ELIMINATING THE PERSONAL

To the schedule of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been added a new course--"humanics". The subject is to prepare the student "to meet the experiences which come when anyone has practical business dealings with someone else"; thus runs the description of the new course. In brief, the purpose of the study is to teach the men not to be egoists and to realize the value of working with the other person for the good of the whole rather than for personal good.

It would seem as if the Engineers were undertaking more than they can finish in such a course. To begin with, no man, if he has not the native common sense necessary to let him work with his associates, will learn how to do so in the lecture room. If it is a question of youthful overconfidence in business, experience alone can teach the true valuation. If not, then there is no course possible aside from a course of hard knocks which will drive the conceit from the budding business man.

In inaugurating such a course, M. I. T. seems to forget that in its sports it has the best possible instructor in team work. For years the worth of sports has long been argued to lie in the team spirit so valuable in later years which they give the youth for a heritage. Certainly an hour of rowing on the basin in rough weather will teach far more than the drone of a lecturer's voice over an equal stretch of time. It seems unfortunate that an adidtional burden should be added to a curriculum already as crowded as that of any college when the purpose of the course is already fulfilled by sports which need only such encouragement as the fund for "humanics" might give them.