APPLIED SCIENCE

All students who have gone through the threes of passing off their science requirement can attest to the necessity of either revising or abolishing the present requisites. For the most part the science taken by those students who have no special interest in the field is only provocative of the slightest bit of scientific thinking and is definitely a bore to the uninterested student.

Geology, Geography, and Biology are taken by best students, who have no particular interest in the field of science, to get off the necessary requirement. None of the elementary courses in these fields stimulates the student to think scientifically, and the laboratory periods are definitely not conducive to such thinking. Very often this is due to poor assistants who are put in charge of the laboratory sections and to the lax manner in which the courses are run. The first difficulty can be met by placing men well-qualified in their field in charge of laboratories. The second difficulty is probably attributable to the large number of Freshmen who are registered in these courses. No special consideration, however, should be given them, for by so doing the standard for the entire class is substantially lowered.

There is no use in maintaining the present requirements unless some change is instituted. In the courses mentioned above, an improvement might be made by stiffening the treatment of the subject matter, giving more intensive laboratory work directed by capable assistants, and running the course more efficiently with less laxity in regard to Freshmen.

It is waste of valuable time for a student to take a science course when he is not enthusiastic about it and when determined application brings such futile results. Students should be familiar with the methods of science, but they can never become acquainted with them by taking a course which covers the material superficially and which is presented as a course in "popular" science. The science requirement must either be abolished or else the standard of the several elementary courses that most students are taking now must be made considerably higher, taxing to a greater extent the student's ability to think creatively.