The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-25

| ty of Yale college life comes from the l formation of influential groups Of stu dents who live outside the college build i ings. A group of this kind, with quar-
 ters more luxurious and arrangements
 for comfort more complete than the col lege can readily afford, becomes a cource of evil which is rather intangible
 and very indefinable, but none the less
 real an that account. All that is bad in
 college ethics-its federation of irrespon-
 sible talk, and its belief that anything
 is right which a mans associates are in 1 the habit of doing-becomes tenfold
 worse when the talk is confined within
 the four walls of a house instead of be- | ing shouted across the campus, and when the ethics are those of clique or
 social group instead of those of the col
 lege as a whole. It is little hard to
 know how to face this state of things. I The building of more dormitories, with
 cheap and substantial rooms, would not 1 directly touch the difficulty. because
 these cheap dormitories would appeal 1 to the men whose ethical surroundings
 are substantially right already. And
 yet l believe that this last suggestion
 indicates the correct line oD which to | attack the problem. If we can make
 the college life of the ordinary man who
 has neither money nor influence behind him big enough to be the really impor-
 tant thing in the institution, we can | disregard disease spots which otherwise
 might be dangerous, because we may kbe sure that the general strength of the I I. k, aIs.S
 danger and react against the evil.
 It is a matter of great satisfaction
 that the dormitory system, hitherto con- | fined to the academic department, is to l be extended to the Sheffield Scientific i school.
 This school in the last forty years has gradually departed from it's original. conception as a place of training for specialists, and has become college in
 everything except the existence of col l lege buildings. This want was a seri-
 ous one. In spite of the best efforts of the faculty, it was inevitable that the
 Freshman should congregate in blocks l which become centers of occasional dis order; and that the upper classmen should segregate themselves in the so- l cial life of their respective society halls in way to prevent the formation of general college life under the best aus
 pices To-day this is in fair way to be. changed. An important beginning
 was made by the erection of Byers
 Hall, which not only provided assembly rooms for the students as body, but
 a number of living rooms for students
 also. The munificent gift of MT. Frtd-
 erick Vanderbilt has allowed the Shef- l field trustees to acquire considerable
 amount of land in an excellent location just south of the Nschool, and erect
 buildings at least equal and perhaps
 superior in style to the best of those of
 the academic department. One of these buildings is already under way; anoth-
 CT is promised for the immediate future. a 1t has been the view of those who
 have had charge of arranging the work of the Sheffield Scientific school that
 many things which are included in the courses of some schools of technology
 are of the nature of mere shopwork rather than of laboratory practice. They do not advance a students knowl-
 ledge of theory. They teach him things
 which at best are the ones that he
 would learn more quickly after he got | into actual business; while in the ma 1 jority of cases they have to be un-
 learned on account of the unexpected different details of practice which he is called upon to face. In the former case
 they do little good in the latter case
 they do positive harm. By the omis- sion of this part of the work a man can
 learn as much during three years as he
 otherwise would in four. I believe this
 to be sound reasoning.
 But there is a constant danger that
 men charged with the administration of courses of study of this kind will un- | der-estimate the importance of teach | ing the particular lines of theory which the practical world needs and demands
 The schools where much shopwork is l taught have at least this advantage: l that their professors are compelled to come in contact with as much as with 1 scientific associations, and thus are led
 to make a more direct connection be- l tween the students course in college and his subsequent work in his profess sion than would otherwise be the case. If we can carry out in practice the theory that our scientific students shall
 have their early years of professional work actually supervised by the in structors in their respective subjects, we can combine the methods of both
 systems-teaching the student both the | theory and the practice with the max 1 imum advantage in economy of time. | The appointment of Mr. John Hays Hammond as member of the govern ] ing board of the Scientific school fur
 nishes an assurance that the course in
 mining engineering will be administered | in this spirit and with this ideal.
 I see no reason why it should not be possible in ten or twenty years to or
 ganize most of the work of the Sheffield
 Scientific school, and indeed a very
 large part of our whole university work,
 on lines like those suggested by the de- velopment of the Forest school or the
 prposed development of mining engi- neering; not by introducing shopwork into the college, but by introducing into the council of the college that practical experience in shopwork-using the word in it's broadest sense--which will make eht years of undergraduate study bet ter preparation for life, and will make the professional work that immediately follows normal continuation of that