ice in any position in which he will work
whole-heartedly. The weakness and superficiality of such a student, it
is usually said, is due to excessive specialization, while in reality
it is primarily due to wrong methods of teaching. Within reasonable
limits specialization has little or nothing to do with the result; and
under certain conditions, as previously stated, specialization helps
rather than hinders intellectual development. If a subject has real
educational value and is so taught as to train a student to see, to
analyze, to discriminate, to describe, the more the specialization the
better; but if a subject is taught chiefly to give unrelated
information about details of practice, the more the specialization the
less the educational value.

10. Experience has conclusively shown that an engineering student is
very likely to slight a general subject in favor of a simultaneous
technical or specialized subject. This fact, together with the
necessity of a fixed sequence in technical engineering subjects, makes
it practically impossible to secure any reasonable work in most
general subjects when a student is at the same time carrying one or
more technical studies. For these reasons it is necessary to make the
later years of the curriculum nearly wholly technical, which makes
specialization possible, if it does not invite it.

III. AIM OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

=Disciplinary values of engineering subjects=

The three elements of engineering education, as indeed of all
education, should be development, training, and information. The first
is the attainment of intellectual power, the capacity for abstract
conception and reasoning. The second includes the formation of correct
habits of thought and methods of work; the cultivation of the ability
to observe closely, to reason correctly, to write and speak clearly;
and the training of the hand to execute. The third includes the
acquisition of the thoughts and experiences of others, and of the
truths of nature. The development of the mental faculties is by far
the most important, since it alone confers that "power which masters
all it touches, which can adapt old forms to new uses, or create new
and better means of reaching old ends." Without this power the
engineer cannot hope to practice his profession with any chance of
success. The formation of correct habits of thinking and working,
habits of observing, of classifying, of investigating, of
discriminating, of provi