Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Transportation Building Dedication Addresses [PAGE 147]

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spend time and energy and money for the sake of the benefit which they may acquire in this great plant which the people of this commonwealth have given to us in trust to use for the benefit of those young men and their successors into all succeeding generations. And now, friends, T just want to say one or two other things. Inside the curriculum itself there is continued struggle between the predominance of practice and theory. We were proud to have the first shops in connection with any engineering school in the United States, There was a tendency for a time to multiply and increase this shop element. The tendency is now in the opposite direction. Which is the wiser? Now it seems to me the

principle is plain, though the application is difficult and must be referred to the men who actually conduct the curriculum itself. No student should be doing that work in the school which he can do better somewhere else or can do just as well somewhere else. Now beyond a certain modicum of shop work, T believe that the so-called practical experience can be acquired in the great shops and in the great industries far bjetter than they can be acquired in our laboratories, our lecture rooms and our drawing rooms. We have to have enough of this particular work to enable the student to get a real understanding of the theory. But practical experience, tho kind of experience that makes a college graduate immediately worth something

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