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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/495

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AMERICAN COLLEGES vs. AMERICAN SCIENCE.
471

stand, it is a nuisance for which no valid excuse can be found. Here there seems to be a real conflict, not between religion and science, but between the injudiciousness of religious people and the requirements of scientific research. Where one good laboratory should exist, we have forty small and inferior sets of apparatus, each fit only for elementary instruction, and wholly unsuited to purposes of investigation. Thus the very institutions which we should naturally expect to advance science have been made by sectarian spirit incapable of yielding solid results. Other branches of learning suffer also, only science is most impeded of all. The classics, mathematics, philosophy, or literature, demand few appliances. Give the professors a fair library, perhaps some maps or charts, and a recitation or lecture room apiece, and all is provided for. But science, to be properly taught, demands much more. There must be not only laboratories and apparatus, but material and specimens; and these all cost much money. No wonder, then, that a poor institution cramps its scientific teachers, and offers meagre opportunities for the prosecution of their best and most valuable work.

Going a step beyond this curtailment of material means, we shall find that the division of forces again operates contrary to science in the selection of professors. In the first place, poverty compels a college to demand more work from a professor than any man can well do. A teacher who is called upon to instruct elementary students in half a dozen distinct branches cannot accomplish much real work in any one. Every branch of science is vigorously growing, and can be properly taught only by one who has the time to keep abreast of its growth. A large majority of American college professors are now incompetent, because the policy of college management keeps them so. Let us glance at a few of the professorships which some country colleges have established. Here, for example, is McCorkle College, situated in Eastern Ohio, whose ministerial president is "Professor of Hebrew, Natural, Mental, and Moral Science." Surely this gentleman, if his professions are honest, must be the most learned scholar in the world. His "moral science" would, of course, prevent him from undertaking any work which he was incompetent to do. We cannot suspect a "reverend" of hypocrisy in such a matter as this. In Maryland, New Windsor College contrives to neutralize scientific heterodoxy with a "Professor of Abstruse Science and Religious Instructor." Such a teacher can easily take time by the forelock, and inoculate the minds of his young charges with a proper disrespect for the awful notions of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Draper, and company. Another Maryland college, St. John's, rejoices in a "Professor of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology, and Lecturer on Zoölogy and Botany." Penn College, in Iowa, has a "Professor of Natural Science and Political Economy;" and Eminence College, Kentucky, a "Professor of Biblical Literature, Mental Philosophy,