Bulletin of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Volume 11-12 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...facility before entering college. At West Point the cadets acquire all the control an engineer needs over French in 200 hours of intensive training; and the technically minded student is far more likely to become broad-minded and cultured thru studies of literature and social conditions in the manner just described than he is thru the type of linguistic drill that is now universally given under the name of foreign languages in high schools and colleges. The organization of curricula here proposed is very different from that in general use. Therefore it would not be wise to attempt to produce a curriculum of this kind by merely substituting, say, engineering laboratory for foreign languages and the new type of English for the old, without in any way changing the content or the methods of instruction of the other courses. The new plan is based on the proposition that it is possible to analyze engineering practice and to make a list of all principles, facts, and theories that are essential to the equipment of every engineer, and then to organize this subject-matter into a curriculum in which the several types of work are interrelated in such a way that their inherent relations are obvious to the learner. Such a curriculum satisfies the professional demand for broad and fundamental training for all engineers and renders superfluous the requirement of two or three years of pre-engineering work in a college of liberal arts. It does not prepare specialists, and hence specialization is the topic of the next chapter. Chapter XIV SPECIALIZATION The preceding chapter suggests methods that may be profitably employed in framing a well-coordinated curriculum designed to give all students of technology a broad and solid foundation in engineering science and practice, thru...