Discussions in education

Front matter

DISCUSSIONS IN EDUCATION

BY

FRANCIS A. WALKER, PH.D., LLD.

Contents

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Immediate Problems in Technological Education, . . 3 The Eise and Importance of Applied Science in American

Education, 19

I

The problem of giving instruction in English, to the "best effect, to students of scientific and technical schools, is a very interesting one. The teacher who shall solve it will make a contribution to the philosophy of education which will be of great value, inasmuch as the number of these schools is large, and is rapidly increasing. The instruction given in English in the classical colleges is, by general admission, very unsatisfactory; but, at least, it stands related to the fact that the pupils have a comparatively large vocabulary, derived from long-continued work in language; that they have made a special study of etymology; that they have become familiar with the figures of rhetoric through the Latin and the Greek, and that they have for years been exercised upon subtile distinctions, alike in language-study and in philosophy. Directly to introduce the methods of English instruction, as practiced in our colleges, into a scientific school, would be to invite failure. Here the pupils have had little language-study; they are generally unfamiliar with the etymology of the words they use; they have little ingenuity in expression, and, indeed, but slight disposition to make much of expression. For

112 TECHNOLOQICAL EDUCATION.

pupils of this class, the methods that would be proper and useful in a college must be modified in no inconsiderable degree if the highest success is to be obtained.

I have spoken of the deficiencies of the student of science, as compared with the student of the classics, of metaphysics, and of rhetoric, so far as the familiar college work in English is concerned. But it must not be thought that the account is all on one side. The scientific student has, to compensate for these deficiencies, certain mental qualities which may be made use of to good effect in training him to use his own language in statement, in narrative, in argument, or in the writing of personal letters and professional reports. The problem in pedagogics which I spoke of has reference to the best means of making use of those qualities in the teaching of English.

The student of natural and physical science has certain deficiencies in language which have been fairly acknowledged ; but he has an immense advantage in a far greater clearness and vividness in the formation of mental images, and a much stronger grasp upon his conceptions. Trained, day by day and year by year, in the objective study of concrete things, he sees nothing vaguely; the images he forms are definite and distinct; what he knows, he knows perfectly. If fine writing be the end in view, these mental characteristics may or may not be advantageous; but for the purposes of simple, straightforward, manly expression, whether in description, in exposition, in narrative, in argument, or

THE PROBLEM OF " ENGLISH." 113

in business correspondence, they are a source of great power. Such a student will still need much study and practice in the use of language to save him from committing numberless solecisms and to give him the completest use of his own powers of expression; but he is, taken altogether, a student of English not a whit less promising than his fellow in the classical college. IS^ay, the advantage indicated extends from the thinking to the speaking or the writing, since every word which is seen to contain a physical image, as so many words do, and indeed as nearly all words in their beginning did, means more to a student of science than to a student of language, literature, and philosophy.