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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0681.PDF
JULY 5, 1917- THE TRAINING OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERS.* By R. MULLINEUX WALMSLEY, D.Sc, F IN many quarters it is invariably the custom to overlook thefact that education is the most technical of all subjects, and requires as careful and laborious a study as any of thosesubjects which have preceded it in this course. That this is not generally recognised would be borne in upon anyone whowould have the patience to read the proceedings and dis- cussions of the numerous educational conferences which havebeen such a marked feature of the past winter. Education is " in the air," and has given rise to an almost endless succes-sion of papers and speeches with little variation in the subject matter ; the same things have been repeated ad nauseam,sometimes with very little difference in phraseology, while the number of really new ideas produced has been remarkablyfew. It is hoped, however, that as the authors are dealing with education for a new profession which itself is in a stateof flux, they may, in what follows, contribute something of value to the general discussion. The following is, at any rate,a genuine attempt to place aeronautics on its educational side on a sound basis, so that, on this side, it may rank withthe older well-established branches of engineering. It is assumed that it is unnecessary to discuss the questionas to the necessity for well-thought-out and co-ordinated schemes for the technical education of those who are to take* charge in the near future of this important and scientific industry, that is, if this country is " to take the air and keepit," as has been recently well said by a well-known authority. If anything could have emphasised the point it would havebeen the far-reaching plans unfolded in the interesting paper of Mr. Holt Thomas and the discussion thereon barely amonth ago in this series of lectures. Those plans take it for granted that a highly-trained staff of constructors and work-men will be available possessing a flexibility of mind based upon sound and varied knowledge which can only be acquiredby such training as that which is dealt with in the present paper. The backbone of such a staff is an ample supply ofaeronautical engineers who usually commence their profes- sional work as technical assistants and who by habit and train-ing are acquainted with the latest developments of the prac- tical, scientific and industrial problems which they are calledupon to face. The greater part of the paper is therefore devoted to a discussion of the methods, as they appear tothe authors, of training those who are in a position to devote not less than four years to a training designed to fit them atthe end of the training to commence practice as junior or senior technical assistants with every prospect of risingrapidly to higher, responsible positions. The needs of other classes less favourably placed and of those who are to filllower positions are not lost sight of, and especially of that class of men already in the industry who must be givenopportunities for keeping abreast of aeronautical develop- ments as thev proceed and of making up from time to timethe ground which the strenuous nature and pre-occupation of their daily work must cause them to lose. The main object of the paper is the professional trainingof aeronautical engineers, but before this can be adequately dealt with it is necessary to consider the educational founda-tion upon which, in the opinion of the authors, this training should be based, for one outcome of the past winter's dis-cussions has been to bring into prominence the chaotic nature of much of the general education of the youth of this country. Preliminary Education. The preliminary education of students who desire to betrained as aeronautical engineers should, in the opinion of the authors, be a good secondary school education, in which thestudent has been taught, through the medium of the proper subjects of such an education, to think and weigh evidence.If this end be attained, it is far more important than- any workshop or other quasi-technical training that can beobtained in a secondary school, especially if, as is often the case, such training is given at the cost of the more essentialsubjects of a secondary school education. The claims of science and scientific method to be included in such a cur-riculum have now been practically conceded, even by many who have been for long years staunch upholders of the claimsof the " humanities," to dominate the time-table to the exclusion of nearly everything else but mathematics. Agood grounding in mathematics is, of course, of prime import- ance to the future engineer, and his curriculum must alsoinclude a good working knowledge of not less than one modern language, in view of the large amount of scientificand technical literature published in foreign journals and by foreign societies, as well as of the fact that during the next * A Paper read before the Aeronautical Society on June 27th. R.S.E., and C. E. LARARD, M.I.C.E., M.I.M.E. fifty years an enormous amount of engineering work will berequired in countries in which English is not the vernacular, and that engineering industrial developments will be thecommon heritage for all time of all the civilised countries of the world. For many years science was practically tabooed in thesecondary schools on the plea that there was no room for it in a time-table in which even modern languages had not avery conspicuous share. What was still worse was that the best and brightest boys, or at any rate those developing thegreatest promise, were never given a chance of showing their aptitude for a scientific training, but at an early period oftheir school career were set to specialised studies in the humanities, including an excessive amount of time devotedto Latin and Greek, so that in ,due course a small minority of them might bring renown and distinction to the school bywinning university scholarships. Meanwhile, as a sop to public opinion, a " modern " side was formed, to which onlythe conspicuous failures were drafted. These evil methods still persist in certain schools, butother dangers have more recently begun to show themselves in quite another direction. There is now a danger thatscience may not be adequatefy dealt with because of the desire to include " engineering " subjects in the time-table.The prospective engineer should first be well educated, in the proper sense of the word, in mathematics, in the humanities(but including English and modern languages), and in science, his education in science being with a view to training inscientific method rather than to the handling of a large number of subjects. An education which adequately coversthis range will certainly fill the limited time of the average boy and will satisfy the ambition of the most voraciousschoolboy. The intensive study of the sciences on which all engineering is based as well as the special " engineering "subjects which, of late years, are becoming fashionable in certain schools, will be far more advantageously and eco-nomically postponed until the time when real professional training is undertaken. If the student has received a good education, in the senseset forth, he should be ready to start his engineering training by the time he reaches the age of 17 in the case of the beststudents, and at 18 in the case of students whose develop- ment is not so well forward. From the engineering point ofview, the retention of a youth at a secondary school beyond these ages for the purposes of taking so-called " engineeringsubjects " constitutes a very serious loss of time, in view of the fact that such subjects cannot be properly and economicallytaught, except in correlation with a systematic and well- organised complete engineering course, and further, suchwork cannot in general be effective when undertaken by any but a fully qualified engineering teacher. It is obvious thatwhen subsequently attending a complete engineering course at a technical college the student will receive in fuller andsounder measure such instruction as part of the regular course covering all, and more than all, he could have possibly-received in a secondary school ; and, moreover, there is a real danger, which has been actually experienced, thatcertain methods and ideas included in certain school courses may have to be corrected, if not eradicated. Technical Training. Passing now from the preliminary but important schoolwork to the subsequent professional training, there is much division of opinion among engineers and engineering teachersas to the position which workshop training should occupy in relation to the more purely technical training of the student.Many engineers and engineering teachers are of opinion that practical experience on the works or in the factory of anengineer should be gained before taking up an engineering course at a technical college. They argue :—1. That works experience is necessarysjto enable the student to take full advantage and realise the importance of hisstudies at an engineering college. 2. That it does not follow that a man who has first passedthrough the technical college will necessarily make a success- ful engineer, the works training under practical conditionsbeing, it is asserted, the best test for his fitness. 3. That the student trained in the technical college doesnot, after his college course, take kindly to the manual labour in the shops necessary to complete his experience, and thatwhen he passes into the works as a workman he finds a greater difficulty in raising himself afterwards to a position of respon-sibility' than one who has obtained Works experience first and technical training afterwards. 681
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