Some of them are, but able men
before long usually work out of a city-room, or gain charge of some
field of city news, doing thus what is in fact reporting, but combined
with editorial, critical, and correspondent work. Such is the Wall
Street man, the local politics man, the City Hall man, or the Police
Headquarters man, who gathers facts and counts acquaintance as one of
his professional assets. But these men are doing, in their work, far
more than reporting as it presents itself to those who see in the task
only an assignment. Such men know the actual working of the financial
mechanism, not as economists see it, but as Bagehot knew it. They
understand the actual working of municipal machinery besides having a
minute knowledge of character, decision, practice, and precedent in
administration. In our real politics, big and little, they and the
Washington and Albany correspondents are the only men who know both
sides, are trusted with the secrets of both parties, and read closed
pages of the book of the chronicles of the Republic. As for the Police
Headquarters man, he too alone knows both police and crime, and no
investigation surprises him by its revelations. If a man, for a
season, has had the work of one of these posts, he comes to feel that
he writes for an ignorant world, and if he have the precious gift of
youth, looks on himself as favored of mortals early, seeing the events
of which others hear, daily close to the center of affairs, knowing
men as they are and storing confidence against the day of revelation.
Men like these are the very heart's core of a newspaper. Their posts
train them. So do the key posts of a newspaper, its guiding and
directing editors and those who do the thinking for thinking men by
the hundred thousand in editorial, criticism, and article. It is for
this order of work on a newspaper that a school of journalism trains.
It is to these posts that, if its men are properly trained, its
graduates rapidly ascend, after a brief apprenticeship in the
city-room and a round in the routine work of a paper. Dull men,
however educated, will never pass these grades, and not passing they
will drop out. A school should sift such out; but so far, in all our
professional training, it is only the best medical schools which are
inflexible in dealing with mediocrity. Most teachers know better, but
let the shifty and dull pass by. The newspaper itself has to be
inexorable, and no well-organized office helps twice the man who is
dull once; but he and his kind come often enough to mar the record.
Journalism, like other professions, has its body of special tasks and
training, but, as in other callings, clear comprehension of this body
of needs will develop in instruction slowly. The case system in law
and the laboratory method in medicine came after some generations or
centuries of professional work and are only a generation old. Any one
who has sought to know the development of these two methods sees that
much in our schools of journalism is where law and medical schools
were sixty years ago. We are still floundering and have not yet solved
the problem of giving background, concision, accuracy, and interest to
the report, of really editing copy and not merely condensing and
heading it, of recognizing and developing the editorial and critical
mind, and most of all, of shutting out early the shallow, the
wrong-headed, the self-seeking, and the unballasted student.
=The average college student lacks expressional power: Reasons=
The very best law and medical schools get the better of this, and only
the best. They are greatly aided by a state examination which tests
and tries all their work, braces their teaching, stimulates their men,
and directs their studies. This will inevitably come in journalism,
though most practicing newspaper men do not believe this. Neither did
doctors before 1870 expect this. As the newspaper comes closer and
closer into daily life, inflicts wounds without healing and does
damage for which no remedy exists, the public will require of the
writer on a daily at least as much proof of competency as it does of a
plumber. This competency sharply divides between training in the
technical work of the newspaper and in those studies that knowledge
which newspaper work requires. Capacity to write with accuracy, with
effect, with interest, and with style is the first and most difficult
task among the technical requirements of the public journal. As has
already been said, a gift for expression is needed, but even this
cannot be exercised or developed unless a man has acquired diction and
come in contact with style, for all the arts rest on the imitation of
accepted models. Many students in all schools of journalism come from
immigrant families and are both inconceivably ignorant of English and
inconceivably satisfied with their acquirement of English, as we all
are with a strange tongue we have learned to speak. Even in families
with two or more generations of American life, the vocabulary is
limited, construction careless, and the daily contact with any
literature, now that family prayers and Bible reading are gone; almost
nil. Of the spoken English of teachers in our public schools,
considered as the basis of training for the writer, it is not seemly
to speak. Everybody knows college teachers who have never shaken off
the slovenly phrases and careless syntax of their homes. The thesis on
which advanced degrees are conferred is a fair and just measure of the
capacity to write conferred by eleven years of education above the
"grammar grades." The old drill in accurate and exact rendering of
Greek and Latin was once the best training for the writer; but
slovenly sight reading has reduced its value, and a large part of its
true effect was because the youth who studied the classics fifty years
ago came in a far larger share than today from families whose elders
had themselves had their expression and vocabulary trained and
developed by liberal studies. The capacity for good writing apparent
at Oxford and Cambridge rests in no small measure on the classical
family horizon in teacher and taught.
=Kind of training in composition to be given students of journalism=
Those who turn to journalism naturally care for writing, but in an art
to "care" is little and most have never had the personal environment,
the training, or the personal command of English to enable them to do
more than write a stiff prose with a narrow vocabulary and no sense
of style. Even those who have some such capacity are hampered by the
family heritage already outlined. College writing is in the same
condition; but the average college man is not expecting to earn his
living by his typewriter. In order to receive a minimum capacity in
writing enough to pass, every year of study for journalism must have a
writing course and the technical work must run to constant writing.
From start to finish there must be patient, individual correction. The
use of the typewriter must be made obligatory. Rigid discipline must
deal with errors in spelling, grammar, the choice of words and
phrases. Previous college training in composition must in general be
revised and made over to secure directness and simplicity. At the end,
the utmost that can be gained for nineteen out of twenty is some
facility, a little sense of style and diction, and copy that will be
above the average of the newspaper and not much above that. Examine
the writing in the newspapers issued by some schools and the work in
schools that do not, and a distressingly large portion is either dull
or "smart," the last, worst fault of the two.
=Effective training in reporting must be given in large urban centers=
Reporting is the first use to which writing is put and through which
the writer is trained. For this, abundant material is indispensable,
as much as clinical material for a medical school. As the medical
schools gravitate to cities, and the rural institutions flicker out
one by one, so in the end the effectively trained reporter will
gravitate to a large city. Towns of under 20,000 population furnish a
very tame sort of reporting, and those who get this training in them
find reporting is under new conditions in a great metropolis. In such
a place the peril is that routine news will take too much of the
precious time for training the reporter and the demands of academic
hours will interfere with sharing in the best of big stories.
=Aims in teaching the art of reporting=
Routine is the curse of the newspaper, and it is at its worst in
reporting. In its face the four hard things to get are the combination
of the vivid, the accurate, and the informed and the condensed story.
Equipped newspapers of high standards like the New York _World_
require recourse to reference books, the "morgue," and the files in
every story where details can be added to the day's digging in that
particular news vein. Condensation comes next. The young cub reporter
generally shuns both. He hates to look up his subject. He spreads
himself like a sitting hen over one egg. Both must be required for
efficient training. Compression it is difficult to enforce in a school
where paper bills are small or do not exist and the space pressure of
the large daily is absent. A number of dailies of large circulation
are cultivating very close handling of news and space for feature and
woman stuff with very great profit, and the schools give too little
attention to this new phase of the newspaper. In all papers, the old
tendency to print anything that came by wire is gone and mere "news"
has not the place it once had. In particular, local news was cut down
one half in a majority of dailies in cities of 250,000 and over from
August, 1914, to the close of the war. The small daily in places of
less than 50,000 and weeklies did not do this, which is one reason why
great tracts of the United States were not ready for war when it came.
Woe to the land whose watchmen sleep!
=The teaching of copy-editing=
Copy-editing is the next task in the training of the coming newspaper
man. On the small daily and weekly, there is little of this, but it is
practiced on the metropolitan daily. There ten to twelve men are
needed, doing nothing else but editing copy. In the office, two or
three years are needed to bring a man to this work. No school can
teach this unless its men give at least a full day to editing a flood
of copy that will fill a 12 to 16 page newspaper. Where the work of
the students runs day by day on the copy of one of the lesser dailies,
editing for that purpose is secured, but not the intensive training
needed to handle the copy-desk requirements of newspapers in a city of
1,000,000 population or more in its urban ring. Success in this field
is proved when men go direct from the classroom to such a desk. This
carries with it tuition in heads for all needs, make-up, and the close
editing of special articles, features, and night Associated Press
copy.
=A liberal curriculum must be part of training for journalism=
Newspaper training will always deal also with subjects and needs a
course containing a larger proportion of the studies usually taught in
college or offered in its curriculum. Medicine requires the same
chemistry, organic and inorganic, the same physics, and the same
elementary biology as our college courses cover; these sciences are
more or less like a Mother Hubbard, no very close fit and concealing
more than is revealed. Johns Hopkins has been able at this point to
apply tests, personal and particular, gauging both teacher and taught,
more searching than are elsewhere required. The fruits abundantly
justify this course, and in time some school of journalism will apply
like tests to history,--ancient, medieval, and modern,--political
economy, political science, and the modern languages, which are the
basis of its work. The practical difficulty is that it is far easier
to test the three sciences just mentioned than history, politics, and
economics. No one will seriously assert that these are as rigorously
taught as chemistry, physics, and biology. The personal equation of
the teacher counts for more, it is both easier and more tempting to
inject social theories, not yet tested by current facts, than in
science. Sciolism is less easily detected in courses which deal with
the humanitarian held than in science, but it is not less perilous and
it is not less possible to apply the same experimental tests as in the
scientific laboratory. He is blind, however, who does not see that
much advance in the current teaching at any time of history, politics,
and economics has had its experimental tests as complete and as
convincing as in any laboratory, which certain teachers wholly refuse
to accept--sometimes because they are behind the times, sometimes
because they are before the times; sometimes they are in no time
whatever but the fool time of vain imaginings that somewhere,
somewhen, and somehow there is a place where human desires are
stronger than the inevitable laws which guide and guard the physics,
the chemistry, and the biology of social bodies.
=Social sciences must be related to life=
A notable difference exists between the views of law taught and
discussed in a law school and in a school of political science. The
medical lectures preserve a sobriety in discussing sundry biological
problems not always present in advanced courses of biology. Both
lecturers, in both instances, are scientific men, both are faithful to
the truths of science, but as a distinguished economist, who in his
early years had been accused of being an advanced socialist, said,
after he had won a comfortable fortune by judicious investments in
business, banking, and realty, to a friend of earlier and far-distant
years: "My principles remain exactly the same, but, I admit, my point
of view has changed." There is not one biology of the medical school,
another of the biological laboratory. Neither does the body of law
differ in a law school or in a school of political science. The
principles remain exactly the same. Of necessity, however, the point
of view has changed and treatment has changed with it. So has
responsibility.