Popular Science Monthly/Volume 52/December 1897/The Teaching of Applied Science
| THE TEACHING OF APPLIED SCIENCE. |
By M. CH. LAUTH.
IN an article published a few months ago in the Revue Scientifique I pointed out a danger that threatens some of our chemical industries. I showed on the evidence of official documents that these very industries have taken a rapid start and had an immense development in Germany, while they have continued nearly stationary in France, the country of their origin. In the search for the causes of this standstill I believe I established that it is largely due to deficiencies in the chemical instruction given in France and to the indifference to industry manifested by our scientific men, while in Germany the teaching of chemistry has reached an admirable stage of perfection, and the alliance of science and industry is commended as a necessity of the first order. Like ideas have been developed recently in various publications; attention seems to be concentrating around the question, a happy sign which I remark with joy. M. Léon Lefèvre, who agrees with me in opinion on this point, speaks of the parallelism in the development of the color-making industry and of organic chemistry in Germany. "That country," he says, "now possesses the supremacy in both, and yet it did not assist at the birth of artificial coloring matters; for the honor of the discovery of the first aniline colors belongs to France and England"; and he calls attention to the very rapid growth of the Chemical Society of Berlin since that discovery was made in 1868 from 107 members to 3,129, as compared with that of the societies of London, 551 to 2,029, and of Paris, 269 to 736. M. Haller, director of the Chemical Institute of Nancy, presents a similar argument, and quotes Humboldt's prediction that those countries which neglect recourse to their scientific lights will see their prosperity inevitably jeopardized as neighboring nations develop and strengthen themselves under the vivifying influence of the arts and sciences. My opinion is further sustained by many other men of science from whom I have received letters. Some of them accuse our method of teaching, which, they find, has no direct bearing on the object for which the instruction should be given. One of them says it is all wrong, in that it gives prominence to the abstract and does not give importance to the application, and another finds fault with the method by which instructors are chosen and appointed.
We may look at the subject from another side and inquire whether manufacturers have done their best to keep their standards even with the highest. It will appear that the majority of French manufacturers do not appreciate as they ought the influence of scientific work on the development of industry and the fatal repercussion which this incessant progress going on in the domain of pure science inflicts upon it. They therefore content themselves with improving their old methods and processes. Instead of inviting the co-operation of men of science and expert chemists, they continue to intrust the fate of their machines to simple overseers, capable enough of adjusting a machine of the old style, but incapable of devising a new process. Sometimes, it may be, they trust to some happy accident to help them against foreign competition and restore prosperity to their establishments without reflecting that the success of their rivals is exclusively owing to their strong scientific organization.
If, with a more enterprising spirit, they call in men of science to co-operate with them, they are most likely to expect an immediate return and to be discouraged if they fail to realize it; and dismiss their advisers because they can not perform the impossibilities they expect of them. Hence the sad misunderstanding which exists between men of pure science and manufacturers, the former repeating that industry offers no opening for their pupils and that it is of no use to direct them to a career that is ungrateful to them, and the latter affirming that they do not find among the chemists they employ the knowledge that will render their collaboration fruitful.
Misunderstandings of this kind will continue so long as professors charged with the direction of chemical studies do not take exact account of what will be expected of their students when they go into industrial occupations. It should be well understood that the manufacturer does not expect to find master workmen or good overseers in the chemists he engages. No one is capable of directing a factory without having followed for a considerable time the course of the several shops. This is not the part the chemist is to perform; nor is it his duty to keep an eye upon the workmen. He must first of all things—and it is an absolute condition—be in the current of the science, and more especially, of course, of the parts of the science that treat of the industrial branch to which he applies himself. He should be familiar with all the details of mineral analysis, qualitative and quantitative, of organic analysis and industrial analyses; and be skillful in delicate manipulations and preparations. He should be acquainted with what is required in the principal chemical industries and familiar with the most practical general methods in use for solving the problems that will be submitted to him, to such an extent as to be competent to improve in quality and value the manufactures which he will be charged with inspecting and perhaps directing. And he should, finally, have a taste for original research, and be able ultimately to take advantage of his theoretical knowledge, so as to aspire to make discoveries that will place him in the rank of inventors—the dream of every chemist of any ambition. The young student who presents himself in industry with such a supply of knowledge will be sure to find for himself a most honorable place at once, and will have every encouragement to continue his studies for a year or two longer rather than present himself insufficiently equipped; for once in conflict with the daily difficulties inherent in every exploitation he will have no more time to learn.
It is not necessary to say that the "ideal" chemist does not exist in France, and with the kind of teaching that is given can not exist. Young men may indeed be found possessing a remarkable stock of theoretical knowledge and in every way capable of brilliantly sustaining their graduating theses, and some can even perform a mineral analysis or an organic analysis correctly. But I do not think I am too severe when I say that I believe that further than that they have only the vaguest smattering—and there is nothing surprising in that, for nobody has taught them more. For this I do not blame the science of the masters or the motive of the students. The teachers have not had their attention directed toward industrial affairs, and have not therefore been able to teach their students with reference to them.
The reform we need can not be introduced by the personal initiative of the students; for even if they should awake to the necessity and turn their minds to industrial research and the acquisition of practical knowledge available in the shops, they are powerless so long as they have to prepare for the examinations. Might we hope that the manufacturers should be disposed to favor special laboratories for the training of industrial chemists? Their effort would invoke our sympathy, but it would be many years before it would yield results; and all that time our rivals would be gaining on us.
The best remedy, it seems to me, is to look to the existing schools for measures to improve their methods and give their teaching a more practical, more industrial direction. Since I first called attention to this subject in 1878 a number of schools have been established where chemistry is specially and practically taught; but the results they yield will, I fear, always be incomplete so long as the direction of them is intrusted to purely scientific men. However eminent they may be, they are not familiar with what is wanted in chemical industries, and they can not familiarize themselves with it except by placing themselves in constant relations with the heads of great manufactories and studying their requirements, as is done everywhere in Germany.
A reform of the kind sought could be brought about without great expense by incorporating upon the present programme systems of lectures and of manipulations; the lectures to consist of the exposition of the principal chemical industries, and the laboratory work of industrial preparations and applications; and the students should be exercised in comparing manufactured products and in studying the general methods pursued in industrial research, the processes adopted for increasing returns, and other branches of similar bearing. Such instruction demands special fitness—teachers who are familiar with industries and love them. That is the basis of the reform I propose. In order to teach the applications of science, to make known the methods, processes, and desiderata of industry, one must have studied and practiced them himself. He must himself have been a workman. Whatever may be the value of our masters, however great may be their intelligence, they can not develop knowledge in the minds of their pupils that is foreign to themselves, or make them adopt methods of labor which they have never themselves seen applied.
I have already received protestations from the teaching body against seeing men raised to the dignity of professors or lecturers—men who have not their diplomas as licentiates or doctors in science. But I really do not believe that the possession of these diplomas is indispensable to the purpose toward which I am looking; and I fancy that for the treatment of industrial questions it is sufficient to understand them for one's self.
The teaching of which I have thus sketched the programme might be given at the close of the studies of our young chemists and constitute the crowning of them. The reform I propose consists, then, simply in opening our chemical schools and institutes to lectures and manipulations in applied chemistry, and in confiding this special teaching to professors who have themselves been engaged in industry.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.