DISCUSSION. 551 
J) 
Mrs. CHARLES HENROTIN, of Chicago: Mr. Chairman—I have been very much inter- 
ssted in the feeling in this country toward technical schools, having sons, and | am very 
nuch surprised to notice that the education given by technical schools is usually con- 
sidered only adapted to perhaps what we may call the middle classes. [ don’t know any 
zlass in this country that seems to suffer so much from their lack of specialization as 
very rich classes. I notice that Professor Thurston spoke as if, first, you were to give 
the general culture to the rich and then the special culture. Now, in my experience in 
tife I should reverse that entirely. I should be inclined to give to the very rich the 
special and then the general. I have watched the children of some very rich people, 
and I have found that when the children are young and show pronounced taste for 
specialization in study, parents often try to insist on the pure culture and education. I 
aave in my mind the sons of several men who had made a mark for themselves in rail- 
roading, and their sons have shown the same tendency ; and their parents have dis- 
couraged it as soon as they reached the age of ten or twelve years, and have insisted, in 
spite of the manifest disposition of those boys for technical education, to throw them to 
the universities of strictly literary and classical training. Now, as I look about the 
world I see that the men who are leading great financial enterprises, and enterprises 
specially that have to do with specialization, as engineering, suffer largely from the 
lack that their view of life was not broad enough, that their early training was not suf- 
ficiently along the lines of specialization to enable them to seize with advantage the 
;remendous future of the country. 
I am greatly interested in this subject, because 1 see this great tendency among people 
who can easily afford it to discourage this special course of education. I think manual 
and scientific training are the most interesting signs of the times. 
PROFESSOR WATERMAN, of the University of Chicago: I have just a few words in 
"egard to one of the points which were raised in the paper, and that is the relation of 
oroad culture training to the curriculum of a higher technological school. It was my 
orivilege to take the broadest culture course which was offered in the Institute of Tech- 
aology in Boston ; to get all of the methods of scientific investigation and applications 
to natural sciences, to political and economical sciences, and to get at them without any 
of the professional work which goes in preparing the man directly for a single profes- 
sion, during the four years which I spent in the Institute of Technology. 1 now feel 
that the training which was offered in that course prepared for almost any life work by 
putting the men who took the course closely in touch with what was going on about 
them, and giving them thoroughness in what they did. 
It seems to me that what has been said regarding the classics putting a man in touch 
with what has been rather than what is, is very much to the point ; and that by giving 
smphasis to the present rather than the past a man is best prepared to live completely, 
and to be an effective citizen and member of society. 
ProFESsOR ALLEN : The first point that I had specially in mind to speak about was 
she matter brought out in the first paper by President Walker in relation to the view of 
the engineer, the practical engineer, as compared with the teacher, and I desire to express 
my opinion in favor of the value of the teacher's opinion. Being u teacher myself, 1 
should do that with some relustance, except for the fact that perhaps more of my time 
aas been spent as an engineer than as a teacher, and for that reason I am able through 
memory to gauge my opinion both as an engineer and as a teacher. I am quite sure 
hat an educator can far better gauge the requirements for an engineer’s education than 
can the engineer himself. 
We as members of the faculty find that it is not altogether safe to allow the pupil or 
ais parents to decide as to individual and separate studies, and what sequence of work 
shall be carried out. In the colleges the clective system is carried to such an extent as 
;0 allow any selection of isolated studies, while in technological schools we decide what 
subjects necessarily depend upon others, what studies can be carried on to advantage in 
connection with other studies. I know that students of our own who have afterward 
veen in colleges where the elective system was in full force, have experienced difficulties 
of that kind. It seems to me the progress we have made in that way does have its 
significance. 
Proressor TrURSTON : Taking up the points as they come in order, 1 would like to 
ay, in reference to the example cited by Professor Richards, of the young man who 
became good afterward, that 1 think it is extremely possible, and is extremely likely, 
hat 1n the case where the young man takes the college course and graduates regularly 
¥ith his A.B., he may get and probably would get a large amount of culture and a less