THE WOLVERINE in Mortimer E. Cooley Advocates Study of Latin, Greek, and Humanities in Preparation For Entrance Into Scientific Professions (Editor's Note: The Wolverine prints today the first of two articles on edu- cational problems by Dean Mortimer E. Cooley, of the College of Engineer- ing and Architecture. Dr. Cooley fav- ors not only the continuance of the study of Latin and, Greek in prepara-r tory schools and universities, but also urges the study of the humanities in preparation for scientific professions.)t cue Well tue comparison did not fail ex- ly short time. We in this country need uept ma, Ln weapons of the chase ( to know these languages, for we are wee ainereni, an i ere w s some now taking upon ourselves the prob- slignt aiscrepancy in tue processes lems of the world. We can no longer airougn wnicn the game was put be- remain provincial and sufficient unto ore ueing served. .iut for tue wo- ourselves. They are being thrust upon men the comparison tailed compieteiy. us whether we wish it or not; we must Next i tought of my college town mix with other nations. We need to- and the effort required to make both know Spanish because of our Span- ends meet on the meagre salaries paid ish speaking neighbors to the south to teachers. homes are maintained in of us-Mexico, South America and the the utmost simplicity, often without West Indies-and in our own Spanish any hired help-it cannot be had at all speaking possessions. We should devel- except at wages which are prohibitive. op commercial relations with those One young instructor I know with a people far more in the future than we wife anu child had actually to do the have done in the past. We cannot in- family washing. sist on doing business with them in (By IDeau f3ortimer E. Cooley) It is most unfortunate that in the future education of our youth Latin and Greek and the other so-called dead languages are to play so little part. It is particularly unfortunate at this time when the world is planning its recovery from t war and statesmen are seeking to prevent recurrence of wars. Every thoughtful person is peering into the future trying to see what the world has in store for him-for us Americans in particular. What little we do see, or think we see, is vague, unrestful and forces the more optim- istic to fall back on their old biblician triumvirate--Faith, Hope and Char- ity. "But the greatest of these is Char- ity," as the quotation runs, alld truly, for without charity we may at times have been inclined to think of Ver- sailles as a place of sounding brass and tinkling cymbols. thinking of would also be the very best training for college. The dollege should follow along the same lines, stressing in the early years the things which make for general training, leaving the special things for a later period. Comparatively little specialization should, however, be done in the college. The work leading to the bachelor's degree should in the main be for general education. Fol- lowing the college should come suec- ialization in the field of one's life work. This plan would add a year, perhaps, two, but the delay would not really be any handicap. It certainly would not be so in engineering. One large em- ployer of engineers complained that college engineers nowadays were un- satisfactory; that while they knew special engineering things extremely well, they did not know anything else; that what employers needed were young men of parts, those who could take part in activities not of a strict-. ly technical character; that more than all else the world today needed eng- ineers of imagination and vision to see beyond the walls built up around them in college. For the young American going into engineering, I would advise a thorough preparation in fundamentals, eschew- ing all fads, even manual training and the practical things thought so essent- ial to his success, and including not less than two years of Latin, prefer- able three or four years. Considerable history, some political economy. A good knowledge of English and of lit erature. A speaking knowledge of at least one foreign language, and if only one, it should be Spanish. Some phil- osophy and as much of art, music and other things apparently having noth- ing to do with engineering as possible. This would bring to the world a type of engineer now rarely met-one, who besides being able to do the things re- quired of him as an engineer, would be able to do other things vastly more im- portant it may be, and which only one with an engineering training could do. In a word, it would give to the world generals of engineering-masters of organized effort. 150 TO ATTEND FIRST TERM3 OF OLIVET MILITARY ACADEMY Charlotte, Mich., July 11.-The pro- posed military academy to be estab- lished at Olivet and to use the build- ings of Olivet college will have at least 150 students at the opening of its first term next September, the trust- ees anticipate. They also expect the enrollment to grow to between 400 and 500 ultimately. The buildings and college plant are to be considerably improved summer, changes to cost in the n borhood of $6,000. The faculty fo army school has a ady been cont ed, it is stated. FLINT POLICE CHIEF SEEKS MEN THROUGH "WANT" Flint, Mich., July 11.-With the tomobile and other industries, inc ing the building trades, calling e available man and offering wages are declared higher than ever be the city of Flint is finding difficul keeping its police force recruited to the needs of the town, it has stated. For this reason Chief of P James Cole is advertising througl "want" columns for men for his fo Special inducements such as vaca with pay and two days off each mo are also offered. Read the Wolverine for Car News. Wolverine delivered at your three times a week at $1.00 per t Then came the next thought and I wondered if it were not the answer. Are we not trending toward the days of our forefathers when families had to do all their own work. But in these days families consisted of more than man and wife and a poodle dog. . But let me return to Rome. It's a safer subect. We don't know so much about it. Think for a moment of the reign of Augustus Caesar towards the end of which the Hun swept down, destroyed civilization and shrouded the world in darkness. Who could not find a possible parallel in the condi- tions today with Bolshevism so ramp- ant? May we not be approaching an- other dark age? Certainly all civiliza- tion is in danger of being destroyed. Are we conscious of these things, or are we like Nero, fiddling while Rome was burning? What we all lack, in our efforts to see clearly, is perspective. We have no background or too little back- ground. Our eyes are riveted on the future and no one thinks of looking backward in order to see forward. When tAught to reason by analogy, we were given as an example that because the sun rose yesterday and has been rising for ages, it will rise tomorrow. Th the same way we may reason that because there have been wars since the world began there will be wars in the future. It is a primal instinct tor animals to fight for food, for their mates,. for their young; and man is but an animal. Civilization' cannot eradicate that primal instinct. It may control it, to be sure, the same as in the hrse and cow, but who wants to be a horse or a cow? Some philosoph.- er said that civilization is but a coat of varnish, scratch it and the animal is revealed beneath. But what has this to do with Latin and Greek you are asking? Let me tell you if I can. In these languages we can read first handed about wars of the past. We can get a/knowledge,of the people who fought these wars, their attithde of mind, their point of view. We can also get first hand knowledge of the civilizations of early times - what was ac- complished . in science, art, let- ters, commerce and the industries. We are constantly being surprised to find how advanced those eary civiliza- tions were even when compared with our tremendous achievements. We learn from these old writings, so far as we can see backwards, that the world has been moving in cycles. And who will dispute that the same was true in prehistoric times, and who bold enough to say that such cycles will not recur until the end of time? Readers of history and of the old languages cannot fail to find striking resemblances between the present times and those early times. Why does not some one write in parallel columns the decline of the Roman em- pire and the history of the world in re- cent years? It would be most illumin- ating. True, we do not have entrees of peacock tongues, but we have other things equally bizarre and extrava- gant. I recall an illustration in point here in. New York two or three years back. Coming out of the Woolworth building one evening, I saw a breadline of wo- men with children in their arms in front of the mayor's office. Dropping into the subway I reached in fifteen minutes an uptown hotel, in the din- ing room of which sat women-with- out children-bedecked and bedizened, with food in abundance before them, but eating sparingly either from lack of appetite of fear of being overnour- ished and spoiling their lines of sym- metry. There were flowers, draperies and gilded decorations. Soft music contributed to a voluptuous atmos- phere. It might have been a scene from an old Roman palace. And I noticed the men, and thought of them in pursuit of the chase down on Wall Street, only a few hours be- fore-their hunting garb replaced by the black and white of evening attire, making a brave effort to a forget the chase ofth -dollars they were now - aj~ l1u'iailu' AAnd immdiatelyv The young people of today do not know. They cannot know. They have no background. The means of obtain- ing that background has been largely eliminated and nothing has been sub- stituted in their education. What has apparently been substituted? Fads, modern stuff, anything believed to fit them' better to make their way in the world, the keynote being money. That alone, our boys and girls are taught is the measure of success. No one seems to connect such education with wars in the future. The fact is over- looked that greed and gain and power and supremacy are the chief causes of wars. And yet our modern education all tends to develop those qualities which make for greed, gain, power and supremacy.\ But why have Latin and Greek fallen so swiftly in our estimation? Mainly the fault lies, I think, in the fact that teachers of these languages have not kept apace with modern requirements. They have taught the same old gram- mar in the same old way for so many years that there is no wonder they are called "dead languages." If taught dif- ferently, or as I think they could be taught, they would be live enough and teachers of these languages would not .be casting about for. a new vocation. Why should not the effect of such teaching be deadening for the chap whose eyes are riveted on his own future success measured in dollars? The same mistake has been made in the church. Until recently, the same old hell fire and brimstone was preach- ed that our forefathers brought over in the Mayflower. What the churches have needed these many years is just now being comprehened. The war has helped to open the eyes of pastors. The renaissance in religion is close at hand. The old languages and the old relig- ion are in themselves as good today as they ever were. They only need to be taught in a more modern way; or rather they need to be taught with more modern application. Old times and conditions should be compared with the modern times and conditions. Just think what a wise teacher could do in pointing out to the youth of to- day the things that happened thous- ands of years ago and directing their attention to the existence of the same conditions. Vitalize the subjects. Make the dead alive. We should not overlook the fact that our modern languages are based on these ancient languages largely. In them we may find the roots of most of our words. Nor should we overlook the egoct of study in these old lan- guages upon the character. The scholarly men and women-- scholarly in the old sense-are fast disappearing. They could talk in a language not now comprehended. Their successors talk in a new lan- guage-a language chiefly filled with dollar signs. They consider a knowledge of Latin as a preliminary to the study of the Romance languages, not to mention the English language. Three years of Latin makes it possible to gain a prac- tical knowledge of French, Italian, our language. We "must do business with them in their own language. We need those foreign relations as a means of promoting our own peace and prosperity. If only we had a for- eign trade we would not have our per- iods of business depression which seem to come in cycles. Foreign trade would act for us like a fly wheel-keep us stable and moving at a more uniform pace. And so the story could be unwound.I The great need in our colleges and un- iversities is young men and women prepared to do real college and univer- sity wdrk. They should come prepar-i ed to think and reason, their minds3 developed to a point which enables then to absrb and collate the more advanced things taught. There is all too little absorption. This is evidened on examination, when the answers to questions asked come as reflected light rather than from a light within. Even as a preparation for engineer- ing I have for years considered that there was no better training than Latin and Greek. Most of the big engineers of today went to college when Latin and Greek were prime in the curri- cula. They were classical students, many of them. There was compara- tively little of engineering science in those days and therefore plenty of time for something else than mere tech- nical training. Why, then, give our youth a smat- tering of this and that so-called prac- tical thing as a preparation for col- lege? How much better to give them something not only preparing them for college but starting them off in life so as to be of maximum use to them- selves and their fellow men. Most young men have only four years in college; they have forty years after- ward in which to learn and practice the bread and bumtter part of their life. The one great need today from our educational institutions is training for responsible citizenship. Starting back in the grade schools, I would eliminate all fads and stress those things which make for an under- standing and appreciation of natural things surounding us. Our boys and girls should be able to see things by the roadside to which they are now blind. The hills, the fields, the forests and the streams should not be sealed books for them. I would not teach them too much from books in the schoolroom. They can read books for themselves when they have the incen- tive. The incentive can be given them in the schoolroom. Stories should be toldthem,-not fairy stories alone, but stories based on historical facts. Fortunate indeed is the child who has a teacher who revels in the work' of teaching, who -watches the child's mind develop with the same delight that a sculptor or painter sees his creation grow. Unfortunately too many of our teachers in the lower grades teach because they must make a living. They teach for the dollars and not for the love of teaching. Toward the end of the grades and before the high school period I would start in with Latin, giving to it the importance that it formerly had, but teach it not as a dead but a live lan- guage; and along with it take up his- tory and the natural sciences, all in preparation for later study of these subjects. In case there is no later study-the boy and girl having to go to work--they would carry with them into life something they would other- wise never have known anything about. In the high school I would still keep away from fads and hammer away on the fundamentals, stressing all those thigs which fit one to live one's life better and getting out of it enjoyment for oneself and those with whom one has to live. I would develop in them love of country rather than of self. This period could be made of vast use to the nation and should be, as it is the finishing school of most young men and women. Such a training as I am Bat hin g Suits WE HAVE THE TWO PIECE KIND WITH THE WHITE BELT GEO. J MOE, "Sport Shop" CHAS. W. GRAHAM MICHIGAN'S OLDEST BOOK STORE OF TIMELY INTFREST TO EDUCATORS You are invited to examine our special table containing latest books dealing education. Different titles will be added to th.is table from week to week. We want you to look over these books without feeling any obligation to buy. This is only one of many small services extended by this store. with all phases of (Formerly Sheehan & Company) CHAS. W. 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