350 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
students who had been given a thorough professional education, with the very minimum 
of chemistry—went into steel-works, the very works that needed the highest educa- 
tion in chemistry. The second year following 1 have one instance of a student who 
followed chemistry to the greatest degree that was given, and he immediately went into 
:ining engineering without any call, or very little call, for chemistry. Now the ques. 
sion comes up, Are we correct in saying that we can differentiate ? I think the answ er 
comes from practice; and, so far as it appears, we cannot. 
In our school we have a general course, a general mining engineer course, and that 
is the course which I advise the students at the present time to take unless they are 
sure of some definite opportunity that is coming to them. 
The second point of which I would like to speak is the immediate professional suc- 
sess or the ultimate professional success. The functional method, the older collegiate 
aethod, points to no profession at all during the four years of college life. This leaves 
the matter entirely with the pupil to take his profession when the time comes. The 
sarlier course in the technical schools pointed, to be sure, toward the professional 
course, but did not put the pupils into position where they were ready to enter those 
courses. I remember many instances in our own school. In one of the departments 
the professor was particularly good in mathematics, and we thought there was no need 
whatever of introducing the pupils to that profession, but simply to give them a 
thorough mathematical training in the mathematical sides of that profession without 
giving them any introductions. This teacher was not particularly enjoyed by the 
pupils during their course in the school. He was not looked up to during the first 
shree or four years of their professional training. The pupils in leaving school met 
with a great many impediments in finding their positions in professions. They went 
“ight back and changed their minds, from which it appeared that they had bad a good 
course, and the only objection that one could see was that during the course the stu- 
dents were not introduced to their profession. They might have been shown many 
things at the school. 
Now the later technical schools have profited by this experience, and they now put 
in & certain amount of work and training in the school which enables them to launch 
successfully in the world in their profession. We, at the present time, in our engineer- 
ing schools. believe that the three great branches, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, 
stand at the bottom of success in the engineering professions: that we must in addition 
bo this give some culture training, and some training to start the pupil in life without 
necessitating his banging his head against the obstacles and obstructions that are in 
his way; and that is, as I understand it, the key of the modern technical schools to-day. 
Third, culture training, then professional training. 1 do not wish to go into a dis- 
sussion of this. Iknow a man who went through one of our leading universities, took 
che four years’ collegiate course, and took it standing at the foot of his class all the way, 
and he was practically struggling, as the faculty said, with another man for the bottom 
of the class. After leaving college he went fo his professional school, and then he 
began to work, and he began to show that he had a very fine mind and a very good 
intellect, and he has since taken a place equal to the first in his line. Now, what good 
lid those four years at the foot of the class do him ? He is to-day standing at the very 
front rank of his profession. 
PrestpENT Henry T. Eppy, Terre Haute, Ind. : In relation to our scientific and 
mining schools, we recall at once that the greatest impulse this country ever received in 
shat direction was due to the land grant of the United States which has set up so many 
scientific schools. The great land grant which was the outcome of the war, which was 
a patriotic impulse, and which had in the hope of the framers thereof an increase of 
patriotic feeling throughout the country, it seems to me lies at the bottom of it. Now 
the thought which came to us in the address of Dr. Weishold last evening, was that the 
classical study. the study of Greek and Roman literature and the classical course of our own 
colleges, was of such a nature and had such an effect upon the human spirit asin a certain 
sense to undermine something really valuable in our present civilization. We are on 
this continent, the dominant power, asserting ourselves. It is not necessary to assert 
ourselves over against surrounding nations, as the German or French nation finds it 
necessary to assert its nationality, at all. I think we leave that in the background, and 
do not feel it and assert it in the way we should. These technical schools are uncon- 
seiously a stronger assertion of our individuality than any old classical colleges which had 
their roots far back in the past while we were provinces of Great Britain. 1 merely 
touch upon this thought, believing that it is already in your minds, and that it relates 
lo the discussion in connection with the two very interesting and valuable papers that 
have already been presented.