1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,470 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,470 --> 00:00:03,880 Commons license. 3 00:00:03,880 --> 00:00:06,920 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to 4 00:00:06,920 --> 00:00:10,570 offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,570 --> 00:00:13,470 To make a donation or view additional materials from 6 00:00:13,470 --> 00:00:16,430 hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at 7 00:00:16,430 --> 00:00:17,680 ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:20,930 --> 00:00:23,380 PROFESSOR: Today I want to make some remarks about 9 00:00:23,380 --> 00:00:25,400 William Barton Rogers. 10 00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:28,560 You were supposed to read an essay that I wrote about him, 11 00:00:28,560 --> 00:00:31,060 so I'm not going to go into great detail. 12 00:00:31,060 --> 00:00:33,390 I don't want to repeat what I've already written in the 13 00:00:33,390 --> 00:00:37,070 essay, but I thought I would hit had some high points and 14 00:00:37,070 --> 00:00:40,960 then end up talking a bit about this piece that Charles 15 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:45,340 Eliot wrote called "The New Education," because I readily 16 00:00:45,340 --> 00:00:48,840 admit that that is not the easiest thing to read and 17 00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:52,380 surely not scintillating prose-- 18 00:00:52,380 --> 00:00:56,350 you would not want to keep it up with you at night and think 19 00:00:56,350 --> 00:00:58,140 you're going to read it one AM. 20 00:00:58,140 --> 00:00:59,320 That wouldn't work. 21 00:00:59,320 --> 00:01:02,280 But it's an important essay. 22 00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:04,970 So we'll talk a bit about that after I make 23 00:01:04,970 --> 00:01:07,230 my few remarks here. 24 00:01:07,230 --> 00:01:11,650 First thing I want to say is that it's hard to believe that 25 00:01:11,650 --> 00:01:15,710 MIT has no full-scale history-- 26 00:01:15,710 --> 00:01:18,510 history book, that is, a book that's been written about the 27 00:01:18,510 --> 00:01:20,150 entire history of MIT. 28 00:01:20,150 --> 00:01:21,680 One does not exist. 29 00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:24,250 As close as we get to it is the book you're reading now. 30 00:01:24,250 --> 00:01:28,620 And basically that consists primarily of snapshots of 31 00:01:28,620 --> 00:01:31,510 critical moments in the institute's history. 32 00:01:31,510 --> 00:01:34,230 I think it's a very good book, but it's not a complete 33 00:01:34,230 --> 00:01:36,430 history of the Institute. 34 00:01:36,430 --> 00:01:41,050 And hopefully, someday, someone will decide one is 35 00:01:41,050 --> 00:01:43,510 needed and actually write it. 36 00:01:43,510 --> 00:01:48,110 It will take it a lot of work because the more I read and 37 00:01:48,110 --> 00:01:51,020 study about this place, the more I realize that it has a 38 00:01:51,020 --> 00:01:54,590 very deep and very diverse history. 39 00:01:54,590 --> 00:01:58,200 And it will not be an easy book to write, in my opinion-- 40 00:01:58,200 --> 00:02:00,720 or at least to make it a good book, that it 41 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:02,170 really should be. 42 00:02:02,170 --> 00:02:04,440 But all the great universities in the United States have 43 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:07,230 these histories and MIT is one of the few that doesn't. 44 00:02:07,230 --> 00:02:11,800 And I was sort of surprised at that. 45 00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:16,160 I must admit, I didn't know a thing about the history of MIT 46 00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:18,950 until about two or three years ago, when I was asked to write 47 00:02:18,950 --> 00:02:22,000 this essay, and then, all of the sudden, I, of course, 48 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:27,080 started to read as much as I could about it in preparing 49 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:28,290 for the essay that I wrote. 50 00:02:28,290 --> 00:02:32,090 But I was really surprised that there's no one big book 51 00:02:32,090 --> 00:02:35,160 you can go to and kind of get the story there. 52 00:02:35,160 --> 00:02:41,980 My assignment by the editor of the book Moments of Decision, 53 00:02:41,980 --> 00:02:45,300 his name is David Kaiser, and he teaches in the STS program, 54 00:02:45,300 --> 00:02:46,170 history of physics. 55 00:02:46,170 --> 00:02:48,430 He's also a physicist. 56 00:02:48,430 --> 00:02:51,080 He has a Ph.D in physics. 57 00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:55,950 And he persuaded me to write this essay, which I did 58 00:02:55,950 --> 00:02:59,110 because he was my colleague, not because I wanted to, I 59 00:02:59,110 --> 00:02:59,740 must admit. 60 00:02:59,740 --> 00:03:02,890 But I'm glad I did in retrospect because I learned a 61 00:03:02,890 --> 00:03:04,560 lot about this place and especially 62 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:06,370 about its early years. 63 00:03:06,370 --> 00:03:09,030 And so what that in mind, I want to talk about, well, what 64 00:03:09,030 --> 00:03:13,500 did I learn from this extensive reading that I did, 65 00:03:13,500 --> 00:03:16,200 and what did I learn especially about William 66 00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:21,990 Barton Rogers the person and the significance of his life? 67 00:03:21,990 --> 00:03:24,930 I think it's fair to say from the outset that he is a very 68 00:03:24,930 --> 00:03:27,790 significant educator. 69 00:03:27,790 --> 00:03:30,660 In the larger history of education, he has to be one of 70 00:03:30,660 --> 00:03:34,370 the more important people of the 19th century. 71 00:03:34,370 --> 00:03:38,080 He came of age in the middle of America's Industrial 72 00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:39,650 Revolution. 73 00:03:39,650 --> 00:03:44,360 He was born in 1804, so he was in his 20s during the 1820s, 74 00:03:44,360 --> 00:03:47,130 right at the very moment when the United States was really 75 00:03:47,130 --> 00:03:52,240 beginning to experience factory systems, the 76 00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:55,610 mechanization of production, the advent of railroads-- 77 00:03:58,400 --> 00:03:59,200 it was the moment. 78 00:03:59,200 --> 00:04:02,760 It was the right moment to be in the country, to see these 79 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:03,830 changes taking place. 80 00:04:03,830 --> 00:04:06,910 And he saw them, and he was very, very interested in them, 81 00:04:06,910 --> 00:04:10,118 though he always considered himself to be a scientist. 82 00:04:10,118 --> 00:04:14,170 He was initially educated by his father, primarily, at 83 00:04:14,170 --> 00:04:15,030 William and Mary. 84 00:04:15,030 --> 00:04:18,010 His father was an academician. 85 00:04:18,010 --> 00:04:21,829 And he initially called himself a natural philosopher, 86 00:04:21,829 --> 00:04:24,800 which would be a 19th century word for 87 00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:26,400 a physicist, basically. 88 00:04:26,400 --> 00:04:27,720 Natural philosophy-- 89 00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:29,130 interesting name. 90 00:04:29,130 --> 00:04:32,280 But technology in those days, interestingly, was also 91 00:04:32,280 --> 00:04:35,980 referred to as "the useful arts." The word technology, in 92 00:04:35,980 --> 00:04:42,060 the 1820s, I don't even know if it had appeared in the 93 00:04:42,060 --> 00:04:43,600 United States at that point. 94 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:48,900 But in any case, it was a very new word to the lexicon and it 95 00:04:48,900 --> 00:04:52,690 was rarely used until we had the founding of this place, 96 00:04:52,690 --> 00:04:54,900 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 97 00:04:54,900 --> 00:04:59,430 It's very interesting that he chose that word. 98 00:04:59,430 --> 00:05:02,440 If I could go back and interview Rogers, that would 99 00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:04,600 be one of the questions I'd want to ask him, is why did 100 00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:08,130 you choose the word technology, not Massachusetts 101 00:05:08,130 --> 00:05:12,270 Institute of Useful Arts, or some more contemporary 102 00:05:12,270 --> 00:05:15,710 expression that was used, frankly, more often than the 103 00:05:15,710 --> 00:05:18,790 word technology was, by 1860. 104 00:05:18,790 --> 00:05:20,920 In any cases here he is. 105 00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:23,660 He's a young man during the 1820s. 106 00:05:23,660 --> 00:05:28,040 His first job out of college was to teach in a small 107 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:31,140 private school in Baltimore Maryland. 108 00:05:31,140 --> 00:05:34,520 And it's in Baltimore that he comes in contact with some of 109 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:37,370 the really famous railroad engineers of 110 00:05:37,370 --> 00:05:39,370 the early 19th century. 111 00:05:39,370 --> 00:05:44,160 All of these guys were West Point-trained people. 112 00:05:44,160 --> 00:05:49,000 They were army engineers who had been basically seconded to 113 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,160 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a private 114 00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:56,130 corporation, to initiate surveys and construction of 115 00:05:56,130 --> 00:05:58,410 this privately owned railroad. 116 00:05:58,410 --> 00:06:01,530 Talk about government in. 117 00:06:01,530 --> 00:06:04,450 It's a great example, in which, here, the federal 118 00:06:04,450 --> 00:06:07,410 government is actually sending its own personnel to a private 119 00:06:07,410 --> 00:06:10,470 corporation to get the job started. 120 00:06:10,470 --> 00:06:15,960 And so he meets people like William Gibbs McNeill and 121 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:18,640 George Washington Whistler, who, actually, 122 00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:21,560 are brothers in law. 123 00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:23,960 Whistler is the more interesting of-- well, more 124 00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:25,540 historically interesting of the two. 125 00:06:25,540 --> 00:06:29,850 They're both important engineers because his son 126 00:06:29,850 --> 00:06:33,990 became a very famous artist, James McNeill Abbott Whistler, 127 00:06:33,990 --> 00:06:36,040 is George Washington's son. 128 00:06:36,040 --> 00:06:38,800 And the famous portrait, Whistler's mother, that sits 129 00:06:38,800 --> 00:06:43,270 in the Louvre in Paris is of George Washington's wife, who 130 00:06:43,270 --> 00:06:46,300 was a McNeill as a young lady. 131 00:06:46,300 --> 00:06:49,650 So here you have these engineers in Baltimore 132 00:06:49,650 --> 00:06:52,940 interacting with this young teacher because he got 133 00:06:52,940 --> 00:06:55,800 interested in railroads and wanted to give a lecture about 134 00:06:55,800 --> 00:06:59,160 the building of this new steam powered railroad out of 135 00:06:59,160 --> 00:07:02,150 Baltimore westward toward the Ohio River. 136 00:07:02,150 --> 00:07:06,770 And he started borrowing models from these engineers to 137 00:07:06,770 --> 00:07:09,010 illustrate his lectures with. 138 00:07:09,010 --> 00:07:12,350 They were building very interesting and fairly, not 139 00:07:12,350 --> 00:07:13,720 large scale models-- 140 00:07:13,720 --> 00:07:17,250 but I've seen some of them, they currently exist in 141 00:07:17,250 --> 00:07:20,820 Russia, they're found in a museum in St. Petersburg-- 142 00:07:20,820 --> 00:07:23,600 of the type of bridges that were being built on the B&O 143 00:07:23,600 --> 00:07:27,940 railroad, and the types of locomotives and rolling stock. 144 00:07:27,940 --> 00:07:33,180 A locomotive would be maybe that long, a 440, that wide, 145 00:07:33,180 --> 00:07:36,110 it's this high, fairly sizable model. 146 00:07:36,110 --> 00:07:38,740 But he was borrowing these models to give lectures with 147 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:43,490 and, in the process, began to get interested in railroads, 148 00:07:43,490 --> 00:07:46,520 and especially because his brothers, two of his brothers, 149 00:07:46,520 --> 00:07:48,560 actually worked for McNeill. 150 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:51,220 Once they left the B&O, McNeill came north to the 151 00:07:51,220 --> 00:07:54,010 Boston area to build a railroad that, basically, is 152 00:07:54,010 --> 00:07:56,900 now part of the Northeast corridor. 153 00:07:56,900 --> 00:08:01,220 It's the road between Boston and Providence-- 154 00:08:01,220 --> 00:08:03,910 and did the surveys on that, even those these two young 155 00:08:03,910 --> 00:08:09,060 were basically interested in geology, McNeill hired them to 156 00:08:09,060 --> 00:08:12,270 help with the survey team, and then, on the side, he 157 00:08:12,270 --> 00:08:15,190 encouraged them to do geological explorations of the 158 00:08:15,190 --> 00:08:16,240 area, which they did. 159 00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:17,500 And they loved it. 160 00:08:17,500 --> 00:08:21,660 And they got to really admire these army engineers, so much 161 00:08:21,660 --> 00:08:24,400 so that they really seriously thought about becoming 162 00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:26,800 engineers themselves. 163 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:29,680 That didn't happen, primarily because they felt that army 164 00:08:29,680 --> 00:08:34,049 engineers had such an inroad into the engineering business 165 00:08:34,049 --> 00:08:36,820 at that time, they were really the only serious engineers in 166 00:08:36,820 --> 00:08:40,250 the United States, were these West Point trained people, 167 00:08:40,250 --> 00:08:42,475 that they didn't think they had much of a chance getting 168 00:08:42,475 --> 00:08:45,783 the good jobs compared to what Whistler, and McNeill, and 169 00:08:45,783 --> 00:08:48,080 others were getting as a result of their connection 170 00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:49,590 with the Army. 171 00:08:49,590 --> 00:08:52,990 Both Whistler and McNeill left the Army in the 1830s and 172 00:08:52,990 --> 00:08:56,170 became private, consulting engineers. 173 00:08:56,170 --> 00:09:00,630 And Whistler went on to engineer not only the Western 174 00:09:00,630 --> 00:09:03,510 branch of what became the Boston and Albany railroad, 175 00:09:03,510 --> 00:09:06,570 which was the first major railroad to go over a serious 176 00:09:06,570 --> 00:09:09,450 mountain chain, the Berkshire mountains. 177 00:09:09,450 --> 00:09:12,230 If you drive west on the Mass Pike and go up over the 178 00:09:12,230 --> 00:09:15,580 Berkshires toward Albany, New York, you're going exactly 179 00:09:15,580 --> 00:09:18,940 through the area that Whistler ran a railroad through during 180 00:09:18,940 --> 00:09:22,610 the mid 1830s, late 1830s-- 181 00:09:22,610 --> 00:09:24,950 serious elevations there. 182 00:09:24,950 --> 00:09:26,405 And he did it. 183 00:09:26,405 --> 00:09:28,870 He got a lot of attention for doing it. 184 00:09:28,870 --> 00:09:31,610 And one of the groups that paid attention to him were 185 00:09:31,610 --> 00:09:35,170 these Russian engineers that were sent to the United States 186 00:09:35,170 --> 00:09:38,250 by Tsar, I think it's Nicholas. 187 00:09:38,250 --> 00:09:40,190 It's either Nicholas or Alexander, but, in 188 00:09:40,190 --> 00:09:41,940 any case, he was-- 189 00:09:41,940 --> 00:09:44,080 DAVID KAISER: Weren't they all Nicholas or Alexander? 190 00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:45,800 PROFESSOR: Nicholas and Alexander, you've got to be 191 00:09:45,800 --> 00:09:46,860 one or the other. 192 00:09:46,860 --> 00:09:49,780 I can't be far wrong on that one. 193 00:09:49,780 --> 00:09:52,810 But in any case, he was hired by the tsar to go to Russia to 194 00:09:52,810 --> 00:09:55,360 engineer what is now called the Moscow and St. Petersburg 195 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:57,250 Railroad, which he did. 196 00:09:57,250 --> 00:10:01,840 He died in Russia, of cholera, in 1849. 197 00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:06,830 But his body was brought back to the United States and 198 00:10:06,830 --> 00:10:09,610 buried down in Stonington, Connecticut. 199 00:10:09,610 --> 00:10:12,970 I have visited his grave. 200 00:10:12,970 --> 00:10:16,250 And I can attest that George Washington Whistler now lies 201 00:10:16,250 --> 00:10:17,400 in Stonington, Connecticut. 202 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:20,220 But he was a great engineer, and he was an important here. 203 00:10:20,220 --> 00:10:23,220 He had a lot of influence on Rogers and his brothers. 204 00:10:23,220 --> 00:10:26,950 And as a result of that, as I said, they both contemplated 205 00:10:26,950 --> 00:10:29,720 engineering careers but then backed away and decided, no, 206 00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:31,360 we are really educators. 207 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:35,340 We're interested in this new field called geology. 208 00:10:35,340 --> 00:10:39,510 Both William Barton and his brother Henry Darwin Rogers 209 00:10:39,510 --> 00:10:42,030 became very, very eminent geologists. 210 00:10:42,030 --> 00:10:45,340 In fact, Henry, his younger brother, actually got an 211 00:10:45,340 --> 00:10:49,110 appointment at the University of Glasgow as a chaired 212 00:10:49,110 --> 00:10:50,910 professor there during the-- 213 00:10:50,910 --> 00:10:56,130 I think it was during the late 1840s, early 1850s. 214 00:10:56,130 --> 00:10:59,490 And it's in the process of experiencing these things with 215 00:10:59,490 --> 00:11:03,370 these new railroads and industrial ventures that 216 00:11:03,370 --> 00:11:08,350 really begins to turn his head toward these "useful arts" and 217 00:11:08,350 --> 00:11:11,320 to think about how are they related to the sorts of 218 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:15,610 scientific interests that he has. 219 00:11:15,610 --> 00:11:18,240 The other experience that he had that's very important in 220 00:11:18,240 --> 00:11:22,370 all this was that when he was teaching at the University of 221 00:11:22,370 --> 00:11:28,480 Virginia in the 1830s he was appointed the head of the 222 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:31,320 state Geological Survey, and I've written about that in the 223 00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:34,600 essay, in which she had a miserable time because of the 224 00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:37,680 political interest that were vying with one another. 225 00:11:37,680 --> 00:11:39,230 He conducted the survey. 226 00:11:39,230 --> 00:11:42,430 He completed it, but the results of the survey, which 227 00:11:42,430 --> 00:11:44,360 were important, were never published because the 228 00:11:44,360 --> 00:11:46,960 legislature was bickering among themselves-- 229 00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:49,190 sounds familiar-- 230 00:11:49,190 --> 00:11:54,510 about the costs, whether it was a worthwhile project, the 231 00:11:54,510 --> 00:11:56,030 whole thing you might imagine. 232 00:11:56,030 --> 00:12:00,200 But in any case, Rogers was disgusted with Virginia. 233 00:12:00,200 --> 00:12:03,370 Surely, by the late '40s, he was really disgusted with the 234 00:12:03,370 --> 00:12:07,270 whole state legislature and political process there. 235 00:12:07,270 --> 00:12:11,670 But in conducting these surveys from one end of the 236 00:12:11,670 --> 00:12:15,080 state to the other, and in those days, Virginia included 237 00:12:15,080 --> 00:12:17,890 the current state of West Virginia, not just the current 238 00:12:17,890 --> 00:12:18,520 state of Virginia. 239 00:12:18,520 --> 00:12:21,720 It was a big state. 240 00:12:21,720 --> 00:12:26,670 He got interested, basically, in things like mountain 241 00:12:26,670 --> 00:12:30,880 formations and very much interested in where mineral 242 00:12:30,880 --> 00:12:33,040 deposits were located and things like that. 243 00:12:33,040 --> 00:12:36,480 But the big problem was finding assistants that could 244 00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:40,860 help him conduct the sort of geological work that he needed 245 00:12:40,860 --> 00:12:44,010 to do in order to finish up the survey and make a report. 246 00:12:44,010 --> 00:12:46,660 And that was another stimulus toward his interest in trying 247 00:12:46,660 --> 00:12:51,550 to do something with combining science with the useful arts. 248 00:12:51,550 --> 00:12:54,950 So those are, I would say, two critical moments during the 249 00:12:54,950 --> 00:13:01,000 1830s in which he really began to begin to think about 250 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:04,250 establishing some sort of what we would call a Polytechnic 251 00:13:04,250 --> 00:13:06,380 Institute, or Institute of Technology. 252 00:13:06,380 --> 00:13:09,340 He and his brother both started talking about this as 253 00:13:09,340 --> 00:13:11,380 early as 1829 in Baltimore. 254 00:13:11,380 --> 00:13:14,670 But then it got continued throughout the 1830s and well 255 00:13:14,670 --> 00:13:16,630 into the 1840s. 256 00:13:16,630 --> 00:13:19,560 And that's really how the whole idea of what this place 257 00:13:19,560 --> 00:13:21,025 is about got started. 258 00:13:24,350 --> 00:13:29,390 Rogers also saw, through these years, that there was a crying 259 00:13:29,390 --> 00:13:33,410 need for people to do engineering work and meet what 260 00:13:33,410 --> 00:13:37,730 he referred to as the "wants of the age." This was the 261 00:13:37,730 --> 00:13:40,540 great field, the open field-- 262 00:13:40,540 --> 00:13:43,370 lots of jobs and possibilities for advancement. 263 00:13:43,370 --> 00:13:46,100 And he saw that, and, again, it stimulated 264 00:13:46,100 --> 00:13:48,220 his interest in education. 265 00:13:48,220 --> 00:13:50,880 So as a result of this, he develops a plan for a 266 00:13:50,880 --> 00:13:53,630 Polytechnic Institute, the first draft of which, I think, 267 00:13:53,630 --> 00:13:55,930 was written as early as 1829. 268 00:13:55,930 --> 00:14:00,900 And then over the next 30 years he and his brother sort 269 00:14:00,900 --> 00:14:02,970 of elaborate on this plan about how would 270 00:14:02,970 --> 00:14:04,710 they organize it? 271 00:14:04,710 --> 00:14:07,190 What disciplines would be included? 272 00:14:07,190 --> 00:14:11,740 But the key, I think, the key idea that they developed over 273 00:14:11,740 --> 00:14:14,490 these years was trying to combine, trying to develop an 274 00:14:14,490 --> 00:14:18,110 educational system that would combine science with the 275 00:14:18,110 --> 00:14:21,670 useful arts, make them relevant to one another and 276 00:14:21,670 --> 00:14:25,080 especially inform the useful arts about what science could 277 00:14:25,080 --> 00:14:28,290 reveal to them-- the understandings of chemistry, 278 00:14:28,290 --> 00:14:30,990 or physics, or whatever. 279 00:14:30,990 --> 00:14:36,560 And of courses, as you've read, the finality of this 280 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:40,860 comes in 1861, when he receives a charter from the 281 00:14:40,860 --> 00:14:43,960 state of Massachusetts to establish what is called the 282 00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:46,580 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 283 00:14:46,580 --> 00:14:50,400 Now in that, he'd had to do a lot of lobbying. 284 00:14:50,400 --> 00:14:53,480 He had learned how to work with politicians through that 285 00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:55,170 miserable Virginia experience. 286 00:14:55,170 --> 00:14:57,650 I think it made him a wiser man-- 287 00:14:57,650 --> 00:15:00,970 maybe a cagier person in terms of learning how to work with 288 00:15:00,970 --> 00:15:03,470 politicians or to get around the obstacles 289 00:15:03,470 --> 00:15:05,280 they put in this way. 290 00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:08,880 It's during the early questions about the charter 291 00:15:08,880 --> 00:15:12,430 for MIT, for example, that the governor of Massachusetts, who 292 00:15:12,430 --> 00:15:18,610 was a Harvard graduate, first proposed the idea of, why 293 00:15:18,610 --> 00:15:21,320 create this MIT as a separate institute? 294 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:23,720 Why not combine it with Harvard? 295 00:15:23,720 --> 00:15:27,470 It's one of those early questions about, well, why not 296 00:15:27,470 --> 00:15:29,750 combine it with Harvard rather than make it a separate 297 00:15:29,750 --> 00:15:31,320 institution? 298 00:15:31,320 --> 00:15:33,790 Rogers resisted that throughout this entire life. 299 00:15:33,790 --> 00:15:35,810 And there were several other attempts made during his 300 00:15:35,810 --> 00:15:39,560 lifetime to try to merge MIT with Harvard. 301 00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:40,820 But it began very early. 302 00:15:40,820 --> 00:15:43,250 And it began first with the government of Massachusetts, 303 00:15:43,250 --> 00:15:45,590 who would like to have seen that sort of 304 00:15:45,590 --> 00:15:48,500 combination put together. 305 00:15:48,500 --> 00:15:51,660 But once they got the charter, the big challenge then was to 306 00:15:51,660 --> 00:15:53,070 try to get the place going. 307 00:15:53,070 --> 00:15:57,340 And the problem was that he got his charter in April 1861, 308 00:15:57,340 --> 00:16:00,460 and what happens in 1861, in April? 309 00:16:00,460 --> 00:16:02,060 Civil War. 310 00:16:02,060 --> 00:16:05,230 And so a war breaks out. 311 00:16:05,230 --> 00:16:09,280 It makes it difficult for him to raise money, basically-- 312 00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:11,260 very difficult to raise money. 313 00:16:11,260 --> 00:16:15,790 And some scholars who have studied the history of MIT 314 00:16:15,790 --> 00:16:18,460 think that maybe it was a good thing that there was a war, in 315 00:16:18,460 --> 00:16:21,450 terms of his interest, because it gave him time to complete 316 00:16:21,450 --> 00:16:25,730 this plans and to work the political process in a way 317 00:16:25,730 --> 00:16:27,710 that allowed him to eventually get the 318 00:16:27,710 --> 00:16:30,060 Institute started in 1865. 319 00:16:30,060 --> 00:16:33,230 There may be some truth to that, but I think the real 320 00:16:33,230 --> 00:16:36,300 problem that he faced 1861 was money. 321 00:16:36,300 --> 00:16:38,890 And that was a problem MIT was going to face for the next 322 00:16:38,890 --> 00:16:40,600 four years or so. 323 00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:44,640 MIT was always running in the red, basically, well into the 324 00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:47,580 late 1890s and probably beyond that. 325 00:16:47,580 --> 00:16:50,420 I just haven't studied that much beyond the fiscal 326 00:16:50,420 --> 00:16:52,650 situation beyond the 1890s. 327 00:16:52,650 --> 00:16:56,320 But in any case, he got his charter. 328 00:16:56,320 --> 00:16:57,870 He has to hire faculty. 329 00:16:57,870 --> 00:17:04,569 He has to choose and acquire a site to initiate classes in. 330 00:17:04,569 --> 00:17:06,550 He has to raise this money. 331 00:17:06,550 --> 00:17:08,880 There are a lot of things that have to be accomplished. 332 00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:12,829 And I think one of the big godsends of the period was 333 00:17:12,829 --> 00:17:17,686 that there was a law passed in 1862. 334 00:17:17,686 --> 00:17:22,140 It was a federal law, part of the Lincoln administration's 335 00:17:22,140 --> 00:17:26,109 political agenda called the Morrill Land Grant Act. 336 00:17:26,109 --> 00:17:29,290 And I remember reading about this when I was your age and 337 00:17:29,290 --> 00:17:30,690 being totally bored by it. 338 00:17:30,690 --> 00:17:33,220 But it turns out that that is a very important piece of 339 00:17:33,220 --> 00:17:37,840 legislation because it led to the establishment of what we 340 00:17:37,840 --> 00:17:40,390 call the land grant university system in this country. 341 00:17:40,390 --> 00:17:44,610 All the big state universities, basically, are 342 00:17:44,610 --> 00:17:46,610 related to that land grant act. 343 00:17:46,610 --> 00:17:50,100 Some very directly, and others less so, but, nonetheless, 344 00:17:50,100 --> 00:17:51,170 most of them-- 345 00:17:51,170 --> 00:17:56,700 Texas A&M, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, 346 00:17:56,700 --> 00:17:59,930 Wisconsin, Berkeley, you know, you can go across the country 347 00:17:59,930 --> 00:18:00,870 and almost choose. 348 00:18:00,870 --> 00:18:03,430 In every state, there's at least one institution that was 349 00:18:03,430 --> 00:18:05,800 founded under the Morrill Act. 350 00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:09,250 Well, that Morrill Act was passed in 1862. 351 00:18:09,250 --> 00:18:12,060 And basically, what it said was that for each 352 00:18:12,060 --> 00:18:14,720 congressional representative that you had in the US 353 00:18:14,720 --> 00:18:20,540 Congress, the state would get 30,000 acres of land, which it 354 00:18:20,540 --> 00:18:23,820 in turn could convert into script and sell the script, or 355 00:18:23,820 --> 00:18:27,060 the rights to the land, as a way of raising money to 356 00:18:27,060 --> 00:18:31,180 establish agricultural mechanical colleges within the 357 00:18:31,180 --> 00:18:32,180 state boundaries-- 358 00:18:32,180 --> 00:18:35,000 A&Ms, if you want to call them that. 359 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,360 So Massachusetts, I think, had 10 congressional 360 00:18:38,360 --> 00:18:43,150 representatives and two US Senators. 361 00:18:43,150 --> 00:18:48,120 So it got a fairly sizable chunk of land in the Midwest. 362 00:18:48,120 --> 00:18:51,110 If I'm not mistaken, it was out in the area of northern 363 00:18:51,110 --> 00:18:55,080 Iowa, southern Minnesota, in that area, where a lot of this 364 00:18:55,080 --> 00:18:56,850 land was located. 365 00:18:56,850 --> 00:18:59,510 People in Minnesota and Iowa, by the way, were not happy 366 00:18:59,510 --> 00:19:02,300 that the federal government was giving away land in their 367 00:19:02,300 --> 00:19:06,010 states to states that had nothing to do with them. 368 00:19:06,010 --> 00:19:08,740 You can imagine how people in Minnesota must've felt about 369 00:19:08,740 --> 00:19:12,260 this huge chunk of land going to New York State, or 370 00:19:12,260 --> 00:19:14,230 Massachusetts, or wherever. 371 00:19:14,230 --> 00:19:19,010 But in any case, that converted into substantial 372 00:19:19,010 --> 00:19:23,750 funds that were used to found not only MIT but also the 373 00:19:23,750 --> 00:19:26,750 University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 374 00:19:26,750 --> 00:19:33,020 And basically, MIT got a third of those monies 375 00:19:33,020 --> 00:19:34,820 over a 30 year period. 376 00:19:34,820 --> 00:19:37,040 It was given to them in increments. 377 00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:41,370 They got a sizable amount of money, well over $300,000. 378 00:19:41,370 --> 00:19:43,790 That may not sound like much today, but if you convert it 379 00:19:43,790 --> 00:19:48,140 into 2008 dollars, it's a big hunk of money. 380 00:19:48,140 --> 00:19:50,360 I don't know but I've-- 381 00:19:50,360 --> 00:19:51,760 DAVID KAISER: Well, it would put you through MIT today. 382 00:19:51,760 --> 00:19:53,420 PROFESSOR: It would put you through MIT today. 383 00:19:53,420 --> 00:19:55,326 That's a good way to put it. 384 00:19:55,326 --> 00:19:58,380 Yeah, so it's a sizable amount of money. 385 00:19:58,380 --> 00:20:00,540 DAVID KAISER: Plus a couple vacations. 386 00:20:00,540 --> 00:20:03,700 PROFESSOR: But probably just as important as the grant from 387 00:20:03,700 --> 00:20:06,450 the state itself, which consisted not only of money, 388 00:20:06,450 --> 00:20:10,120 but also of land, over in the Back Bay-- 389 00:20:10,120 --> 00:20:14,090 MIT was first established not here, where we are today, but 390 00:20:14,090 --> 00:20:16,590 over in the Back Bay near Copley Square. 391 00:20:16,590 --> 00:20:19,750 If you're familiar with that area, the original building 392 00:20:19,750 --> 00:20:23,600 was very close, block or two, from Copley Square. 393 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:27,080 And it stayed there until 1916, pretty much. 394 00:20:27,080 --> 00:20:30,010 But in any case, the money for all that came from the state 395 00:20:30,010 --> 00:20:31,530 of Massachusetts. 396 00:20:31,530 --> 00:20:34,420 So the state was important in all this. 397 00:20:34,420 --> 00:20:39,120 Without the state, I would, in fact, question whether private 398 00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:42,950 donors would have stepped forward to donate money to MIT 399 00:20:42,950 --> 00:20:45,440 because they weren't sure about its future. 400 00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,510 But when the state began to invest in MIT, that sort of 401 00:20:48,510 --> 00:20:52,260 gave a signal that, yeah, MIT's got a future. 402 00:20:52,260 --> 00:20:55,070 I'm going to pony up some money and give --and one of 403 00:20:55,070 --> 00:20:59,520 the big donations that came very soon after MIT got the 404 00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:02,560 state funds was a donation that I begin my essay with, 405 00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:05,330 this doctor-- 406 00:21:05,330 --> 00:21:06,810 what's his name-- 407 00:21:06,810 --> 00:21:07,600 DAVID KAISER: Walker? 408 00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:08,530 PROFESSOR: What is it? 409 00:21:08,530 --> 00:21:09,050 DAVID KAISER: Walker. 410 00:21:09,050 --> 00:21:10,730 PROFESSOR: Walker, yes. 411 00:21:10,730 --> 00:21:14,720 William Walker, a physician who had invested in industry 412 00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:15,280 in this state. 413 00:21:15,280 --> 00:21:16,880 This was a leading industrial state. 414 00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:19,110 And he ponied up $60,000-- 415 00:21:19,110 --> 00:21:22,450 a lot of money for a private individual in those days. 416 00:21:22,450 --> 00:21:24,350 DAVID KAISER: On the last day before the-- 417 00:21:24,350 --> 00:21:27,890 PROFESSOR: In the last day, yeah, so it was an iffy 418 00:21:27,890 --> 00:21:29,550 proposition from the beginning. 419 00:21:29,550 --> 00:21:35,115 And Rogers, I think one of his great skills was as a, in a 420 00:21:35,115 --> 00:21:37,040 way, small p politician, a lobbyist. 421 00:21:37,040 --> 00:21:40,090 He was very effective at lobbying people, and raising 422 00:21:40,090 --> 00:21:43,650 funds, and keeping this institution going from one 423 00:21:43,650 --> 00:21:45,340 year, literally, one year to another. 424 00:21:45,340 --> 00:21:48,150 Because every year, as I said, it was running on the red. 425 00:21:48,150 --> 00:21:49,530 But he made it go. 426 00:21:49,530 --> 00:21:51,940 DAVID KAISER: Something about Back Bay, too-- because maybe 427 00:21:51,940 --> 00:21:54,630 not everybody knows that what is now Back 428 00:21:54,630 --> 00:21:57,970 Bay was once a Bay. 429 00:21:57,970 --> 00:21:58,440 PROFESSOR: Absolutely. 430 00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:00,670 DAVID KAISER: And I hadn't really remembered until I was 431 00:22:00,670 --> 00:22:05,010 reading the reading last night that part of the initial 432 00:22:05,010 --> 00:22:07,220 interest was-- 433 00:22:07,220 --> 00:22:10,040 they filled in the Back Bay to make what is now Back Bay, 434 00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:12,630 which was a huge engineering project in and of itself. 435 00:22:12,630 --> 00:22:15,050 And then there was interest in using that land for 436 00:22:15,050 --> 00:22:19,790 educational purposes, which Rogers then sort of satisfied 437 00:22:19,790 --> 00:22:21,050 to some degree. 438 00:22:21,050 --> 00:22:21,990 PROFESSOR: Right. 439 00:22:21,990 --> 00:22:25,820 And I think I mentioned in the essay that the initial 440 00:22:25,820 --> 00:22:31,030 proposal was not just for an industrial school, MIT, but 441 00:22:31,030 --> 00:22:34,205 was also for a natural history museum and a society of arts. 442 00:22:34,205 --> 00:22:38,225 It was a 3 part combination that was initially proposed. 443 00:22:38,225 --> 00:22:41,180 And eventually, of course, MIT was the 444 00:22:41,180 --> 00:22:42,480 one that really lasted. 445 00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,470 And the other two sort of slipped by the wayside. 446 00:22:45,470 --> 00:22:49,240 But in any case, that's the story of the beginning 447 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:52,040 because, I think, in the early days, if I'm not mistaken, 448 00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:56,810 that one of the early courses at MIT was in mining and, 449 00:22:56,810 --> 00:22:58,190 what's the other-- 450 00:22:58,190 --> 00:22:59,140 DAVID KAISER: Metallurgy. 451 00:22:59,140 --> 00:23:00,200 PROFESSOR: Mining and metallurgy. 452 00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:02,560 And in those days, geology would've been 453 00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:04,640 lumped into that area. 454 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:06,150 And then later, it becomes-- 455 00:23:06,150 --> 00:23:07,700 yeah, yeah. 456 00:23:07,700 --> 00:23:10,140 Now, I can't absolutely swear that's the 457 00:23:10,140 --> 00:23:11,960 case, but that's my-- 458 00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:13,610 what would say say, an educated guess, I 459 00:23:13,610 --> 00:23:16,010 guess, would be. 460 00:23:16,010 --> 00:23:20,300 So to look at Rogers and just say, OK, what are some of the 461 00:23:20,300 --> 00:23:21,840 important points to remember about him? 462 00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:24,170 One is, he's a good lobbyist. 463 00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:25,280 He keeps the place going. 464 00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:27,600 He keeps the vision alive, OK? 465 00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:31,170 And secondly, there's the vision itself. 466 00:23:31,170 --> 00:23:36,190 You see it on the great seal of MIT. 467 00:23:36,190 --> 00:23:39,970 You know, interestingly, if you look at the seal, it's 468 00:23:39,970 --> 00:23:40,420 interesting. 469 00:23:40,420 --> 00:23:43,010 It says mens et manus-- 470 00:23:43,010 --> 00:23:45,200 mind and hand. 471 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,210 Science and the useful arts, another way to think of it. 472 00:23:49,210 --> 00:23:52,710 But clearly, that vision of the combination of science and 473 00:23:52,710 --> 00:23:56,040 the useful arts was there from day one. 474 00:23:56,040 --> 00:24:03,640 And that seal was actually approved in 1864, if I'm not 475 00:24:03,640 --> 00:24:06,690 mistaken Rogers was on the committee that, you know, 476 00:24:06,690 --> 00:24:07,990 approved that seal. 477 00:24:07,990 --> 00:24:11,700 And he obviously played a role, I mean, I think his 478 00:24:11,700 --> 00:24:14,300 vision is sort of stamped, literally, into the seal 479 00:24:14,300 --> 00:24:18,190 itself, of what this place was going to be. 480 00:24:18,190 --> 00:24:22,430 One curious thing about that seal, however, I'll 481 00:24:22,430 --> 00:24:23,790 point it out now. 482 00:24:23,790 --> 00:24:26,730 It's not original with me, but a colleague of mine, years 483 00:24:26,730 --> 00:24:29,740 ago, pointed it out to me, and I have thought 484 00:24:29,740 --> 00:24:31,550 about it ever since-- 485 00:24:31,550 --> 00:24:43,230 was that when you look at this seal, you have a craftsman, or 486 00:24:43,230 --> 00:24:46,980 an industrial worker, and a scholar, OK, the scientist and 487 00:24:46,980 --> 00:24:52,020 the useful arts standing next to a pedestal, and then the 488 00:24:52,020 --> 00:24:54,440 words mens et manus below, and the date of 489 00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:56,720 the founding of MIT. 490 00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,780 The interesting thing though is that, in Rogers' vision he 491 00:25:00,780 --> 00:25:04,080 wanted to combine, he wanted each of them, science and 492 00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:06,180 useful arts, to inform one another. 493 00:25:06,180 --> 00:25:10,420 That was the special thing, the idea that he had. 494 00:25:10,420 --> 00:25:12,730 This was a new way of educating people. 495 00:25:12,730 --> 00:25:17,530 And yet these figures, science and engineering, or science 496 00:25:17,530 --> 00:25:20,410 and useful arts, they have their backs turned to each 497 00:25:20,410 --> 00:25:23,280 other, as if they're not conversing at all. 498 00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:24,210 Curious. 499 00:25:24,210 --> 00:25:26,880 I don't know it if was for aesthetic purposes or what, 500 00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:30,670 but from a didactic point of view, they should have been 501 00:25:30,670 --> 00:25:35,360 facing each other, and having discussions, and interacting. 502 00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:36,950 Clearly, they're not doing anything. 503 00:25:36,950 --> 00:25:38,970 They're sort of both in their own worlds. 504 00:25:38,970 --> 00:25:42,700 And that's an interesting comment, I think, just on the 505 00:25:42,700 --> 00:25:45,655 seal, not necessarily about Rogers' vision. 506 00:25:45,655 --> 00:25:52,170 But he has this important idea about the combination of the 507 00:25:52,170 --> 00:25:53,540 two, which is very important. 508 00:25:53,540 --> 00:25:58,000 And in the essay, I put a lot of emphasis on the importance 509 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:01,290 of laboratory education there, in which students are not just 510 00:26:01,290 --> 00:26:05,190 being given lectures and demonstrations by the 511 00:26:05,190 --> 00:26:08,220 professor using the apparatus, but, in fact, they're allowed 512 00:26:08,220 --> 00:26:11,690 to go in and perform experiments themselves using 513 00:26:11,690 --> 00:26:12,980 the apparatus. 514 00:26:12,980 --> 00:26:15,570 One of the reasons why MIT was constantly in financial 515 00:26:15,570 --> 00:26:18,260 difficulty was the need to maintain the laboratories that 516 00:26:18,260 --> 00:26:21,920 were so critical to the education of its students. 517 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,720 Laboratories are very expensive, to this day 518 00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,840 probably the most expensive item in the MIT budget, I 519 00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,270 would think-- one of the most expensive ones. 520 00:26:30,270 --> 00:26:32,560 Look around us at these new buildings that are going up 521 00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:35,250 just in the biological sciences and think of the 522 00:26:35,250 --> 00:26:38,080 expense that has been invested in them. 523 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,330 And it was no less true in the 19th century. 524 00:26:41,330 --> 00:26:45,300 And it had a special meaning for Rogers because he wanted 525 00:26:45,300 --> 00:26:49,310 students to be immersed in that experimental process and 526 00:26:49,310 --> 00:26:50,800 not just lookers-on. 527 00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:52,750 He wanted them involved in the process. 528 00:26:52,750 --> 00:26:56,380 And I think that's one of the really distinctive things 529 00:26:56,380 --> 00:26:59,470 about MIT, then and today. 530 00:26:59,470 --> 00:27:05,660 I keep thinking that vision of 1861, 1864, of Rogers can be 531 00:27:05,660 --> 00:27:08,620 seen in the UROP projects. 532 00:27:08,620 --> 00:27:10,890 And several of you have written in your reflections 533 00:27:10,890 --> 00:27:12,850 about this today-- 534 00:27:12,850 --> 00:27:17,010 different programs that exist at MIT that have that sort of 535 00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:21,660 active involvement of students that, in the days of the 536 00:27:21,660 --> 00:27:26,370 1860s, just didn't exist at other places, or surely not to 537 00:27:26,370 --> 00:27:30,170 any extent like it did at MIT. 538 00:27:30,170 --> 00:27:34,870 The other thing that Rogers had was an eye for talent. 539 00:27:34,870 --> 00:27:37,470 Every great leader needs to surround themselves with 540 00:27:37,470 --> 00:27:39,400 capable people. 541 00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:41,050 And the more capable, the better. 542 00:27:41,050 --> 00:27:44,420 And Rogers, I don't know if you want to call it good 543 00:27:44,420 --> 00:27:48,770 fortune or just the ability to spot people and hire them. 544 00:27:48,770 --> 00:27:52,430 But he hired a very talented staff. 545 00:27:52,430 --> 00:27:55,520 I think there were something like 20 professors, maybe not 546 00:27:55,520 --> 00:28:00,000 even 20, by 1870, five years after classes started. 547 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:04,630 But at least half of them were very, very competent people. 548 00:28:04,630 --> 00:28:08,190 And two of the most important were a guy named Francis 549 00:28:08,190 --> 00:28:13,390 Storer, S-T-O-R-E-R, and somewhat younger guy, but not 550 00:28:13,390 --> 00:28:17,340 a lot younger, Charles Eliot, both of whom were chemists, 551 00:28:17,340 --> 00:28:21,070 both of whom were Harvard educated, and, it turns out, 552 00:28:21,070 --> 00:28:23,640 both of whom were brothers in law. 553 00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,610 Storer married Eliot's sister. 554 00:28:26,610 --> 00:28:29,610 And Storer came to MIT first. 555 00:28:29,610 --> 00:28:33,200 He was one of the first faculty hired at MIT, to set 556 00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:34,640 up a chemistry department here. 557 00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:39,250 And then Eliot, who was studying in Germany, was hired 558 00:28:39,250 --> 00:28:43,390 like in 1867 to come in and fill out that enterprise. 559 00:28:43,390 --> 00:28:49,450 And they end up building one of the first really 560 00:28:49,450 --> 00:28:52,700 experimental research oriented laboratories in the United 561 00:28:52,700 --> 00:28:54,760 States, academic, anyway. 562 00:28:54,760 --> 00:29:00,670 And they also are the first to write textbooks for the study 563 00:29:00,670 --> 00:29:03,180 of chemistry, and chemical experiments, and things like-- 564 00:29:03,180 --> 00:29:06,450 two very famous textbooks that were published during the 565 00:29:06,450 --> 00:29:09,470 early, well, the late 1860s and early 1870s. 566 00:29:09,470 --> 00:29:10,910 So they're important people. 567 00:29:10,910 --> 00:29:15,720 Now the interesting thing is that Eliot was at MIT a very 568 00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:17,870 short period of time. 569 00:29:17,870 --> 00:29:20,810 He came and '67 and he left in '69 to become 570 00:29:20,810 --> 00:29:22,860 President of Harvard. 571 00:29:22,860 --> 00:29:26,910 And interestingly, it's Eliot who really initiates all these 572 00:29:26,910 --> 00:29:34,240 attempts to merge Harvard with MIT. 573 00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:38,840 The essay that you read today called, "The New Education," 574 00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:43,030 same guy, Charles Eliot, the author is Charles Eliot. 575 00:29:43,030 --> 00:29:45,830 He wrote that while he was at MIT, but the same year that 576 00:29:45,830 --> 00:29:48,610 essay was published, he becomes president of Harvard. 577 00:29:48,610 --> 00:29:51,310 And immediately, he starts making overtures to William 578 00:29:51,310 --> 00:29:53,740 Rogers about, come on, Bill, let's-- 579 00:29:53,740 --> 00:29:54,960 I don't know if they'd call him Bill. 580 00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:57,940 I've often wondered, what did they call William-- did 581 00:29:57,940 --> 00:30:00,640 William Rogers have a nickname? 582 00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,930 We had a reunion over in Burton-Conner about two or 583 00:30:03,930 --> 00:30:06,420 three weeks ago, and they had this big cut 584 00:30:06,420 --> 00:30:08,240 out picture of Rogers. 585 00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:10,565 And one of the students from Burton-Conner came over and 586 00:30:10,565 --> 00:30:15,260 clipped a little ID badge on him saying, "Billy." But I 587 00:30:15,260 --> 00:30:18,260 can't imagine, William Rogers, does not strike me that you 588 00:30:18,260 --> 00:30:21,100 would walk up and call him Billy Rogers. 589 00:30:21,100 --> 00:30:22,790 I don't know if he had a nickname or not. 590 00:30:22,790 --> 00:30:25,180 But in any case, Eliot liked-- 591 00:30:25,180 --> 00:30:25,930 DAVID KAISER: Mr. Rogers. 592 00:30:25,930 --> 00:30:26,340 PROFESSOR: Pardon? 593 00:30:26,340 --> 00:30:28,870 Mr. Rogers, that would even be better. 594 00:30:28,870 --> 00:30:29,870 Yeah, Mr. Rogers. 595 00:30:29,870 --> 00:30:32,670 DAVID KAISER: And they called MIT Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. 596 00:30:32,670 --> 00:30:35,040 PROFESSOR: Well, you're just full of neat 597 00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,410 observations today. 598 00:30:37,410 --> 00:30:38,200 DAVID KAISER: That's my job, [INAUDIBLE] 599 00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:38,760 PROFESSOR: That's good. 600 00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:39,310 That's good. 601 00:30:39,310 --> 00:30:42,850 You remind me of Waldorf over and-- you know, the muppets up 602 00:30:42,850 --> 00:30:43,730 in the balcony? 603 00:30:43,730 --> 00:30:44,500 DAVID KAISER: [LAUGHS] 604 00:30:44,500 --> 00:30:46,320 PROFESSOR: You're Waldorf today. 605 00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:50,850 Anyway, Eliot really liked what he saw at MIT. 606 00:30:50,850 --> 00:30:54,820 He clearly thinks that MIT is the core of this "new 607 00:30:54,820 --> 00:30:57,240 education." This is where the action was at. 608 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,600 And he tried very hard during his presidential years at 609 00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:03,950 Harvard-- and he was president of Harvard for at, what, 35 610 00:31:03,950 --> 00:31:04,580 years or so? 611 00:31:04,580 --> 00:31:06,400 A long time. 612 00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:07,630 Never happened. 613 00:31:07,630 --> 00:31:11,180 But that was one of his fondest wishes. 614 00:31:11,180 --> 00:31:14,090 And he was one of these early hires that William Barton 615 00:31:14,090 --> 00:31:15,410 Rogers made here. 616 00:31:15,410 --> 00:31:20,070 Clearly, he had sold Eliot on the MIT vision. 617 00:31:20,070 --> 00:31:21,390 There were others. 618 00:31:21,390 --> 00:31:29,680 Edward Pickering, like Eliot and Storer, established a very 619 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:33,070 famous lab in physics here. 620 00:31:33,070 --> 00:31:36,660 And he was literally Rogers successor as the teacher of 621 00:31:36,660 --> 00:31:38,350 physics at MIT-- 622 00:31:38,350 --> 00:31:39,870 again, another Harvard graduate. 623 00:31:39,870 --> 00:31:42,870 All these early professors are pretty much Harvard graduates 624 00:31:42,870 --> 00:31:48,500 who came to MIT and then, like Storer and Eliot, often left 625 00:31:48,500 --> 00:31:51,790 MIT to go back to Harvard, interestingly. 626 00:31:51,790 --> 00:31:54,030 I don't know exactly why. 627 00:31:54,030 --> 00:31:57,400 Eliot was a very persuasive person, but I'm sure Harvard 628 00:31:57,400 --> 00:31:59,970 could shake a lot more money in their faces, too, in terms 629 00:31:59,970 --> 00:32:01,300 of salaries and things like that. 630 00:32:01,300 --> 00:32:06,300 That's probably important, an important attraction. 631 00:32:06,300 --> 00:32:10,960 So Pickering, as I recollect, also returned to Harvard at 632 00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:12,300 one point in this career. 633 00:32:12,300 --> 00:32:17,210 But he was a very important laboratory builder here at MIT 634 00:32:17,210 --> 00:32:20,930 that established, again, the MIT model for spreading this 635 00:32:20,930 --> 00:32:23,860 new vision of education around the country. 636 00:32:23,860 --> 00:32:27,310 And then finally, in architecture, another Harvard 637 00:32:27,310 --> 00:32:30,080 graduate, William Ware, establishes the Department of 638 00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:31,190 Architecture at MIT. 639 00:32:31,190 --> 00:32:35,580 It's the first in the country, and very successful, very much 640 00:32:35,580 --> 00:32:41,030 oriented towards this hands on, laboratory oriented design 641 00:32:41,030 --> 00:32:44,900 process in architecture. 642 00:32:44,900 --> 00:32:47,170 He was at MIT for about 15 years. 643 00:32:47,170 --> 00:32:50,480 And then he leaves to go to Columbia and establish a 644 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:52,940 similar school at Columbia. 645 00:32:52,940 --> 00:32:56,230 He's considered the leading educator in architecture of 646 00:32:56,230 --> 00:32:58,120 the late 19th century. 647 00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,350 So you have here, in this early faculty, some very 648 00:33:01,350 --> 00:33:04,850 interesting and significant people. 649 00:33:04,850 --> 00:33:08,250 And I think the important thing, for the purposes of our 650 00:33:08,250 --> 00:33:11,160 discussion today, is that Rogers hired these guys. 651 00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:14,000 He had an eye for talent. 652 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:18,400 And there's nothing like having great talent around you 653 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:20,030 to build a great institution. 654 00:33:20,030 --> 00:33:22,360 And that was underway by the 1870s. 655 00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:26,360 People were actually writing to Rogers by the 1870s, like, 656 00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,670 within five years of the founding of this place, 657 00:33:28,670 --> 00:33:33,000 saying, MIT is making itself heard. 658 00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:37,910 And that reputation continues to gain momentum throughout 659 00:33:37,910 --> 00:33:40,450 the decades of the late 19th century. 660 00:33:40,450 --> 00:33:48,150 So much so that in the paper that I wrote, I refer to 661 00:33:48,150 --> 00:33:52,240 Francis Amasa Walker, who was the third president of MIT 662 00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:56,890 making his annual report in 1894, in which he comes out 663 00:33:56,890 --> 00:33:59,460 and says, basically, thanks to the founders of this 664 00:33:59,460 --> 00:34:03,005 Institute, and especially to William Rogers, the battle of 665 00:34:03,005 --> 00:34:04,780 "the new education" " has won. 666 00:34:04,780 --> 00:34:08,840 Well, the new education meant that MIT had now become the 667 00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:14,219 great model of this new way of educating people toward a more 668 00:34:14,219 --> 00:34:18,929 integrated curriculum built around science and 669 00:34:18,929 --> 00:34:19,830 engineering. 670 00:34:19,830 --> 00:34:21,679 That was a new model. 671 00:34:21,679 --> 00:34:24,860 And when you look around the country today, virtually every 672 00:34:24,860 --> 00:34:30,770 major university has sort of bought in to that model. 673 00:34:30,770 --> 00:34:33,330 Even a number of small colleges have, but especially 674 00:34:33,330 --> 00:34:35,389 large state universities-- 675 00:34:35,389 --> 00:34:39,510 very much influenced by this MIT approach. 676 00:34:39,510 --> 00:34:43,510 Now the final point to be made about Rogers, I think, is that 677 00:34:43,510 --> 00:34:46,929 he's one of the country's first geologists, 678 00:34:46,929 --> 00:34:48,239 professional geologist. 679 00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:49,929 He's one of the founders of the field 680 00:34:49,929 --> 00:34:51,889 in the United States. 681 00:34:51,889 --> 00:34:56,610 He is also a founder of the American Association for the 682 00:34:56,610 --> 00:34:58,650 Advancement of Science. 683 00:34:58,650 --> 00:35:01,990 He's not and he's not on the inside of that operation, but 684 00:35:01,990 --> 00:35:06,630 he's definitely consulted about it, is an early member, 685 00:35:06,630 --> 00:35:08,570 and plays a role in it. 686 00:35:08,570 --> 00:35:12,250 But he is an important geologist in the history of 687 00:35:12,250 --> 00:35:14,160 science in this country. 688 00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:17,410 And he's also an early defender of Charles Darwin. 689 00:35:17,410 --> 00:35:20,650 Darwin's Origins of Species, the famous book on 690 00:35:20,650 --> 00:35:24,450 evolutionary theory, was published in 1859. 691 00:35:24,450 --> 00:35:28,590 And Rogers was one of the first in the Boston area to 692 00:35:28,590 --> 00:35:30,780 embrace that theory, and defend it, and 693 00:35:30,780 --> 00:35:32,200 argue that it had-- 694 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,970 from his geological perspective 695 00:35:35,970 --> 00:35:38,300 was a viable theory. 696 00:35:38,300 --> 00:35:41,710 He was opposed, very vigorously, by a zoologist 697 00:35:41,710 --> 00:35:47,020 from Harvard named Louis Agassiz, who, in more than one 698 00:35:47,020 --> 00:35:52,850 time, tried to do in Rogers, both as a geologist and as the 699 00:35:52,850 --> 00:35:54,670 founder of MIT. 700 00:35:54,670 --> 00:36:01,250 But, again Rogers had staying power and was able to make its 701 00:36:01,250 --> 00:36:03,010 way through all these crises. 702 00:36:03,010 --> 00:36:08,400 But I think as a geologist, he often gets forgotten in that 703 00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:09,740 area, even though he was an important 704 00:36:09,740 --> 00:36:11,950 contributor to that field. 705 00:36:11,950 --> 00:36:13,610 Now what are the take home points of the 706 00:36:13,610 --> 00:36:14,540 essay that I wrote. 707 00:36:14,540 --> 00:36:16,480 I'll give you three. 708 00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:18,600 One is obvious. 709 00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,790 It's the sustainability of Rogers' vision for MIT-- 710 00:36:21,790 --> 00:36:23,185 the mens et manus theme. 711 00:36:23,185 --> 00:36:27,845 The idea of combining, bringing together science and 712 00:36:27,845 --> 00:36:30,140 the useful arts. 713 00:36:30,140 --> 00:36:32,610 It's a remarkable continuity, if you ask me. 714 00:36:32,610 --> 00:36:35,360 I think it's something that has maintained itself right up 715 00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:36,740 to the present. 716 00:36:36,740 --> 00:36:37,570 That's amazing. 717 00:36:37,570 --> 00:36:40,260 This place is 150 years old, and yet the founding vision of 718 00:36:40,260 --> 00:36:43,370 the place still informs it in many ways. 719 00:36:43,370 --> 00:36:45,130 Now that doesn't mean there haven't been changes. 720 00:36:45,130 --> 00:36:46,260 There surely have been. 721 00:36:46,260 --> 00:36:47,840 And we'll see them during the term. 722 00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:54,190 But that basic concept has maintained itself. 723 00:36:54,190 --> 00:36:56,380 That's amazing to me. 724 00:36:56,380 --> 00:36:58,770 Another thing that's important to note here is the role of 725 00:36:58,770 --> 00:37:04,770 the state in the founding of MIT, the fact that the state 726 00:37:04,770 --> 00:37:07,830 of Massachusetts, funded by the federal government, 727 00:37:07,830 --> 00:37:11,430 basically, put up a lot of the real seed bed money that was 728 00:37:11,430 --> 00:37:14,020 used to get this place started. 729 00:37:14,020 --> 00:37:17,230 And then that, in turn, attracted private 730 00:37:17,230 --> 00:37:19,680 donations to MIT. 731 00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:24,530 But as late as the 1890s, MIT was petitioning the state of 732 00:37:24,530 --> 00:37:29,810 Massachusetts for increments of $25,000 a year, simply to 733 00:37:29,810 --> 00:37:33,010 try to support the building of labs and stuff like that. 734 00:37:33,010 --> 00:37:38,310 So Massachusetts have a long history of involvement with 735 00:37:38,310 --> 00:37:42,290 MIT, even though this was supposedly a "private 736 00:37:42,290 --> 00:37:44,960 corporation." It's curious. 737 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:49,280 It's a land grant school that is a private corporation. 738 00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,090 Not many were like that. 739 00:37:51,090 --> 00:37:54,733 Most were state universities that were state controlled and 740 00:37:54,733 --> 00:37:57,460 did not have this word corporation. 741 00:37:57,460 --> 00:37:59,560 You might have been a member of the board of trustees, but 742 00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:01,870 you were not a member of the corporation 743 00:38:01,870 --> 00:38:03,120 like we have today. 744 00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:07,020 So again the state is important here. 745 00:38:07,020 --> 00:38:14,130 And then finally, just about MIT's significance, it's the 746 00:38:14,130 --> 00:38:16,760 new education that's important. 747 00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:22,020 It's a new breed of cat that's being developed here, and it's 748 00:38:22,020 --> 00:38:24,580 one that had legs. 749 00:38:24,580 --> 00:38:28,810 It's probably had, I suppose, this sounds so much like a 750 00:38:28,810 --> 00:38:31,210 homer lecture, but it is, in a way. 751 00:38:31,210 --> 00:38:33,700 I'm enthusiastic about the history of MIT. 752 00:38:33,700 --> 00:38:35,990 Maybe it's because I haven't learned enough about it yet. 753 00:38:35,990 --> 00:38:41,500 But the vision for MIT had an impact. 754 00:38:41,500 --> 00:38:44,010 It made impacts elsewhere. 755 00:38:44,010 --> 00:38:45,460 It continues to have that. 756 00:38:45,460 --> 00:38:49,060 We'll talk about, later in the term, about how the MIT model 757 00:38:49,060 --> 00:38:52,660 is now being exported to Singapore, and to India, and 758 00:38:52,660 --> 00:38:54,480 all over the world. 759 00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:58,090 So it's had enormous, enormous impact. 760 00:38:58,090 --> 00:39:00,380 And that's not something to be sneezed at. 761 00:39:00,380 --> 00:39:05,770 And it's really why Charles Eliot wrote that essay called 762 00:39:05,770 --> 00:39:08,120 "The New Education," was to point out, this is something 763 00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,340 new and different. 764 00:39:10,340 --> 00:39:11,740 This is worth attending to. 765 00:39:11,740 --> 00:39:16,960 And he does a survey of all these various schools and says 766 00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:20,130 the real place where the action is is MIT. 767 00:39:20,130 --> 00:39:22,280 That's 1869. 768 00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:25,800 Within months, he was going to become president of Harvard 769 00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,790 and, as I said, made numerous attempts to try to bring MIT 770 00:39:30,790 --> 00:39:33,910 into the Harvard fold, unsuccessfully. 771 00:39:33,910 --> 00:39:40,390 So David suggested that's my remarks, OK. 772 00:39:40,390 --> 00:39:43,170 Brilliant. 773 00:39:43,170 --> 00:39:44,630 Aren't they? 774 00:39:44,630 --> 00:39:47,310 Eli, you thought they were pretty good, huh? 775 00:39:47,310 --> 00:39:48,560 That's good. 776 00:39:50,550 --> 00:39:51,790 I know all these people. 777 00:39:51,790 --> 00:39:55,820 So you're wondering, why is he talking to them, you know? 778 00:39:55,820 --> 00:40:00,240 Anyway, David suggested, before the class started, that 779 00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:03,840 we take a closer look at Eliot's piece "The New 780 00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:08,070 Education." I debated about whether we should have you 781 00:40:08,070 --> 00:40:12,530 read this or not because, frankly, it's pretty boring. 782 00:40:12,530 --> 00:40:14,020 It's not an easy piece to read. 783 00:40:14,020 --> 00:40:17,770 It's written in a very stilted, 19th century style. 784 00:40:17,770 --> 00:40:20,040 And yet it's says things, if you can make your way through 785 00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:21,830 it, it does say things, I think, that are 786 00:40:21,830 --> 00:40:23,980 important to note. 787 00:40:23,980 --> 00:40:28,930 And so, this is basically Charles Eliot's take on the 788 00:40:28,930 --> 00:40:31,860 state of education, higher education, in the United 789 00:40:31,860 --> 00:40:34,240 States circa 1869. 790 00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:36,980 That's really what this essay is about. 791 00:40:36,980 --> 00:40:42,450 And the big distinction he makes is that he talks about 792 00:40:42,450 --> 00:40:47,480 how there are basically three different types of higher 793 00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:49,930 education institutions in the United States. 794 00:40:49,930 --> 00:40:55,190 There are the classical colleges that teach Latin and 795 00:40:55,190 --> 00:40:59,280 Greek, mathematics, the typical curriculum aimed at 796 00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:03,030 cultivating an educated gentleman for society. 797 00:41:03,030 --> 00:41:06,230 That's where gentlemanly people went. 798 00:41:06,230 --> 00:41:10,320 Ladies, I'm sorry, were not admitted to those schools in 799 00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,200 those days. 800 00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:16,230 Most women, in those days, if they went to college at all, 801 00:41:16,230 --> 00:41:20,670 and many of them did not, went to-- 802 00:41:20,670 --> 00:41:23,950 my grandmother, who went to one of these college called 803 00:41:23,950 --> 00:41:30,190 state teachers institutes, or educational institutes. 804 00:41:30,190 --> 00:41:34,180 But rarely would you see women on the campus of Yale. 805 00:41:34,180 --> 00:41:35,880 I don't even know if Yale admitted 806 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,420 women, did they in the--? 807 00:41:37,420 --> 00:41:39,170 DAVID KAISER: 1969. 808 00:41:39,170 --> 00:41:39,970 PROFESSOR: Wow. 809 00:41:39,970 --> 00:41:41,260 See? 810 00:41:41,260 --> 00:41:41,940 It's a good-- 811 00:41:41,940 --> 00:41:42,840 OK. 812 00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:44,280 Well, Harvard had Radcliffe. 813 00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:48,120 So they're next door neighbors, but there's this 814 00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:50,190 divorce that exists. 815 00:41:50,190 --> 00:41:53,640 Now, interestingly, Rogers, from day one, said we will 816 00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,280 admit women to this place. 817 00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:58,670 A very, very small number came. 818 00:41:58,670 --> 00:42:02,240 And most of those who did come were called special students. 819 00:42:02,240 --> 00:42:06,640 They were not regular students like you are but rather 820 00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:09,870 special students who were part time, basically, part time 821 00:42:09,870 --> 00:42:12,380 students, women who were working in the area who wanted 822 00:42:12,380 --> 00:42:16,270 to take a chemistry class or something, could enroll here. 823 00:42:16,270 --> 00:42:21,510 But for it's day, that was quite a revolutionary and open 824 00:42:21,510 --> 00:42:23,190 minded thing to do, I think. 825 00:42:23,190 --> 00:42:25,100 But he was very open to that. 826 00:42:25,100 --> 00:42:27,870 He was very much a reformer, I think. 827 00:42:27,870 --> 00:42:30,120 He was involved in the abolitionist movement. 828 00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:32,860 And David pointed out today that one of his friends from 829 00:42:32,860 --> 00:42:36,660 Virginia, a guy named Edmund Ruffin, was actually one of 830 00:42:36,660 --> 00:42:40,560 the first to fire the Confederate cannons on Fort 831 00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:42,430 Sumter in 1861. 832 00:42:42,430 --> 00:42:45,620 So here's this man coming out of Virginia who was imbued 833 00:42:45,620 --> 00:42:52,166 with this slave oriented ethos that's pervaded Virginia prior 834 00:42:52,166 --> 00:42:59,020 to the Civil War, who was open minded enough to see the 835 00:42:59,020 --> 00:43:02,340 problems and downright evils of slavery, resist them, and, 836 00:43:02,340 --> 00:43:04,410 eventually, remove himself from the South 837 00:43:04,410 --> 00:43:05,190 and come to New England. 838 00:43:05,190 --> 00:43:06,610 That's one of the reasons he moved here. 839 00:43:06,610 --> 00:43:11,760 He was just so sick of the violent society that Virginia 840 00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:16,620 had become by the 1850s, especially around slavery. 841 00:43:16,620 --> 00:43:20,270 A lot of his problems came from that direction. 842 00:43:20,270 --> 00:43:23,810 Well, when Eliot writes about "The New Education," he 843 00:43:23,810 --> 00:43:25,460 doesn't use that phrase a lot in here. 844 00:43:25,460 --> 00:43:27,910 You really have to kind of look-- 845 00:43:27,910 --> 00:43:31,180 he may have mentioned the term new education or some variant 846 00:43:31,180 --> 00:43:33,560 of it maybe three or four times in the entire essay. 847 00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,120 It's not something he's pounding away at. 848 00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:39,220 But he's making as interesting comparisons, first, between 849 00:43:39,220 --> 00:43:44,430 these three kinds of institutions that are trying 850 00:43:44,430 --> 00:43:49,420 to organize educational framework around the useful 851 00:43:49,420 --> 00:43:51,200 arts and science. 852 00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:54,040 And he argues that two of them are just abject failures, 853 00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,470 basically, there are schools like the Lawrence School at 854 00:43:57,470 --> 00:44:04,280 Harvard, or the Sheffield School at Yale, or the 855 00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:10,450 Chandler School at Dartmouth, that make the attempt but can 856 00:44:10,450 --> 00:44:15,690 never quite achieve what is needed to be done because 857 00:44:15,690 --> 00:44:19,620 their faculty come from the school itself. 858 00:44:19,620 --> 00:44:23,740 And as a result, the faculty loyalties and the degree of 859 00:44:23,740 --> 00:44:26,680 involvement in these new ways of educating 860 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:28,410 students is never complete. 861 00:44:28,410 --> 00:44:32,290 It's always sort of a halfway process. 862 00:44:32,290 --> 00:44:34,400 And that's something that bothered Eliot a great deal, 863 00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:36,600 especially about Harvard because the Lawrence School 864 00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:38,810 was heavily endowed for its day. 865 00:44:38,810 --> 00:44:42,780 And yet it had really had a sort of a meager record of 866 00:44:42,780 --> 00:44:46,190 turning out students who were well educated 867 00:44:46,190 --> 00:44:48,480 in the useful arts. 868 00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,080 And so that's a problem. 869 00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:56,130 There are other types of colleges that he talks about 870 00:44:56,130 --> 00:44:59,330 with reference to the useful arts, smaller schools like 871 00:44:59,330 --> 00:45:04,020 Union College up in Schenectady, New York or Brown 872 00:45:04,020 --> 00:45:06,470 University down in Providence. 873 00:45:06,470 --> 00:45:09,200 And basically, the argument is somewhat similar there, is 874 00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:13,950 that it's hard to introduce this new concept of combining 875 00:45:13,950 --> 00:45:18,480 useful arts and science in environments that have been 876 00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,350 completely oriented toward the classical education 877 00:45:22,350 --> 00:45:23,250 up until that time. 878 00:45:23,250 --> 00:45:25,020 It's very difficult to do that. 879 00:45:25,020 --> 00:45:29,160 And as a result, he says, it's really to the third type of 880 00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:34,240 school, the RPIs, the MITs, are the two main ones where 881 00:45:34,240 --> 00:45:37,540 this model is more likely to succeed. 882 00:45:37,540 --> 00:45:42,140 And there, he says that RPI's been quite successful at it. 883 00:45:42,140 --> 00:45:46,560 It's really the first civilian engineering school founded in 884 00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:47,400 the United States. 885 00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,230 It dates to 1824. 886 00:45:50,230 --> 00:45:54,240 And RPI is basically a place that trains civil engineers. 887 00:45:54,240 --> 00:45:56,730 It does not get into mechanical engineering or 888 00:45:56,730 --> 00:45:58,650 metallurgical engineering, things like that. 889 00:45:58,650 --> 00:46:01,620 It's strictly oriented toward civil engineering-- by the 890 00:46:01,620 --> 00:46:04,500 time the Civil War, very successful. 891 00:46:04,500 --> 00:46:07,830 But it's really to MIT that he looks. 892 00:46:07,830 --> 00:46:13,150 And he says now here is the model because it's so open to 893 00:46:13,150 --> 00:46:16,360 educating not only civil engineers but mechanical 894 00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,970 engineers, architects, metallurgical engineers-- 895 00:46:20,970 --> 00:46:25,070 MIT has a menu by the late 1860s that no other school 896 00:46:25,070 --> 00:46:26,350 really has. 897 00:46:26,350 --> 00:46:29,460 And so that is, I think, a distinctive 898 00:46:29,460 --> 00:46:30,735 comment that he makes. 899 00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:40,320 But basically, I read this, and for me the takeaway is 900 00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:43,520 that Eliot loves MIT. 901 00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:48,620 He sees MIT as the new direction for higher education 902 00:46:48,620 --> 00:46:50,740 and that's doing something different than any other place 903 00:46:50,740 --> 00:46:53,120 has ever done. 904 00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:54,370 It's a good question. 905 00:46:54,370 --> 00:46:56,840 The interesting thing, I wanted to note, here, though 906 00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:02,610 is that on page 216 near the end, yeah, he's talking about 907 00:47:02,610 --> 00:47:07,380 RPI and MIT, but he makes no reference to the US Military 908 00:47:07,380 --> 00:47:10,055 Academy, which is arguably the first engineering school in 909 00:47:10,055 --> 00:47:10,910 the United States. 910 00:47:10,910 --> 00:47:14,010 It's modeled after the French Ecole Polytechnique-- 911 00:47:14,010 --> 00:47:17,030 except for a footnote at the bottom of 216. 912 00:47:17,030 --> 00:47:18,130 Did you see this note? 913 00:47:18,130 --> 00:47:22,670 He says the United States Naval and military academies 914 00:47:22,670 --> 00:47:25,440 are not referred to at length because-- they're not refer to 915 00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:31,990 at all, basically, because access to them is not free. 916 00:47:31,990 --> 00:47:34,810 A thoroughly vicious system blah, blah, blah. 917 00:47:34,810 --> 00:47:36,930 He does not like the military academies. 918 00:47:36,930 --> 00:47:40,040 But he completely erases them from the essay. 919 00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:41,426 Did you have your hand up? 920 00:47:41,426 --> 00:47:42,764 AUDIENCE: Um, not really. 921 00:47:42,764 --> 00:47:43,210 PROFESSOR: Huh? 922 00:47:43,210 --> 00:47:43,660 AUDIENCE: No. 923 00:47:43,660 --> 00:47:45,810 PROFESSOR: Oh OK, I thought you were waving your hand 924 00:47:45,810 --> 00:47:48,630 going, I object! 925 00:47:48,630 --> 00:47:50,800 He's just anti-militarist, or something. 926 00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:54,470 But those are important places-- 927 00:47:54,470 --> 00:47:55,760 especially West Point. 928 00:47:58,370 --> 00:48:02,030 In fact, I think I say it in my essay, that the president 929 00:48:02,030 --> 00:48:05,700 of Brown University, Francis Wayland, made a comment in the 930 00:48:05,700 --> 00:48:09,200 1850s that West Point had trained more engineers then 931 00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,600 all the other colleges in the United States put together. 932 00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:15,470 Well, that says something. 933 00:48:15,470 --> 00:48:16,850 It's not a big school. 934 00:48:16,850 --> 00:48:20,550 And it also tells you about the need for more engineers in 935 00:48:20,550 --> 00:48:22,570 the country because West Point could not produce 936 00:48:22,570 --> 00:48:24,110 all of these people. 937 00:48:24,110 --> 00:48:29,360 Hence the reason why MIT became so important by the 938 00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:31,580 later decades of the 19th century. 939 00:48:31,580 --> 00:48:37,980 And where did early MIT graduates go to work? 940 00:48:37,980 --> 00:48:40,220 Many of them went to railroads. 941 00:48:40,220 --> 00:48:42,400 That was the big industry after the Civil War. 942 00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:45,520 And many of them go into the railroad industry as managers, 943 00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:49,420 engineers, railroad builders. 944 00:48:49,420 --> 00:48:51,530 Many go into chemical industries that are beginning 945 00:48:51,530 --> 00:48:53,540 to emerge during this period too. 946 00:48:53,540 --> 00:48:58,040 It's interesting, for example, that the du Pont family sends 947 00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,120 the best and brightest of their family, of young people, 948 00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:02,750 up here to get educated. 949 00:49:02,750 --> 00:49:04,760 Pierre du Pont, one of the really important 950 00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:08,040 industrialists of the early 20th century, is a graduate of 951 00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,780 MIT class of 1890. 952 00:49:10,780 --> 00:49:13,660 And there were other du Ponts that came here, too, but he's 953 00:49:13,660 --> 00:49:16,230 probably the most important. 954 00:49:16,230 --> 00:49:21,690 And Arthur D. Little, famous AD Little Laboratories. 955 00:49:21,690 --> 00:49:25,210 I don't know if they're still, are they still in operation? 956 00:49:25,210 --> 00:49:27,295 Private research laboratories in chemistry? 957 00:49:27,295 --> 00:49:29,570 DAVID KAISER: I belive AD Little is still in operation 958 00:49:29,570 --> 00:49:31,710 but they sold off the R&D lab-- 959 00:49:31,710 --> 00:49:32,390 PROFESSOR: They did, OK. 960 00:49:32,390 --> 00:49:34,310 DAVID KAISER: To an MIT alum, actually, Kenan 961 00:49:34,310 --> 00:49:35,730 Sahin, owns it now. 962 00:49:35,730 --> 00:49:36,695 And it's got a different name. 963 00:49:36,695 --> 00:49:36,980 PROFESSOR: Oh, he did? 964 00:49:36,980 --> 00:49:38,050 OK. 965 00:49:38,050 --> 00:49:44,000 Well, there's a list of very eminent engineers, chemists, 966 00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:47,910 applied scientists that are coming out of MIT by the 1890s 967 00:49:47,910 --> 00:49:53,600 that go on to really play a big role in the commercial 968 00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:55,930 development and industrialization of the 969 00:49:55,930 --> 00:49:57,410 United States in the 20th century. 970 00:49:57,410 --> 00:49:59,920 So MIT has had an impact. 971 00:49:59,920 --> 00:50:04,160 I don't know if you want to say any more about Charles 972 00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:05,520 Eliot's piece here. 973 00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:05,800 DAVID KAISER: I would read through little 974 00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:07,460 bit of it in detail. 975 00:50:07,460 --> 00:50:08,120 PROFESSOR: Go ahead. 976 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:10,220 DAVID KAISER: How many people brought the piece 977 00:50:10,220 --> 00:50:12,700 [INTERPOSING VOICES] 978 00:50:12,700 --> 00:50:13,670 PROFESSOR: Can you get it off the scholar site? 979 00:50:13,670 --> 00:50:16,300 DAVID KAISER: If you have it, maybe pull it out because it's 980 00:50:16,300 --> 00:50:19,630 sort of worth, I think, reading parts of it in some 981 00:50:19,630 --> 00:50:24,220 detail because, first of all, it's a good exercise in what 982 00:50:24,220 --> 00:50:26,010 we call close reading, were how you-- 983 00:50:26,010 --> 00:50:28,630 I mean, the language a little foreign. 984 00:50:28,630 --> 00:50:31,370 It's not very foreign, but what's being said between the 985 00:50:31,370 --> 00:50:34,370 lines, or what's he assuming that people are saying. 986 00:50:34,370 --> 00:50:36,500 And I think some of it is relevant to both what 987 00:50:36,500 --> 00:50:38,410 [? Rowe ?] was saying, and even to MIT today. 988 00:50:43,380 --> 00:50:44,410 I'm sorry? 989 00:50:44,410 --> 00:50:45,990 It is on Stellar, yeah, so if you have a laptop 990 00:50:45,990 --> 00:50:47,742 you can find it. 991 00:50:47,742 --> 00:50:49,650 You know, he starts out with this line-- 992 00:50:49,650 --> 00:50:54,220 "what can I do with my boy?" Which is very interesting. 993 00:50:54,220 --> 00:50:57,320 I mean, obviously it's only boys and men that he's 994 00:50:57,320 --> 00:50:58,740 addressed like [? Rowe ?] mentioned, that was the 995 00:50:58,740 --> 00:51:02,720 language of the day, up until a couple of decades ago. 996 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:05,860 But, sort of addressed to the parents, and of if you read 997 00:51:05,860 --> 00:51:09,360 down a little bit, this is what a parent might say, I 998 00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:12,130 want to give my boy practical education. 999 00:51:12,130 --> 00:51:14,770 One that will prepare him better than I was prepared to 1000 00:51:14,770 --> 00:51:18,590 follow my business, or any other active calling. 1001 00:51:18,590 --> 00:51:23,390 And I like that phrase active calling, because implied there 1002 00:51:23,390 --> 00:51:25,960 is there are passive callings. 1003 00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,320 I wonder what he means by a non active calling. 1004 00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:34,690 I would guess he would mean the clergy, or probably law, 1005 00:51:34,690 --> 00:51:36,560 and he comes back to them a little bit. 1006 00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:42,780 And then he says this is a problem that everyone has, but 1007 00:51:42,780 --> 00:51:45,420 the difficulty presses more heavily-- still in the first 1008 00:51:45,420 --> 00:51:46,200 paragraph-- 1009 00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:49,940 on the thoughtful American than on the European. 1010 00:51:49,940 --> 00:51:51,580 And so he's making a distinction that the 1011 00:51:51,580 --> 00:51:55,630 conditions of this country are special, in some way, for this 1012 00:51:55,630 --> 00:51:56,530 kind of education. 1013 00:51:56,530 --> 00:52:02,010 It's not the modern phrase of old Europe, there are special 1014 00:52:02,010 --> 00:52:05,930 things here, because the American is free to choose, in 1015 00:52:05,930 --> 00:52:10,070 a way, a way of life for himself and his children. 1016 00:52:10,070 --> 00:52:10,600 And then-- 1017 00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:13,690 a couple lines down-- in the face of prodigious material 1018 00:52:13,690 --> 00:52:17,610 resources of a vast and new territory, he is more fully 1019 00:52:17,610 --> 00:52:20,620 awake then the European can be to the gravity and urgency of 1020 00:52:20,620 --> 00:52:21,140 the problem. 1021 00:52:21,140 --> 00:52:23,860 Also a really interesting way to start out at the beginning, 1022 00:52:23,860 --> 00:52:25,980 that there are special things about this country. 1023 00:52:25,980 --> 00:52:28,380 That's not a new idea, American exceptionalism, is 1024 00:52:28,380 --> 00:52:30,050 what historians call it. 1025 00:52:30,050 --> 00:52:32,730 But, the conditions here are different than in Europe. 1026 00:52:32,730 --> 00:52:34,780 Partly because of the huge size of the place. 1027 00:52:34,780 --> 00:52:38,020 Partly because of the huge amount of resources. 1028 00:52:38,020 --> 00:52:41,530 And that makes the American more fully awake. 1029 00:52:41,530 --> 00:52:44,870 And yet, he has fewer options than any other, except 1030 00:52:44,870 --> 00:52:47,370 possibly the English, of solving the problem. 1031 00:52:47,370 --> 00:52:52,920 And then on the next column, he refers to implicitly 1032 00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,060 particularly the French engineering schools. 1033 00:52:55,060 --> 00:52:58,110 For more than a generation the government schools of arts and 1034 00:52:58,110 --> 00:53:01,290 trades, arts and manufactures, bridges and highways-- 1035 00:53:01,290 --> 00:53:03,286 one of the famous French engineering school is Ponts Et 1036 00:53:03,286 --> 00:53:06,240 Chaussees, the school of bridges and highways-- 1037 00:53:06,240 --> 00:53:06,960 Ecole Des Mines-- 1038 00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:09,020 another famous French engineering school-- 1039 00:53:09,020 --> 00:53:12,060 mines, agriculture, and commerce have introduced 1040 00:53:12,060 --> 00:53:15,800 hundreds of well trained young men. 1041 00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:19,750 They begin as subalterns, basically low people on the 1042 00:53:19,750 --> 00:53:23,160 totem pole, but soon become the commission's officers of 1043 00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:25,620 the army, and of industry. 1044 00:53:25,620 --> 00:53:28,080 Which is interesting too, what is the problem that the 1045 00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:30,630 European engineering schools are feeding? 1046 00:53:30,630 --> 00:53:33,760 They don't have vast territory remaining, they don't have 1047 00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:36,700 vast resources in their countries, where are all those 1048 00:53:36,700 --> 00:53:42,210 engineers going, if in the US they're going out west? 1049 00:53:42,210 --> 00:53:44,160 Into the colonies. 1050 00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:45,950 It's a problem of maintaining the empire. 1051 00:53:45,950 --> 00:53:47,790 He doesn't talk too much about, he does use the word 1052 00:53:47,790 --> 00:53:51,440 empire in there, but in a way he's sort of arguing that 1053 00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:56,320 America has its own empire right here, and French 1054 00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:00,610 particularly, German, English, they're all building railroads 1055 00:54:00,610 --> 00:54:02,460 in the colonies, a little bit more in 1056 00:54:02,460 --> 00:54:03,900 the later 19th century. 1057 00:54:03,900 --> 00:54:06,670 PROFESSOR: Think, for example, the British and India, huge, 1058 00:54:06,670 --> 00:54:08,570 huge, and that's only a part of the British 1059 00:54:08,570 --> 00:54:09,850 empire in that period. 1060 00:54:09,850 --> 00:54:11,280 It's a huge empire. 1061 00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:13,570 DAVID KAISER: Then he this great line, The American 1062 00:54:13,570 --> 00:54:15,360 people are fighting the wilderness, 1063 00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,840 physical and moral. 1064 00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:20,980 Which is funny, it's also interesting, this is four 1065 00:54:20,980 --> 00:54:22,080 years after the Civil War. 1066 00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,270 In fact, most of the stuff we've been reading, relatively 1067 00:54:24,270 --> 00:54:26,330 recent, doesn't mention the war in here. 1068 00:54:26,330 --> 00:54:28,140 You have a country that just lost the better part of a 1069 00:54:28,140 --> 00:54:29,560 million people. 1070 00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,910 The South has been destroyed to a large degree by the war. 1071 00:54:34,910 --> 00:54:38,120 The young people's population has been destroyed. 1072 00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:40,210 I don't know, what was the population of the US in the 1073 00:54:40,210 --> 00:54:41,370 time of the Civil War? 1074 00:54:41,370 --> 00:54:47,240 PROFESSOR: I want to say it's around six million maybe? 1075 00:54:47,240 --> 00:54:49,480 DAVID KAISER: So six million, even if you lost six-- 1076 00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:50,180 PROFESSOR: I'm not sure. 1077 00:54:50,180 --> 00:54:51,140 DAVID KAISER: --hundred thousand people out of that. 1078 00:54:51,140 --> 00:54:53,040 10% of the population. 1079 00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:55,330 Extend that out today, that's like you having a civil war 1080 00:54:55,330 --> 00:54:58,260 where you are losing tens of millions of people. 1081 00:54:58,260 --> 00:55:00,300 Nobody would have been unaffected, and he doesn't 1082 00:55:00,300 --> 00:55:02,100 mention it in this piece, which is also very 1083 00:55:02,100 --> 00:55:02,530 interesting. 1084 00:55:02,530 --> 00:55:05,760 PROFESSOR: I know one thing, the South lost 25% of it's 1085 00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:08,270 younger men during that war. 1086 00:55:08,270 --> 00:55:08,525 25%-- 1087 00:55:08,525 --> 00:55:08,780 DAVID KAISER: That's huge. 1088 00:55:08,780 --> 00:55:11,060 PROFESSOR: --that's a big, big, [INAUDIBLE] 1089 00:55:11,060 --> 00:55:12,250 DAVID KAISER: The American people are fighting the 1090 00:55:12,250 --> 00:55:13,770 wilderness, physical and moral. 1091 00:55:13,770 --> 00:55:16,030 So, you wonder what that, physical wilderness is 1092 00:55:16,030 --> 00:55:20,790 obvious, moral probably is referring to the, I would 1093 00:55:20,790 --> 00:55:22,690 imagine, the Western wars and-- 1094 00:55:22,690 --> 00:55:23,310 PROFESSOR: Yeah. 1095 00:55:23,310 --> 00:55:23,945 DAVID KAISER: --fighting the-- 1096 00:55:23,945 --> 00:55:24,200 PROFESSOR: Indians. 1097 00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,050 DAVID KAISER: --Native Americans there. 1098 00:55:26,050 --> 00:55:28,220 And that's his vision of the battle. 1099 00:55:28,220 --> 00:55:30,820 At the same time, trying to work out the awful problem of 1100 00:55:30,820 --> 00:55:31,970 self government. 1101 00:55:31,970 --> 00:55:35,630 So he's tying these basic ideas about education to both 1102 00:55:35,630 --> 00:55:37,710 the physical state of the country, and also the 1103 00:55:37,710 --> 00:55:41,270 ideological and government state of the country. 1104 00:55:41,270 --> 00:55:44,330 PROFESSOR: One thing to note in all that is that William 1105 00:55:44,330 --> 00:55:47,490 Tecumseh Sherman was a very famous Civil War general, he's 1106 00:55:47,490 --> 00:55:50,550 the one that burned Atlanta, and did the famous march to 1107 00:55:50,550 --> 00:55:56,590 the sea, was asked during the 1870's, what he thought about 1108 00:55:56,590 --> 00:56:01,270 the quote "Indian problem" Here's this movement west, and 1109 00:56:01,270 --> 00:56:02,770 the part of white settlers. 1110 00:56:02,770 --> 00:56:05,080 He says, nothing to worry about, we're building 1111 00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:07,960 railroads in the West and that's driving a stake into 1112 00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:09,450 the heart of the American Indian, or 1113 00:56:09,450 --> 00:56:11,000 something like that. 1114 00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:13,560 That was going to do them in, is the engineering of these 1115 00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:17,150 new railroad technologies, is just going to overwhelm them, 1116 00:56:17,150 --> 00:56:20,180 and it did basically. 1117 00:56:20,180 --> 00:56:22,550 DAVID KAISER: So down in the bottom of that column he talks 1118 00:56:22,550 --> 00:56:25,830 about all these frustrations, but he knows the greatness of 1119 00:56:25,830 --> 00:56:27,840 the material prizes to be won. 1120 00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:32,150 So it's not an appeal for moral elevation necessarily, 1121 00:56:32,150 --> 00:56:34,080 or this and that. 1122 00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:41,860 It's an appeal for material prizes, which is very much on 1123 00:56:41,860 --> 00:56:46,130 the mind of Americans, since the founding 1124 00:56:46,130 --> 00:56:50,150 On the next page, just interesting phrases on the top 1125 00:56:50,150 --> 00:56:54,710 left, on 204, These old ways have trained some boys well, 1126 00:56:54,710 --> 00:56:59,150 for the life of 50 or 100 years ago, And the American 1127 00:56:59,150 --> 00:57:01,850 will not believe that they are applicable to his son. 1128 00:57:01,850 --> 00:57:04,490 For the reason that the kind of man which he wants a son to 1129 00:57:04,490 --> 00:57:07,690 make, did not exist in all the world 50 years ago. 1130 00:57:07,690 --> 00:57:11,730 This was 1869, and somebody mentioned in one of their 1131 00:57:11,730 --> 00:57:14,520 response papers that they appreciated, from the reading, 1132 00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:17,200 how close the revolution still was, in that most of the 1133 00:57:17,200 --> 00:57:19,432 fathers of these people would have been directly involved in 1134 00:57:19,432 --> 00:57:20,800 it, which is correct. 1135 00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,600 So, 50 or 100 years ago there's been all this 1136 00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,310 political upheaval and America was a very agrarian society, 1137 00:57:27,310 --> 00:57:29,945 but everywhere was, and he's really referring to what we 1138 00:57:29,945 --> 00:57:31,960 now call the Industrial Revolution there. 1139 00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:33,680 Entirely new kind of people are required. 1140 00:57:38,300 --> 00:57:41,080 Then also down in that column, I think this is very 1141 00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:45,730 interesting too, it requires courage to quit the beaten 1142 00:57:45,730 --> 00:57:49,080 paths in which the great majority of well educated men 1143 00:57:49,080 --> 00:57:51,690 have walked, and still walk. 1144 00:57:51,690 --> 00:57:55,230 So he's basically saying, and you even still hear this to 1145 00:57:55,230 --> 00:57:59,000 some degree today, the MIT graduates especially if 1146 00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:01,710 they're successful, will enter a world where everyone knows 1147 00:58:01,710 --> 00:58:03,120 Latin and Greek. 1148 00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:06,020 Everyone knows different kinds of history. 1149 00:58:06,020 --> 00:58:08,760 Everyone is going to be extremely well versed in 1150 00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:11,410 theology, and these other things, and MIT graduates, for 1151 00:58:11,410 --> 00:58:13,600 the most part, won't be. 1152 00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:17,070 But he refers to it as courage to go into that world with 1153 00:58:17,070 --> 00:58:20,160 this new kind of training, because it will be so rare, it 1154 00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:21,990 certainly was rare at the time. 1155 00:58:21,990 --> 00:58:26,080 Frankly, it's still rare, as you'll find what you graduate. 1156 00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:28,960 And that he talks about a special kind of 1157 00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:31,140 courage that's required. 1158 00:58:31,140 --> 00:58:36,060 And down at the end or that paragraph, even more, a boy 1159 00:58:36,060 --> 00:58:38,050 who was brought up in a different way suffers 1160 00:58:38,050 --> 00:58:41,350 somewhat, both in youth and in manhood, from the mere 1161 00:58:41,350 --> 00:58:44,870 singularity of his education, though it may have been better 1162 00:58:44,870 --> 00:58:46,630 than the common. 1163 00:58:46,630 --> 00:58:48,300 I found that really interesting to read. 1164 00:58:48,300 --> 00:58:53,050 I never thought about this kind of education as 1165 00:58:53,050 --> 00:58:56,100 courageous, or the kind of people who are educated, as 1166 00:58:56,100 --> 00:58:56,840 taking that on. 1167 00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:01,060 Because you will be an anomaly, you may not be if you 1168 00:59:01,060 --> 00:59:03,700 go work for a very highly technical corporation in the 1169 00:59:03,700 --> 00:59:04,570 engineering part. 1170 00:59:04,570 --> 00:59:07,080 But, most corporations, even the very highly technical 1171 00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:10,170 ones, as you rise up the people are less and less 1172 00:59:10,170 --> 00:59:12,400 engineering educated, not to mention in the 1173 00:59:12,400 --> 00:59:13,650 general social world. 1174 00:59:18,490 --> 00:59:21,570 Then he talks a little bit about the organization that 1175 00:59:21,570 --> 00:59:23,380 Roe mentioned on the next column. 1176 00:59:23,380 --> 00:59:25,580 A large number of professors trained in the existing 1177 00:59:25,580 --> 00:59:28,940 methods, hold firm possession and transmit the traditions 1178 00:59:28,940 --> 00:59:29,990 they inherited. 1179 00:59:29,990 --> 00:59:32,590 And I just thought that was an interesting word, inherited. 1180 00:59:32,590 --> 00:59:35,270 Because again, he's kind of trying to overthrow European 1181 00:59:35,270 --> 00:59:38,810 model of inheritance, comes back to that in a minute, and 1182 00:59:38,810 --> 00:59:42,190 again the American model is one of earning it. 1183 00:59:42,190 --> 00:59:48,160 And he talks here about how stodgy these old systems are, 1184 00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:51,010 backed by the reputation of their authors and the capital 1185 00:59:51,010 --> 00:59:53,000 of their publishers. 1186 00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:55,980 Steadily fed by schools whose masters are inspired, these 1187 00:59:55,980 --> 01:00:00,460 are the older schools, and all the so-called learned 1188 01:00:00,460 --> 01:00:02,620 professions, I love that kind of language. 1189 01:00:02,620 --> 01:00:05,120 Again, I think that's really a dig at, probably, both the 1190 01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:08,810 clergy and the legal profession, maybe 1191 01:00:08,810 --> 01:00:10,060 some others as well. 1192 01:00:13,130 --> 01:00:15,990 Also, makes a distinction between, it's an interesting 1193 01:00:15,990 --> 01:00:20,310 thing about, that none of the MIT founders have any problem 1194 01:00:20,310 --> 01:00:22,000 teaching languages. 1195 01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:23,770 Which is interesting because one of the few things that was 1196 01:00:23,770 --> 01:00:26,260 required then, that's not required now, which I'm not 1197 01:00:26,260 --> 01:00:29,460 sure is the greatest idea, but it's the living languages 1198 01:00:29,460 --> 01:00:30,960 versus dead languages. 1199 01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:33,730 Especially, then if you don't read French and German, you 1200 01:00:33,730 --> 01:00:35,820 can't read engineering literature basically. 1201 01:00:35,820 --> 01:00:38,010 It's not so true today. 1202 01:00:38,010 --> 01:00:41,070 German was, for many years, the real classic engineering 1203 01:00:41,070 --> 01:00:42,890 literature. 1204 01:00:42,890 --> 01:00:44,390 But just not Latin and Greek. 1205 01:00:47,970 --> 01:00:51,280 And then there's a great line on the top of the 205 where he 1206 01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:55,060 talks about, again, the old style educators. 1207 01:00:55,060 --> 01:00:58,020 To have been a school master or college professor 30 years 1208 01:00:58,020 --> 01:01:01,810 ago only too often makes a man an unsafe witness in matters 1209 01:01:01,810 --> 01:01:02,165 of education. 1210 01:01:02,165 --> 01:01:03,760 It Is just a great metaphor. 1211 01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:06,850 There are flanges on his mental wheels which will fit 1212 01:01:06,850 --> 01:01:08,760 only one gauge. 1213 01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:10,240 What is that a reference to? 1214 01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:14,750 It's a railroad analogy. 1215 01:01:14,750 --> 01:01:17,380 So he's using these sort of technical analogies to make 1216 01:01:17,380 --> 01:01:18,630 his point about the education. 1217 01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:26,190 Then he talks here, again, also sort of a dis at the kind 1218 01:01:26,190 --> 01:01:29,790 of great professor model of education. 1219 01:01:29,790 --> 01:01:32,360 In no country is so little attention paid by parents and 1220 01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:35,140 students to the reputation of teachers for genius and deep 1221 01:01:35,140 --> 01:01:37,950 learning as in our own country. 1222 01:01:37,950 --> 01:01:40,260 Faradays, Rumfords, and Cuviers-- 1223 01:01:40,260 --> 01:01:43,030 these are the famous European professors-- 1224 01:01:43,030 --> 01:01:46,060 would get very few pupils here if they're teachings were 1225 01:01:46,060 --> 01:01:48,780 unmethodical and objectless. 1226 01:01:48,780 --> 01:01:51,500 If, in short, they taught under a bad general system. 1227 01:01:51,500 --> 01:01:55,070 Spasmodic and ill-directed genius cannot compete in the 1228 01:01:55,070 --> 01:01:57,870 American community with methodical, careful, teaching 1229 01:01:57,870 --> 01:02:01,050 by less inspired men. 1230 01:02:01,050 --> 01:02:03,600 Very interesting argument to make. 1231 01:02:03,600 --> 01:02:05,470 I'm not sure if everyone would agree with that today 1232 01:02:05,470 --> 01:02:08,370 necessarily, but obviously we don't want to have spasmodic 1233 01:02:08,370 --> 01:02:10,340 and ill-directed directed genius in 1234 01:02:10,340 --> 01:02:11,940 front of the classroom. 1235 01:02:11,940 --> 01:02:15,300 But, it really is very much an argument about order in 1236 01:02:15,300 --> 01:02:20,220 education and sort of focus on what's empirical. 1237 01:02:20,220 --> 01:02:24,350 And I think that's a really important component of a lot 1238 01:02:24,350 --> 01:02:26,260 of the background here, we haven't said anything about 1239 01:02:26,260 --> 01:02:28,140 the Enlightenment yet, in this class. 1240 01:02:28,140 --> 01:02:31,630 Anybody heard that phrase before? 1241 01:02:31,630 --> 01:02:35,490 Usually associated with the 18th century, late 17th, most 1242 01:02:35,490 --> 01:02:37,770 of the 18th century, into the early 19th. 1243 01:02:37,770 --> 01:02:41,230 But, one of the great focuses of the Enlightenment is 1244 01:02:41,230 --> 01:02:44,890 empirical learning, not just theorizing, not just the sort 1245 01:02:44,890 --> 01:02:48,760 of platonic philosophy of working as the ancients 1246 01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:54,250 through a set of reasoned arguments, but, actually 1247 01:02:54,250 --> 01:02:56,400 gathering data from the world. 1248 01:02:56,400 --> 01:02:58,320 Now, what's interesting about that, is there's sort of a 1249 01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:03,160 split that you observe where if you look at someone like 1250 01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:06,030 Louis Agassiz who Roe has mentioned, the great Harvard 1251 01:03:06,030 --> 01:03:08,800 natural history professor at the time, very much an 1252 01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:13,620 enlightenment empiricist, in the sense of Natural History. 1253 01:03:13,620 --> 01:03:15,330 Has anybody been over to the Harvard Natural 1254 01:03:15,330 --> 01:03:17,390 History Museum lately? 1255 01:03:17,390 --> 01:03:20,240 What kind of a museum is it? 1256 01:03:20,240 --> 01:03:21,740 AUDIENCE: It has a lot of rocks. 1257 01:03:21,740 --> 01:03:23,600 DAVID KAISER: OK, a lot of rocks. 1258 01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:24,850 What else? 1259 01:03:26,965 --> 01:03:28,215 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 1260 01:03:30,520 --> 01:03:30,871 DAVID KAISER: What? 1261 01:03:30,871 --> 01:03:30,990 Animals. 1262 01:03:30,990 --> 01:03:33,880 It's a kind of, old-fashioned, glass case museum. 1263 01:03:33,880 --> 01:03:34,170 Right? 1264 01:03:34,170 --> 01:03:37,670 Very typical, not what you'd find, I was just at the 1265 01:03:37,670 --> 01:03:40,930 Natural History Museum in New York, which is used to be that 1266 01:03:40,930 --> 01:03:43,340 kind of museum, and still has pieces of it, but is a very 1267 01:03:43,340 --> 01:03:44,230 different kind of museum. 1268 01:03:44,230 --> 01:03:47,540 But the Harvard museums are sort of lovely and wonderful 1269 01:03:47,540 --> 01:03:50,420 in this way, but there's cases and cases of specimens, 1270 01:03:50,420 --> 01:03:55,260 whether they're , plants, or stuffed animals, what's the 1271 01:03:55,260 --> 01:03:55,850 correct word? 1272 01:03:55,850 --> 01:03:57,100 Taxidermy. 1273 01:04:01,470 --> 01:04:03,120 I brought my daughter there actually, she liked the 1274 01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:04,790 stuffed animals. 1275 01:04:04,790 --> 01:04:08,470 Animals, plants, geological specimens, and that's very 1276 01:04:08,470 --> 01:04:10,680 much the kind of natural historical world that Louis 1277 01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:12,680 Agassiz represented. 1278 01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:15,720 There, the empirical philosophy was one of 1279 01:04:15,720 --> 01:04:19,110 collecting, ordering the collection, everything's very 1280 01:04:19,110 --> 01:04:20,760 carefully labeled. 1281 01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:24,580 Very carefully name with a very fancy Latin name. 1282 01:04:24,580 --> 01:04:28,250 Often then numbered, drawers and drawers, taking the world 1283 01:04:28,250 --> 01:04:31,230 classifying it, putting it into a hierarchy. 1284 01:04:31,230 --> 01:04:34,630 You're familiar with the Linnaean hierarchy of the 1285 01:04:34,630 --> 01:04:35,950 natural world. 1286 01:04:35,950 --> 01:04:39,240 Very much an enlightenment practice, but slightly more, 1287 01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:43,590 kind of, 18th century version of it that Agassiz, sort of, 1288 01:04:43,590 --> 01:04:46,350 still represents into the 19th century. 1289 01:04:46,350 --> 01:04:49,330 Rogers, in his reaction against that, is in a way, 1290 01:04:49,330 --> 01:04:51,830 kind of even further, more radical enlightenment. 1291 01:04:51,830 --> 01:04:54,160 What's different about the kind of world that he would 1292 01:04:54,160 --> 01:04:55,460 think about? 1293 01:04:55,460 --> 01:04:57,580 Let me give you an example that maybe you could set off. 1294 01:04:57,580 --> 01:04:59,910 I was reading last night an example of a student who said, 1295 01:04:59,910 --> 01:05:01,760 when I went to work for Louis Agassiz at 1296 01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:03,280 Harvard as a student. 1297 01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:09,030 Basically, he locked me in a room with 500 tortoise shells 1298 01:05:09,030 --> 01:05:13,920 and no supporting anything, and my job was to discern the 1299 01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:17,500 inherent truth of nature that was collected in those 1300 01:05:17,500 --> 01:05:19,390 tortoise shells. 1301 01:05:19,390 --> 01:05:23,220 What's the kind of world, the way that Rogers and an MIT 1302 01:05:23,220 --> 01:05:25,100 approach to that problem might use? 1303 01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:31,710 It's also very empirical, collecting 1304 01:05:31,710 --> 01:05:33,420 information from the world. 1305 01:05:33,420 --> 01:05:35,910 So it's not that what he's reacting 1306 01:05:35,910 --> 01:05:37,160 against is not empirical. 1307 01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:42,920 Well first of all, intervention by active 1308 01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:44,440 experiments. 1309 01:05:44,440 --> 01:05:46,720 You're not just collecting the world and putting it in glass 1310 01:05:46,720 --> 01:05:50,000 cases, you're often physically out in it, collectors were 1311 01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:53,010 doing that too, but your making changes to it, putting 1312 01:05:53,010 --> 01:05:55,670 things on, and also enhancing your senses by using 1313 01:05:55,670 --> 01:05:57,440 instruments. 1314 01:05:57,440 --> 01:06:01,030 He was a great fan, Rogers, of new kinds of instrumentation 1315 01:06:01,030 --> 01:06:03,190 and the uses of these kinds of instruments. 1316 01:06:03,190 --> 01:06:08,470 They might be spectroscopes, spectrographs, or obviously 1317 01:06:08,470 --> 01:06:12,440 microscopes, but other kinds of photometers and things. 1318 01:06:12,440 --> 01:06:16,670 And a much more kind of, you might call it high-tech in a 1319 01:06:16,670 --> 01:06:21,100 way, but also very active intervention in the world of 1320 01:06:21,100 --> 01:06:23,460 nature, the physical world, the things you're going into. 1321 01:06:23,460 --> 01:06:26,350 It's not a world of collecting and classifying, and 1322 01:06:26,350 --> 01:06:29,990 discerning this inherent underlying truth from. 1323 01:06:29,990 --> 01:06:33,910 It's a world of very active, and again, as much for the 1324 01:06:33,910 --> 01:06:38,040 students as for the researchers in his world. 1325 01:06:38,040 --> 01:06:40,020 Which says something about why he was such 1326 01:06:40,020 --> 01:06:41,380 an admirer of Darwin. 1327 01:06:41,380 --> 01:06:42,830 Yeah, very much so. 1328 01:06:42,830 --> 01:06:44,080 PROFESSOR: It's a world that's evolving. 1329 01:06:48,690 --> 01:06:50,470 DAVID KAISER: There's a nice story, which we haven't really 1330 01:06:50,470 --> 01:06:54,330 told about, when Rogers finally gets the charter for 1331 01:06:54,330 --> 01:06:57,410 MIT, and the war starts. 1332 01:06:57,410 --> 01:07:00,100 And Massachusetts gives him one year to come up with 1333 01:07:00,100 --> 01:07:04,230 $100,000, which is then later extended to two years and he 1334 01:07:04,230 --> 01:07:06,280 almost doesn't make it except for this big gift from 1335 01:07:06,280 --> 01:07:07,820 [? Walker ?]. 1336 01:07:07,820 --> 01:07:11,090 And so he's figured, OK great, now I'm off and running, I've 1337 01:07:11,090 --> 01:07:15,170 got all this time, the war is probably going to delay our 1338 01:07:15,170 --> 01:07:16,990 plans a minute I can just go raise money. 1339 01:07:16,990 --> 01:07:19,510 And the governor comes back to him and says, oh, and by the 1340 01:07:19,510 --> 01:07:21,170 way, I would really like you to become the 1341 01:07:21,170 --> 01:07:25,640 inspector of gas in Boston. 1342 01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:28,830 And gas, at the time, is the new high tech way to light 1343 01:07:28,830 --> 01:07:32,560 your home, and it's a technological systems, there 1344 01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:35,520 are pipes being run under the streets in the city. 1345 01:07:35,520 --> 01:07:37,560 But it's very dangerous, because as still 1346 01:07:37,560 --> 01:07:39,840 today, gas is explosive. 1347 01:07:39,840 --> 01:07:42,660 Probably every few months, a house in the Boston area blows 1348 01:07:42,660 --> 01:07:43,910 up because of a gas leak. 1349 01:07:46,590 --> 01:07:48,610 And Rogers says, no way, I can't take the 1350 01:07:48,610 --> 01:07:49,460 time out to do this. 1351 01:07:49,460 --> 01:07:51,450 This is crazy. 1352 01:07:51,450 --> 01:07:53,990 And the governor calls him in for a one on one, and we don't 1353 01:07:53,990 --> 01:07:55,710 really know what was said, but he walks out of there 1354 01:07:55,710 --> 01:07:57,470 convinced that he's going to do it. 1355 01:07:57,470 --> 01:07:59,290 So he takes on this job. 1356 01:07:59,290 --> 01:08:02,800 And soon he finds that the instruments that he's been 1357 01:08:02,800 --> 01:08:06,130 given to inspect the gas, probably the quality of the 1358 01:08:06,130 --> 01:08:09,710 gas, and different chemical composition of it, and the 1359 01:08:09,710 --> 01:08:12,800 different illuminating capabilities, and maybe 1360 01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:15,000 measure leaks and things for safety, are 1361 01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:16,350 inadequate for him. 1362 01:08:16,350 --> 01:08:19,170 So he re-engineers, and re-designs a number of the 1363 01:08:19,170 --> 01:08:20,279 instruments. 1364 01:08:20,279 --> 01:08:22,470 And then he begins to see that this is actually a very 1365 01:08:22,470 --> 01:08:25,350 valuable thing for him because he uses the states money to 1366 01:08:25,350 --> 01:08:27,240 buy the latest instrumentation. 1367 01:08:27,240 --> 01:08:31,200 He has very close contact with industry, and it gives him 1368 01:08:31,200 --> 01:08:33,649 insight into what the latest kinds of instrumentation 1369 01:08:33,649 --> 01:08:36,930 should be that the students at MIT, that he would then buy 1370 01:08:36,930 --> 01:08:38,680 for the laboratories as they're outfitting 1371 01:08:38,680 --> 01:08:39,640 laboratories. 1372 01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:42,430 And it's a nice little story, partly because of the kind of 1373 01:08:42,430 --> 01:08:46,060 ethos of presidents of MIT doing national service, or in 1374 01:08:46,060 --> 01:08:48,660 that case they service, which is something we'll talk about 1375 01:08:48,660 --> 01:08:50,240 later, starts at the beginning. 1376 01:08:50,240 --> 01:08:52,710 But also because it gets him out in the world, get him 1377 01:08:52,710 --> 01:08:55,720 involved, and he's very much a fan of instrumentation. 1378 01:08:55,720 --> 01:08:58,600 Even though you think about geology in the 1830's and '40s 1379 01:08:58,600 --> 01:09:00,880 is not a ton of instrumentation associated 1380 01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:04,740 with that, although certainly there is in surveying. 1381 01:09:04,740 --> 01:09:09,069 It gives you the sense of him as not simply a scientist, but 1382 01:09:09,069 --> 01:09:10,319 also quite a tinkerer. 1383 01:09:13,450 --> 01:09:16,340 A couple other things to point out in Elliott essay. 1384 01:09:21,670 --> 01:09:23,850 I found it interesting because I actually went to Yale as an 1385 01:09:23,850 --> 01:09:25,229 undergrad, and studied engineering. 1386 01:09:25,229 --> 01:09:28,160 So, I could see why he thought that was all the wrong model, 1387 01:09:28,160 --> 01:09:30,200 although he praises it a little bit. 1388 01:09:30,200 --> 01:09:33,319 But, at Yale the school he was writing about, The Sheffield 1389 01:09:33,319 --> 01:09:35,939 Scientific School, which was a very famous science and 1390 01:09:35,939 --> 01:09:38,130 engineering school, doesn't exist anymore. 1391 01:09:38,130 --> 01:09:42,060 It was closed down by the Yale faculty in the 1950s. 1392 01:09:42,060 --> 01:09:48,670 So, it sort of supports his case that, that kind of model 1393 01:09:48,670 --> 01:09:51,010 and The Lawrence Scientific School doesn't existent at 1394 01:09:51,010 --> 01:09:54,610 Harvard either anymore, that that kind of model is the 1395 01:09:54,610 --> 01:09:57,400 wrong model, and not really destined survive as a second 1396 01:09:57,400 --> 01:09:58,650 class citizen there. 1397 01:10:01,130 --> 01:10:02,950 But there are a couple other interesting pieces I 1398 01:10:02,950 --> 01:10:04,200 want to point out. 1399 01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:15,070 He talks on page 215 about, and this a good reminder, 216 1400 01:10:15,070 --> 01:10:18,180 on the bottom and the left, he says, when the American 1401 01:10:18,180 --> 01:10:21,500 University emerges, it will not be a copy of foreign 1402 01:10:21,500 --> 01:10:23,930 institutions or a hotbed plant. 1403 01:10:23,930 --> 01:10:28,210 But the slow and natural outgrowth of American social 1404 01:10:28,210 --> 01:10:29,800 and political habits. 1405 01:10:29,800 --> 01:10:32,520 An expression of the average aims and ambitions of the 1406 01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:35,280 better educated classes. 1407 01:10:35,280 --> 01:10:37,260 That's interesting because you think we've been spending all 1408 01:10:37,260 --> 01:10:39,200 of our time you're talking about the emergence of an 1409 01:10:39,200 --> 01:10:42,950 American university, and the whole issue vis a vis Harvard. 1410 01:10:42,950 --> 01:10:44,250 What is he referring to there? 1411 01:10:50,470 --> 01:10:52,450 Well, it's worth keeping in mind that everything we've 1412 01:10:52,450 --> 01:10:56,130 been talking about, so far, is really about college teaching. 1413 01:10:56,130 --> 01:10:58,540 Harvard College is still Harvard College at the time. 1414 01:10:58,540 --> 01:11:00,210 I don't know when they changed their name to Harvard 1415 01:11:00,210 --> 01:11:01,850 University. 1416 01:11:01,850 --> 01:11:04,090 He says the American college is an institution without a 1417 01:11:04,090 --> 01:11:07,880 parallel, the American University future tense, will 1418 01:11:07,880 --> 01:11:09,410 be equally original. 1419 01:11:09,410 --> 01:11:12,470 MIT is not a university then either, some people think it 1420 01:11:12,470 --> 01:11:16,350 isn't today, but I don't think that's really right. 1421 01:11:16,350 --> 01:11:18,450 But what's the difference between a college and 1422 01:11:18,450 --> 01:11:19,700 university? 1423 01:11:21,480 --> 01:11:23,710 Simple crude distinction. 1424 01:11:23,710 --> 01:11:25,550 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] have more colleges. 1425 01:11:25,550 --> 01:11:26,460 DAVID KAISER: Sorry? 1426 01:11:26,460 --> 01:11:29,180 AUDIENCE: Universities have [? several ?] colleges. 1427 01:11:29,180 --> 01:11:32,700 DAVID KAISER: Some do, not all. 1428 01:11:32,700 --> 01:11:34,480 Graduate education. 1429 01:11:34,480 --> 01:11:36,910 So that's actually the first, does anybody know what the 1430 01:11:36,910 --> 01:11:40,790 first university is in the United States? 1431 01:11:40,790 --> 01:11:42,580 Johns Hopkins actually. 1432 01:11:42,580 --> 01:11:48,500 And it's founded late 19th, early 20th century. 1433 01:11:48,500 --> 01:11:50,990 Where you really have the idea that there's research and 1434 01:11:50,990 --> 01:11:54,160 graduate education, combined with a college. 1435 01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:56,660 So it's just worth keeping that in mind, as we move 1436 01:11:56,660 --> 01:12:00,330 forward in time, and MIT does become a university. 1437 01:12:00,330 --> 01:12:02,440 I mean if you read rankings, everybody thinks of it as a 1438 01:12:02,440 --> 01:12:03,270 university. 1439 01:12:03,270 --> 01:12:05,292 There are people here still who say, no it's a technical 1440 01:12:05,292 --> 01:12:07,370 institute, it's not a university. 1441 01:12:07,370 --> 01:12:10,740 I don't think there's really too much to be argued for 1442 01:12:10,740 --> 01:12:15,850 that, but arguably MIT only really became our university, 1443 01:12:15,850 --> 01:12:17,460 in that sense, about 20 years ago. 1444 01:12:17,460 --> 01:12:18,920 It's not an old thing. 1445 01:12:18,920 --> 01:12:22,020 But the graduate model, the American University that he is 1446 01:12:22,020 --> 01:12:25,020 referring to, is really still 40 years away when he's 1447 01:12:25,020 --> 01:12:28,130 writing this in 1869. 1448 01:12:28,130 --> 01:12:31,860 Then I just thought there was a great passage on 218, on the 1449 01:12:31,860 --> 01:12:36,410 right column, which also have an amazing, 1450 01:12:36,410 --> 01:12:38,560 and truly MIT metaphor. 1451 01:12:38,560 --> 01:12:41,060 People who think vaguely about the difference between a good 1452 01:12:41,060 --> 01:12:45,640 college and a good Polytechnic school are apt to say, that 1453 01:12:45,640 --> 01:12:49,120 the aim of the college course is to make a rounded man, with 1454 01:12:49,120 --> 01:12:51,700 all his faculties impartially developed. 1455 01:12:51,700 --> 01:12:54,870 While it is to express object of a technical course to make 1456 01:12:54,870 --> 01:12:57,040 a one sided man, the mere 1457 01:12:57,040 --> 01:12:59,690 engineer, chemist, or architect. 1458 01:12:59,690 --> 01:13:02,480 Two truths are supported in this form of statement. 1459 01:13:02,480 --> 01:13:06,540 First, faculties are not given by God. 1460 01:13:06,540 --> 01:13:08,630 Sorry, two truths are suppressed 1461 01:13:08,630 --> 01:13:10,030 in this form statement. 1462 01:13:10,030 --> 01:13:11,020 He was arguing against it. 1463 01:13:11,020 --> 01:13:15,550 First, faculties are not given by God impartially, to each 1464 01:13:15,550 --> 01:13:17,750 round soul a little of each power. 1465 01:13:17,750 --> 01:13:21,000 As if the soul were a pill, which must contain it's due 1466 01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:24,110 proportion of many variance ingredients. 1467 01:13:24,110 --> 01:13:26,550 To reason about the average human mind as if it were a 1468 01:13:26,550 --> 01:13:29,300 globe, to be expanded symmetrically from a center 1469 01:13:29,300 --> 01:13:32,600 outward, is to be betrayed by metaphor. 1470 01:13:32,600 --> 01:13:33,320 Then I love this. 1471 01:13:33,320 --> 01:13:37,840 A cutting tool, a drill, or an auger would be a juster symbol 1472 01:13:37,840 --> 01:13:38,850 of the mind. 1473 01:13:38,850 --> 01:13:40,760 If there's not a great MIT statement, I 1474 01:13:40,760 --> 01:13:42,580 think it's that one. 1475 01:13:42,580 --> 01:13:43,500 PROFESSOR: That's good. 1476 01:13:43,500 --> 01:13:45,400 DAVID KAISER: The natural, best, and particular quality 1477 01:13:45,400 --> 01:13:47,890 of everybody's mind should be sacredly 1478 01:13:47,890 --> 01:13:49,560 regarded in his education. 1479 01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:51,690 The division of mental labor, which is essential in 1480 01:13:51,690 --> 01:13:54,980 civilized communities, in order that knowledge may grow 1481 01:13:54,980 --> 01:13:58,180 and society improve, demands this regard to peculiar 1482 01:13:58,180 --> 01:14:02,390 constitution of each mind, so on and so forth. 1483 01:14:02,390 --> 01:14:05,960 But I think, in some way, that's also a nice statement 1484 01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:11,960 of the case for MIT, in an intellectual sense. 1485 01:14:11,960 --> 01:14:17,280 That, not everybody agrees with it by any stretch, but 1486 01:14:17,280 --> 01:14:20,680 that the model of the mind is the cutting tool, or the 1487 01:14:20,680 --> 01:14:23,040 drill, or the auger. 1488 01:14:23,040 --> 01:14:25,740 Those of you, all of you, who are here as undergrads could 1489 01:14:25,740 --> 01:14:28,630 probably feel maybe your mind as being expected to behave 1490 01:14:28,630 --> 01:14:34,800 that way on a regular basis, honed finely and sharpened. 1491 01:14:34,800 --> 01:14:36,550 So, I sort of thought it was worth going 1492 01:14:36,550 --> 01:14:37,580 through some of this. 1493 01:14:37,580 --> 01:14:39,000 It is a difficult piece to read. 1494 01:14:39,000 --> 01:14:42,200 It's written in this, sort of, 19th century English which can 1495 01:14:42,200 --> 01:14:45,560 be hard to read, but it's actually a very rich piece, 1496 01:14:45,560 --> 01:14:49,980 and he's got a very strong opinions, and some of them I 1497 01:14:49,980 --> 01:14:51,260 think are still valuable. 1498 01:14:51,260 --> 01:14:54,890 I did exactly what he thought was a bad idea. 1499 01:14:54,890 --> 01:14:57,820 Which was I did both a literary education and 1500 01:14:57,820 --> 01:14:59,990 engineering education at the same time. 1501 01:14:59,990 --> 01:15:03,970 And given that there's only 24 hours a day, it's very hard. 1502 01:15:03,970 --> 01:15:06,750 I always my students it's not hard to do a double major, 1503 01:15:06,750 --> 01:15:08,920 it's just twice the work. 1504 01:15:08,920 --> 01:15:12,070 Which is sort of true, but inevitably there are 1505 01:15:12,070 --> 01:15:13,600 compromises on either side. 1506 01:15:13,600 --> 01:15:16,665 And the question is, what's the benefit versus what's 1507 01:15:16,665 --> 01:15:20,830 lost, I think it probably depends on the individual and 1508 01:15:20,830 --> 01:15:22,300 what you see. 1509 01:15:22,300 --> 01:15:25,410 I think in all this conversation, right, don't 1510 01:15:25,410 --> 01:15:29,180 forget that the people who run this world are still more 1511 01:15:29,180 --> 01:15:31,630 Harvard graduates that MIT graduates. 1512 01:15:31,630 --> 01:15:32,680 OK. 1513 01:15:32,680 --> 01:15:36,570 There is something about that model, you go over to Harvard 1514 01:15:36,570 --> 01:15:39,680 and you see Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, and 1515 01:15:39,680 --> 01:15:44,530 John F Kennedy, and any number of US presidents who have been 1516 01:15:44,530 --> 01:15:45,710 Harvard graduates. 1517 01:15:45,710 --> 01:15:49,830 And any number of Harvard graduates who are in Congress, 1518 01:15:49,830 --> 01:15:52,370 and the Senate, and the Supreme Court, at any given 1519 01:15:52,370 --> 01:15:57,300 time, far out way, and even arguably at the top echelons 1520 01:15:57,300 --> 01:16:00,120 of corporations, MIT graduates. 1521 01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:04,290 And it is worth thinking about why that is, and why it hasn't 1522 01:16:04,290 --> 01:16:09,500 been different in the last 150 years, that way. 1523 01:16:09,500 --> 01:16:12,700 So what we're reading is the argument of the people who 1524 01:16:12,700 --> 01:16:16,070 founded MIT, and there's no question that in the 1525 01:16:16,070 --> 01:16:20,090 scientific and technological world MIT graduates have been 1526 01:16:20,090 --> 01:16:23,910 great leaders, and actually in other countries they are more 1527 01:16:23,910 --> 01:16:27,750 likely to be found as presidents or top political 1528 01:16:27,750 --> 01:16:29,240 leaders than they are in this country. 1529 01:16:29,240 --> 01:16:32,140 There are many other countries where engineering is a much 1530 01:16:32,140 --> 01:16:33,950 higher prestige profession, relatively 1531 01:16:33,950 --> 01:16:36,770 speaking, than it is here. 1532 01:16:36,770 --> 01:16:42,570 And there's reasons for that, historically. 1533 01:16:42,570 --> 01:16:45,010 Even in France, for example, the polytechnic graduates 1534 01:16:45,010 --> 01:16:47,975 really are the people who populate the upper echelons of 1535 01:16:47,975 --> 01:16:48,720 the government. 1536 01:16:48,720 --> 01:16:51,320 That may be changing now in the last 20 years. 1537 01:16:51,320 --> 01:16:54,550 But it has not been changing dramatically. 1538 01:16:54,550 --> 01:16:59,110 And so there's a lot of reasons for that. 1539 01:16:59,110 --> 01:17:01,370 And it's a whole other conversation to have. 1540 01:17:01,370 --> 01:17:06,710 But it is interesting to think about what it really takes to 1541 01:17:06,710 --> 01:17:13,490 train people to be leaders and how well are we doing at that? 1542 01:17:13,490 --> 01:17:17,620 Or how well does Eliot's model do that? 1543 01:17:17,620 --> 01:17:20,720 I think the general principle of it really does go back to 1544 01:17:20,720 --> 01:17:21,340 the beginning. 1545 01:17:21,340 --> 01:17:28,250 There has always been a fair amount of English history, 1546 01:17:28,250 --> 01:17:30,750 management sort of stuff, languages, again. 1547 01:17:30,750 --> 01:17:33,590 Languages, were considered, frankly, they probably should 1548 01:17:33,590 --> 01:17:36,090 still be considered, a core part of a technical education. 1549 01:17:36,090 --> 01:17:39,220 Because we go around as MIT saying we're training global 1550 01:17:39,220 --> 01:17:42,690 leaders and to do that and not have a language requirement 1551 01:17:42,690 --> 01:17:45,030 for the undergraduates is a little bit missing the mark. 1552 01:17:45,030 --> 01:17:47,250 That's my opinion. 1553 01:17:47,250 --> 01:17:50,940 And I'm not someone who's good with languages at all. 1554 01:17:50,940 --> 01:17:54,800 But many colleges have language requirements, and it 1555 01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:58,050 probably would be, as someone pointed out, more Chinese than 1556 01:17:58,050 --> 01:17:59,500 German today. 1557 01:17:59,500 --> 01:18:01,080 That's fine. 1558 01:18:01,080 --> 01:18:02,510 That's the way the world is going. 1559 01:18:02,510 --> 01:18:04,450 But whatever people took would surely 1560 01:18:04,450 --> 01:18:07,610 benefit them in the world. 1561 01:18:07,610 --> 01:18:10,260 But the actual school of humanities and social sciences 1562 01:18:10,260 --> 01:18:14,270 was founded in 1949. 1563 01:18:14,270 --> 01:18:17,430 We just celebrated, well just, 10 years ago, we celebrated 1564 01:18:17,430 --> 01:18:20,660 the 50th anniversary of the school. 1565 01:18:20,660 --> 01:18:23,880 And the actual eight courses, I believe, dates from then. 1566 01:18:23,880 --> 01:18:26,160 And that was a product, and we'll come across this, and 1567 01:18:26,160 --> 01:18:29,310 we'll read the report that the so-called Lewis Commission 1568 01:18:29,310 --> 01:18:33,180 wrote at the end of World War II, which really did a lot of 1569 01:18:33,180 --> 01:18:37,280 introspection about what kind of place is MIT becoming. 1570 01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:39,580 There's all this military research, there's all this big 1571 01:18:39,580 --> 01:18:41,140 time research on campus. 1572 01:18:41,140 --> 01:18:43,000 What do we really owe our students? 1573 01:18:43,000 --> 01:18:47,990 And you all know that you have eight required HASS courses. 1574 01:18:47,990 --> 01:18:51,760 That's quite a bit larger than most comparable technical 1575 01:18:51,760 --> 01:18:57,800 institutions like Caltech and RPI, Georgia Tech. 1576 01:18:57,800 --> 01:18:58,970 It's usually lower. 1577 01:18:58,970 --> 01:19:02,490 Certainly overseas at technical institutions it's 1578 01:19:02,490 --> 01:19:04,480 close to zero. 1579 01:19:04,480 --> 01:19:08,790 And so it is a much bigger component of it and arguably 1580 01:19:08,790 --> 01:19:12,690 why MIT can consider itself now among the top ranks of the 1581 01:19:12,690 --> 01:19:14,310 universities. 1582 01:19:14,310 --> 01:19:17,760 If you asked people at MIT 20 years ago, who are our 1583 01:19:17,760 --> 01:19:18,380 competitors? 1584 01:19:18,380 --> 01:19:23,090 They'd say Caltech, Georgia Tech, RPI, The Royal 1585 01:19:23,090 --> 01:19:26,510 Institute, ETH in Zurich and so on. 1586 01:19:26,510 --> 01:19:30,370 Now, people will say Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton. 1587 01:19:30,370 --> 01:19:34,320 And that's really only in the last 20 years that I know as 1588 01:19:34,320 --> 01:19:39,520 we compete for undergraduates, most students who say no to 1589 01:19:39,520 --> 01:19:42,252 MIT as undergrads, where do they go? 1590 01:19:42,252 --> 01:19:42,966 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 1591 01:19:42,966 --> 01:19:43,204 Harvard? 1592 01:19:43,204 --> 01:19:46,170 DAVID KAISER: No, Stanford is the place where you lose the 1593 01:19:46,170 --> 01:19:46,910 most people to. 1594 01:19:46,910 --> 01:19:49,910 So that's a good measure of who you think you're competing 1595 01:19:49,910 --> 01:19:53,090 against when you accept the student, and they say no, 1596 01:19:53,090 --> 01:19:55,180 where are they going? 1597 01:19:55,180 --> 01:19:57,580 Far fewer do we lose to Caltech or 1598 01:19:57,580 --> 01:20:00,280 RPI or Georgia Tech. 1599 01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:00,720 That's true-- 1600 01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:02,424 AUDIENCE: Does that also have to do with 1601 01:20:02,424 --> 01:20:04,129 the size of the school? 1602 01:20:04,129 --> 01:20:07,051 Like Stanford is a larger school than Caltech. 1603 01:20:07,051 --> 01:20:08,440 DAVID KAISER: It may well. 1604 01:20:08,440 --> 01:20:10,770 But Stanford is a very different place from Caltech. 1605 01:20:10,770 --> 01:20:13,520 And so Caltech is a very small college, as you know. 1606 01:20:13,520 --> 01:20:15,535 It's really, still is, in many ways a college. 1607 01:20:22,500 --> 01:20:23,330 Other questions? 1608 01:20:23,330 --> 01:20:25,369 Comments from the reading? 1609 01:20:25,369 --> 01:20:26,710 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] you mentioned before that 1610 01:20:26,710 --> 01:20:28,243 [INAUDIBLE] college and universities. 1611 01:20:28,243 --> 01:20:32,250 So how did graduate education work for people in the 19th 1612 01:20:32,250 --> 01:20:35,090 century here, or how did it work in Europe? 1613 01:20:35,090 --> 01:20:38,376 Was there a lot of advanced degrees [? conferred?] 1614 01:20:38,376 --> 01:20:41,592 in physics or what not? 1615 01:20:41,592 --> 01:20:46,810 DAVID KAISER: Well, up into the 1920's, certainly in the 1616 01:20:46,810 --> 01:20:51,820 sciences, if you wanted to get a Ph.D, you went to Germany or 1617 01:20:51,820 --> 01:20:54,780 to Europe in general, England, France as well. 1618 01:20:54,780 --> 01:20:59,670 And so if you look at the MIT faculty in the sciences in the 1619 01:20:59,670 --> 01:21:03,560 teens and '20s, most of them would probably have European 1620 01:21:03,560 --> 01:21:05,290 educations at the graduate level. 1621 01:21:05,290 --> 01:21:08,010 That was not just because of what programs were available 1622 01:21:08,010 --> 01:21:09,750 but also because of the quality. 1623 01:21:09,750 --> 01:21:12,250 It was really the German universities in physics that 1624 01:21:12,250 --> 01:21:13,200 were the main thing. 1625 01:21:13,200 --> 01:21:15,790 That begin to change during the decades before the 1626 01:21:15,790 --> 01:21:16,750 second World War. 1627 01:21:16,750 --> 01:21:20,800 Not least when a lot of European professors came here. 1628 01:21:20,800 --> 01:21:25,250 But PhDs in engineering, I mean you don't even see them-- 1629 01:21:25,250 --> 01:21:26,460 MIT did not-- 1630 01:21:26,460 --> 01:21:31,250 I know Vannevar Bush, who graduated with a Ph.D in 1916, 1631 01:21:31,250 --> 01:21:34,740 I believe, that was MIT's fifth Ph.D in engineering. 1632 01:21:34,740 --> 01:21:40,430 So a 20th century phenomena to be sure. 1633 01:21:40,430 --> 01:21:44,650 And, again, engineering was considered a useful art. 1634 01:21:44,650 --> 01:21:49,380 A Ph.D was considered a high, scholarly calling. 1635 01:21:49,380 --> 01:21:54,250 And there was a lot of ferment in and around I want to say 1636 01:21:54,250 --> 01:21:57,282 1890 to 1905 or so. 1637 01:21:57,282 --> 01:22:00,160 University of Chicago was big in that. 1638 01:22:00,160 --> 01:22:01,410 They hired-- 1639 01:22:01,410 --> 01:22:05,630 it was in Worcester, Clark University used to have all 1640 01:22:05,630 --> 01:22:06,620 these famous people. 1641 01:22:06,620 --> 01:22:08,510 Robert Goddard was there for a while and so on. 1642 01:22:08,510 --> 01:22:12,060 And now it's sort of a little university in a way. 1643 01:22:12,060 --> 01:22:12,270 Why? 1644 01:22:12,270 --> 01:22:14,260 Because the University of Chicago came in with a lot of 1645 01:22:14,260 --> 01:22:19,870 money and hired away all their people around 1910, I believe. 1646 01:22:19,870 --> 01:22:23,790 So it's very much a 20th century thing. 1647 01:22:23,790 --> 01:22:29,800 PROFESSOR: I was thinking about Warren Lewis who is the 1648 01:22:29,800 --> 01:22:32,730 author of the report David referred to that established 1649 01:22:32,730 --> 01:22:36,380 the humanities requirement at MIT. 1650 01:22:36,380 --> 01:22:38,550 He was a chemical engineer. 1651 01:22:38,550 --> 01:22:46,050 And he joined the MIT faculty around 1910, 1911 after doing 1652 01:22:46,050 --> 01:22:48,700 his Ph.D in Germany. 1653 01:22:48,700 --> 01:22:52,180 And so he's right at the borderline, I think. 1654 01:22:52,180 --> 01:22:55,520 And he's very much responsible, in a way, for not 1655 01:22:55,520 --> 01:23:00,650 just revolutionizing undergraduate education after 1656 01:23:00,650 --> 01:23:05,720 World War II but also being involved in the establishment 1657 01:23:05,720 --> 01:23:08,310 of doctoral programs at MIT. 1658 01:23:08,310 --> 01:23:12,890 After the arrival of Karl Compton which is 1930 that-- 1659 01:23:12,890 --> 01:23:17,850 Compton is a physicist who came to MIT from Princeton and 1660 01:23:17,850 --> 01:23:22,390 comes out of a background at which doctoral education is 1661 01:23:22,390 --> 01:23:23,450 important to him. 1662 01:23:23,450 --> 01:23:24,860 And so he supports that. 1663 01:23:24,860 --> 01:23:28,310 And then it really grows, I think, during his presidency 1664 01:23:28,310 --> 01:23:29,840 and then beyond. 1665 01:23:29,840 --> 01:23:33,420 But Lewis is a really interesting person. 1666 01:23:33,420 --> 01:23:37,440 To think that here's a chemical engineer who is 1667 01:23:37,440 --> 01:23:42,890 talking so strongly about the need for humanities education 1668 01:23:42,890 --> 01:23:45,350 at a technical university, basically, or a technical 1669 01:23:45,350 --> 01:23:48,560 institute is very interesting. 1670 01:23:48,560 --> 01:23:51,030 His granddaughter is a colleague of ours. 1671 01:23:51,030 --> 01:23:55,800 And I think she's coming to give a talk about him. 1672 01:23:55,800 --> 01:23:58,880 He's extremely interesting, he's one of these key people 1673 01:23:58,880 --> 01:24:02,100 at MIT in the 20th century that had his 1674 01:24:02,100 --> 01:24:03,660 hand on a lot of things. 1675 01:24:03,660 --> 01:24:07,580 DAVID KAISER: You would not find MIT faculty mostly having 1676 01:24:07,580 --> 01:24:11,500 PhDs until probably also about 1920. 1677 01:24:11,500 --> 01:24:15,660 Arthur Kennelly is either the first or one of the first 1678 01:24:15,660 --> 01:24:19,280 electrical engineering professors here and really 1679 01:24:19,280 --> 01:24:20,590 kind of founds the department. 1680 01:24:20,590 --> 01:24:22,310 He was Bush's advisor. 1681 01:24:22,310 --> 01:24:23,570 Where did he come from? 1682 01:24:23,570 --> 01:24:25,880 He worked in Thomas Edison's lab. 1683 01:24:25,880 --> 01:24:29,980 I don't believe he had a Ph.D. And Edison really started this 1684 01:24:29,980 --> 01:24:33,590 model of industrial research around the 1890s. 1685 01:24:33,590 --> 01:24:36,240 And that was what brought people back in. 1686 01:24:36,240 --> 01:24:41,590 PROFESSOR: Is that it begins to happen after World War II 1687 01:24:41,590 --> 01:24:44,140 mainly because so much important research 1688 01:24:44,140 --> 01:24:45,230 was going on here. 1689 01:24:45,230 --> 01:24:49,850 And big laboratories were established after World War II 1690 01:24:49,850 --> 01:24:54,150 or during and after World War II that would have enhanced 1691 01:24:54,150 --> 01:24:55,680 graduate education. 1692 01:24:55,680 --> 01:24:58,770 And as a result, when you're educating the 1693 01:24:58,770 --> 01:25:01,200 best, you hire them. 1694 01:25:01,200 --> 01:25:03,500 I think that's how it happened, especially in the 1695 01:25:03,500 --> 01:25:08,030 School of Engineering which has had a fairly long track 1696 01:25:08,030 --> 01:25:11,370 record of hiring its own. 1697 01:25:11,370 --> 01:25:13,970 If you're producing the best, you try to hire the best. 1698 01:25:13,970 --> 01:25:18,080 And so I would guess, it's a guess, I don't have the 1699 01:25:18,080 --> 01:25:21,890 answer, but I would guess that it's right after World War II 1700 01:25:21,890 --> 01:25:23,130 that you begin to see it. 1701 01:25:23,130 --> 01:25:24,010 DAVID KAISER: So I would give you a different answer. 1702 01:25:24,010 --> 01:25:25,750 I would guess that it was earlier. 1703 01:25:25,750 --> 01:25:28,110 Because, again, if you read all the stuff like in 1704 01:25:28,110 --> 01:25:31,840 Elliott's piece about why the institution not only needs to 1705 01:25:31,840 --> 01:25:35,460 be what it is, but it needs to be autonomous. 1706 01:25:35,460 --> 01:25:38,110 I often think of it as a kind of sign of MIT's arrogance 1707 01:25:38,110 --> 01:25:39,730 like nobody else in the world is good enough. 1708 01:25:39,730 --> 01:25:41,850 So we have to hire our own students. 1709 01:25:41,850 --> 01:25:44,670 But you read this sort of stuff, and you see it's part 1710 01:25:44,670 --> 01:25:48,840 of the culture in that when they're on the cutting edge of 1711 01:25:48,840 --> 01:25:51,810 either a field or just generally of the types of 1712 01:25:51,810 --> 01:25:54,590 teaching that you're doing then you really, it's very 1713 01:25:54,590 --> 01:25:58,090 hard to find people from elsewhere who are doing that. 1714 01:25:58,090 --> 01:26:01,500 PROFESSOR: So, you would say it's during the Compton years 1715 01:26:01,500 --> 01:26:03,070 starting in the '30s or there abouts? 1716 01:26:03,070 --> 01:26:04,170 Or even before that? 1717 01:26:04,170 --> 01:26:05,940 DAVID KAISER: I would imagine it's before that with hiring 1718 01:26:05,940 --> 01:26:07,070 instructors. 1719 01:26:07,070 --> 01:26:09,330 Not sure about that. 1720 01:26:09,330 --> 01:26:11,376 PROFESSOR: That's interesting. 1721 01:26:11,376 --> 01:26:14,280 DAVID KAISER: Obviously, it's not so early on. 1722 01:26:14,280 --> 01:26:16,690 But I bet as soon as they become the right age, it's 1723 01:26:16,690 --> 01:26:18,040 something that gets done. 1724 01:26:18,040 --> 01:26:21,680 It can't be something that's done that often without some 1725 01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:23,150 traditions behind it. 1726 01:26:23,150 --> 01:26:26,940 A lot of universities won't do it at all. 1727 01:26:26,940 --> 01:26:29,270 Although, here, I was talking to someone in Economics, they 1728 01:26:29,270 --> 01:26:33,420 won't hire their own graduates on the faculty until they've 1729 01:26:33,420 --> 01:26:35,115 gone away for a year or two, and then they 1730 01:26:35,115 --> 01:26:36,640 will hire them back. 1731 01:26:36,640 --> 01:26:38,940 So, they have a rule that you cannot come out of your Ph.D 1732 01:26:38,940 --> 01:26:39,740 and join the faculty. 1733 01:26:39,740 --> 01:26:41,822 But you go somewhere else for a little while and then you 1734 01:26:41,822 --> 01:26:42,350 can come right back. 1735 01:26:42,350 --> 01:26:46,585 And many of their faculty have PhDs from here. 1736 01:26:46,585 --> 01:26:49,080 PROFESSOR: Not a bad rule. 1737 01:26:49,080 --> 01:26:50,710 Not to my knowledge. 1738 01:26:50,710 --> 01:26:52,190 I don't think there is a big difference. 1739 01:26:54,780 --> 01:27:02,640 It's basically a play on the same word, technic but 1740 01:27:02,640 --> 01:27:05,360 preceded by poly means many. 1741 01:27:05,360 --> 01:27:08,410 Basically, it's perhaps a reference to a 1742 01:27:08,410 --> 01:27:11,260 more diverse approach. 1743 01:27:11,260 --> 01:27:12,980 I don't know. 1744 01:27:12,980 --> 01:27:14,670 You're asking good questions. 1745 01:27:14,670 --> 01:27:16,020 I don't have the answers. 1746 01:27:16,020 --> 01:27:16,940 DAVID KAISER: I think it's just what you said. 1747 01:27:16,940 --> 01:27:19,690 I think polytechnic, especially at this time, has a 1748 01:27:19,690 --> 01:27:21,650 little more European connotation. 1749 01:27:21,650 --> 01:27:25,180 The French schools really are, they are called polytechnique. 1750 01:27:25,180 --> 01:27:30,080 And they have a certain way of being that. 1751 01:27:30,080 --> 01:27:33,300 West Point was modeled after much of, but probably not so 1752 01:27:33,300 --> 01:27:36,000 all of, in that they're very connected in 1753 01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:37,050 the political system. 1754 01:27:37,050 --> 01:27:40,280 And there's a very sort of well understood hierarchy for 1755 01:27:40,280 --> 01:27:43,220 the alumni to go through and run the big bureaucracies and 1756 01:27:43,220 --> 01:27:45,450 the government. 1757 01:27:45,450 --> 01:27:48,410 And there are polytechnic schools in this country. 1758 01:27:48,410 --> 01:27:50,990 There's California Polytechnic, there's Brooklyn 1759 01:27:50,990 --> 01:27:53,410 Polytechnic. 1760 01:27:53,410 --> 01:27:57,080 And I think it's really those are not-- 1761 01:27:57,080 --> 01:27:59,770 there's no meaningful distinction from them from MIT 1762 01:27:59,770 --> 01:28:02,240 or Caltech. 1763 01:28:02,240 --> 01:28:05,257 It's a kind of term, connotation. 1764 01:28:08,070 --> 01:28:11,310 PROFESSOR: The other thing that's relevant to that is 1765 01:28:11,310 --> 01:28:20,080 that Rogers, Charles Eliot, William Ware in architecture 1766 01:28:20,080 --> 01:28:25,570 all spent time in Europe, especially in France during 1767 01:28:25,570 --> 01:28:30,750 the founding years of MIT, late '60s early '70s, looking 1768 01:28:30,750 --> 01:28:34,750 at European universities and, to a degree, German technical 1769 01:28:34,750 --> 01:28:35,970 institutes. 1770 01:28:35,970 --> 01:28:42,920 And so they're influenced by these European organizational 1771 01:28:42,920 --> 01:28:44,620 models, if you want to call it that. 1772 01:28:44,620 --> 01:28:46,140 They don't copy them directly. 1773 01:28:46,140 --> 01:28:51,470 But they surely are looking and trying to find niches 1774 01:28:51,470 --> 01:28:55,670 where certain parts of the French educational system fit 1775 01:28:55,670 --> 01:28:58,230 in to the MIT model and stuff like that. 1776 01:28:58,230 --> 01:28:59,320 They're borrowing. 1777 01:28:59,320 --> 01:29:03,300 They're definitely borrowing ideas as they should. 1778 01:29:03,300 --> 01:29:07,080 And so those influences are very much in evidence 1779 01:29:07,080 --> 01:29:10,011 especially during the early years. 1780 01:29:10,011 --> 01:29:12,010 DAVID KAISER: It's worth mentioning a phrase that may 1781 01:29:12,010 --> 01:29:13,710 come up which is technocrat. 1782 01:29:13,710 --> 01:29:15,910 Has anybody ever heard that phrase? 1783 01:29:15,910 --> 01:29:17,080 PROFESSOR: Technocrat. 1784 01:29:17,080 --> 01:29:19,420 DAVID KAISER: You'll hear it used from time to time. 1785 01:29:19,420 --> 01:29:26,910 And, again, technocracy is a sort of funny social movement 1786 01:29:26,910 --> 01:29:27,540 from the '20s. 1787 01:29:27,540 --> 01:29:28,820 It's not quite worth talking about. 1788 01:29:28,820 --> 01:29:31,700 But people do talk about technocrats when they're 1789 01:29:31,700 --> 01:29:34,330 technically trained people who are in high positions of 1790 01:29:34,330 --> 01:29:37,820 bureaucracies of one kind or another and bring a sort of 1791 01:29:37,820 --> 01:29:41,240 technical mentality to running a large organization. 1792 01:29:41,240 --> 01:29:45,480 And, again, in France, the technocratic tradition is a 1793 01:29:45,480 --> 01:29:48,760 very old tradition where the leaders of the polytechnic go 1794 01:29:48,760 --> 01:29:55,480 into the UN, they go into the various civil bureaucracies, 1795 01:29:55,480 --> 01:30:00,230 and it's the big government institutions are very much run 1796 01:30:00,230 --> 01:30:02,800 by people with technical backgrounds. 1797 01:30:02,800 --> 01:30:04,610 It's just not a tradition in the US that has 1798 01:30:04,610 --> 01:30:05,780 been nearly so much. 1799 01:30:05,780 --> 01:30:09,350 And so we'll come across it when we talk about the '60s 1800 01:30:09,350 --> 01:30:13,790 like Robert McNamara who ran the Pentagon during the 1801 01:30:13,790 --> 01:30:15,540 Vietnam War is not an MIT 1802 01:30:15,540 --> 01:30:16,640 graduate, he's not an engineer. 1803 01:30:16,640 --> 01:30:19,450 But he was a very technical person, very mathematical. 1804 01:30:19,450 --> 01:30:21,770 He was a sort of prototype technocrat. 1805 01:30:21,770 --> 01:30:24,840 But most leaders of the Pentagon are not technical, 1806 01:30:24,840 --> 01:30:27,280 most of them are political in background and have very 1807 01:30:27,280 --> 01:30:31,050 different kinds of skills and approaches to the world. 1808 01:30:31,050 --> 01:30:34,430 Robert Seamans, who we'll talk about as well, who was an MIT 1809 01:30:34,430 --> 01:30:37,510 graduate and kind of led the chief engineer on the Apollo 1810 01:30:37,510 --> 01:30:40,510 program and Secretary of the Air Force and the first 1811 01:30:40,510 --> 01:30:43,130 Secretary of the Energy was much more in a kind of 1812 01:30:43,130 --> 01:30:47,560 technocratic role where he had this kind of background. 1813 01:30:47,560 --> 01:30:51,450 And so you'll see some of it in the US setting 1814 01:30:51,450 --> 01:30:52,620 but not that much. 1815 01:30:52,620 --> 01:30:56,630 Whereas, again, the polytechniques and the English 1816 01:30:56,630 --> 01:30:58,340 system doesn't really work that way either. 1817 01:30:58,340 --> 01:31:01,395 They have their own civil service system and engineers 1818 01:31:01,395 --> 01:31:03,182 are not particularly high up. 1819 01:31:03,182 --> 01:31:07,030 PROFESSOR: Seamans is one of these MIT trained engineers, 1820 01:31:07,030 --> 01:31:10,770 comes from an old New England family as I understand it, but 1821 01:31:10,770 --> 01:31:14,970 who really reached in the higher echelon. 1822 01:31:14,970 --> 01:31:18,520 He wasn't a politician, but he ran a number of agencies and 1823 01:31:18,520 --> 01:31:21,380 really was a person of considerable influence. 1824 01:31:21,380 --> 01:31:22,700 He's only been dead, what? 1825 01:31:22,700 --> 01:31:24,150 Three years, four years? 1826 01:31:24,150 --> 01:31:25,060 DAVID KAISER: One or two. 1827 01:31:25,060 --> 01:31:26,290 Has anyone heard that name? 1828 01:31:26,290 --> 01:31:27,160 Robert Seamans? 1829 01:31:27,160 --> 01:31:28,485 PROFESSOR: Robert Seamans, aero? 1830 01:31:28,485 --> 01:31:29,600 DAVID KAISER: We'll come across him. 1831 01:31:29,600 --> 01:31:32,020 PROFESSOR: I'm so sorry he's not still alive to come and 1832 01:31:32,020 --> 01:31:33,670 visit this class because he was quite-- 1833 01:31:33,670 --> 01:31:34,900 DAVID KAISER: He's an interesting story. 1834 01:31:34,900 --> 01:31:38,520 You know we haven't also mentioned huge issue of social 1835 01:31:38,520 --> 01:31:41,220 class between Harvard and MIT. 1836 01:31:41,220 --> 01:31:44,580 And all of this stuff that we're reading has buried in it 1837 01:31:44,580 --> 01:31:49,780 the sort of MIT attitude that Harvard is for elites, and the 1838 01:31:49,780 --> 01:31:53,760 Harvard attitude that MIT is for vocational 1839 01:31:53,760 --> 01:31:56,130 middle class workers. 1840 01:31:56,130 --> 01:31:59,390 And that runs throughout all this history. 1841 01:31:59,390 --> 01:32:02,990 And Seamans came from this very old New England family, 1842 01:32:02,990 --> 01:32:05,940 comes from a family on the North Shore. 1843 01:32:05,940 --> 01:32:08,050 And he went to Harvard as an undergrad, in fact he was 1844 01:32:08,050 --> 01:32:10,070 classmates with John F. Kennedy. 1845 01:32:10,070 --> 01:32:14,140 And I think he maybe took one course, or he had a friend who 1846 01:32:14,140 --> 01:32:15,970 was doing something at MIT, and he got really 1847 01:32:15,970 --> 01:32:16,860 interested in MIT. 1848 01:32:16,860 --> 01:32:19,030 And he wanted to come here for graduate school. 1849 01:32:19,030 --> 01:32:22,180 And he writes in his memoirs about how his parents said, 1850 01:32:22,180 --> 01:32:25,890 no, no, no, fine boys from our background don't go to MIT, 1851 01:32:25,890 --> 01:32:27,220 that's not what they do. 1852 01:32:27,220 --> 01:32:28,660 Go, study science at Harvard. 1853 01:32:28,660 --> 01:32:32,150 And he rebelled against that and really said, no I really 1854 01:32:32,150 --> 01:32:33,050 want to go to MIT. 1855 01:32:33,050 --> 01:32:34,900 And he did amazingly well here. 1856 01:32:34,900 --> 01:32:38,530 But when time came for him to advance in his career, he was 1857 01:32:38,530 --> 01:32:41,130 certainly helped by the fact that he had this advanced 1858 01:32:41,130 --> 01:32:43,850 social background when he went back to Washington. 1859 01:32:43,850 --> 01:32:49,480 And, again, he was rubbing elbows with JFK and all the 1860 01:32:49,480 --> 01:32:51,160 senior leadership during that period. 1861 01:32:51,160 --> 01:32:53,690 And he was socially very well suited for it. 1862 01:32:53,690 --> 01:32:55,790 So he was a little bit unusual as an 1863 01:32:55,790 --> 01:32:57,096 engineer during that period. 1864 01:32:59,964 --> 01:33:05,090 PROFESSOR: About every 20 years, there's a discussion 1865 01:33:05,090 --> 01:33:09,140 that pops up in the MIT community about why doesn't 1866 01:33:09,140 --> 01:33:14,690 MIT have as many CEOs as Harvard or Princeton or-- 1867 01:33:14,690 --> 01:33:19,470 and a lot of it centers around what David has just said is 1868 01:33:19,470 --> 01:33:24,170 that if you look at the social backgrounds of CEO's, the 1869 01:33:24,170 --> 01:33:26,990 majority of them come out of backgrounds like Seamans. 1870 01:33:26,990 --> 01:33:32,400 They come out of well-to-do, socially placed families. 1871 01:33:32,400 --> 01:33:37,600 And so there's this generational movement that you 1872 01:33:37,600 --> 01:33:40,020 went to Harvard, and you're from an old family, and you 1873 01:33:40,020 --> 01:33:43,250 have an interest in the company, you become the CEO at 1874 01:33:43,250 --> 01:33:44,240 some point. 1875 01:33:44,240 --> 01:33:46,030 I think there's a lot of truth to that. 1876 01:33:46,030 --> 01:33:50,860 And MIT, I think, has been more of a place that has 1877 01:33:50,860 --> 01:33:55,810 attracted socially mobile students from middle class 1878 01:33:55,810 --> 01:34:00,210 backgrounds, sometimes working class backgrounds, 1879 01:34:00,210 --> 01:34:01,450 oftentimes, I think. 1880 01:34:01,450 --> 01:34:04,160 And which is one of the great things about the place, I 1881 01:34:04,160 --> 01:34:04,960 think, is that-- 1882 01:34:04,960 --> 01:34:08,850 DAVID KAISER: The fraction of our students who are the first 1883 01:34:08,850 --> 01:34:12,040 generation of their family to go to college, even 1884 01:34:12,040 --> 01:34:13,675 today, is very high. 1885 01:34:13,675 --> 01:34:15,310 A lot of children of immigrants-- 1886 01:34:15,310 --> 01:34:20,950 PROFESSOR: I think there's a very old cultural influence 1887 01:34:20,950 --> 01:34:24,360 involved in all of this in the sense that during the 19th 1888 01:34:24,360 --> 01:34:27,390 century when we're talking about the founding of MIT, one 1889 01:34:27,390 --> 01:34:30,880 of the tensions of that period in the academic world was 1890 01:34:30,880 --> 01:34:35,000 between what groups we'll call Ancients versus Moderns. 1891 01:34:35,000 --> 01:34:40,680 And the Moderns would be the type of school like MIT that 1892 01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:44,470 was emphasizing science and engineering as opposed to the 1893 01:34:44,470 --> 01:34:48,320 Ancients, which were the old classical colleges teaching 1894 01:34:48,320 --> 01:34:53,680 Greek and Latin and all the classics and literature and 1895 01:34:53,680 --> 01:34:55,060 things like that. 1896 01:34:55,060 --> 01:34:56,620 There was a lot of tension there. 1897 01:34:56,620 --> 01:35:00,990 And it also had class implications that you were 1898 01:35:00,990 --> 01:35:04,570 educating people on the classics to be gentlemen and 1899 01:35:04,570 --> 01:35:05,990 ladies and things like that. 1900 01:35:05,990 --> 01:35:10,000 Whereas people coming to the MIT were people that were 1901 01:35:10,000 --> 01:35:13,940 going to go out in the world and engineer that world or 1902 01:35:13,940 --> 01:35:15,560 pursue science in that world. 1903 01:35:15,560 --> 01:35:20,950 It was a much more utilitarian oriented disposition, I think, 1904 01:35:20,950 --> 01:35:27,610 which is very American in many ways because early 1905 01:35:27,610 --> 01:35:30,590 sociologists, I guess you could call them, people like 1906 01:35:30,590 --> 01:35:33,590 Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in 1907 01:35:33,590 --> 01:35:37,630 the 1830's and wrote a very famous treatise called 1908 01:35:37,630 --> 01:35:43,280 Democracy in America, asks a lot of questions about what 1909 01:35:43,280 --> 01:35:45,540 makes the United States what it is. 1910 01:35:45,540 --> 01:35:47,250 Why is it different from Europe? 1911 01:35:47,250 --> 01:35:49,950 That's one interesting questions he's asking. 1912 01:35:49,950 --> 01:35:52,990 One of the answers he gives is that these Americans are so 1913 01:35:52,990 --> 01:35:54,730 utilitarian oriented. 1914 01:35:54,730 --> 01:36:00,030 They are very oriented towards things that work, things that 1915 01:36:00,030 --> 01:36:02,370 are put to work in society. 1916 01:36:02,370 --> 01:36:04,830 Where as you don't see as much of that in Europe. 1917 01:36:04,830 --> 01:36:07,570 That was one of his most important statements about the 1918 01:36:07,570 --> 01:36:10,640 difference between Europe and the United States, is 1919 01:36:10,640 --> 01:36:12,720 Americans like utility. 1920 01:36:12,720 --> 01:36:14,810 They like things that work. 1921 01:36:14,810 --> 01:36:19,050 They like to get out and tinker around with stuff. 1922 01:36:19,050 --> 01:36:21,850 He also talks about literacy in the United States being 1923 01:36:21,850 --> 01:36:23,340 higher than it is in Europe. 1924 01:36:23,340 --> 01:36:26,910 And that being a more literate nation meant that the United 1925 01:36:26,910 --> 01:36:32,400 States was more apt to be inventive and pursue areas of 1926 01:36:32,400 --> 01:36:35,240 engineering and science that others would be 1927 01:36:35,240 --> 01:36:38,280 less involved with. 1928 01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:41,130 DAVID KAISER: It arguably is. 1929 01:36:41,130 --> 01:36:42,640 Which I'm not so sure, German-- 1930 01:36:42,640 --> 01:36:43,270 PROFESSOR: Maybe. 1931 01:36:43,270 --> 01:36:44,920 DAVID KAISER: I'm not so sure. 1932 01:36:44,920 --> 01:36:48,160 Where it is also is very much in developing countries even 1933 01:36:48,160 --> 01:36:53,930 in the Middle East and lots of places where MIT has had an 1934 01:36:53,930 --> 01:36:56,140 influence actually setting up engineering schools. 1935 01:36:56,140 --> 01:37:06,440 But I'll give you one example, a lot of wealthy American 1936 01:37:06,440 --> 01:37:11,350 families, they send their brightest kid to Harvard and 1937 01:37:11,350 --> 01:37:15,210 may become a lawyer or other place and become a lawyer. 1938 01:37:15,210 --> 01:37:17,000 I used to spend a lot of time in Turkey. 1939 01:37:17,000 --> 01:37:21,380 And I worked with some people who were very wealthy and ran 1940 01:37:21,380 --> 01:37:23,640 a lot of big international trading which is an old 1941 01:37:23,640 --> 01:37:26,380 Turkish kind of profession. 1942 01:37:26,380 --> 01:37:29,150 And these were the very few, very elite 1943 01:37:29,150 --> 01:37:30,940 families in that country. 1944 01:37:30,940 --> 01:37:34,330 And the people who were my age who were really the ones 1945 01:37:34,330 --> 01:37:37,880 running and soon to inherit the business, they had all 1946 01:37:37,880 --> 01:37:39,410 gone to American engineering schools and 1947 01:37:39,410 --> 01:37:40,600 gotten American MBA's. 1948 01:37:40,600 --> 01:37:43,220 That was their education. 1949 01:37:43,220 --> 01:37:48,830 And I was once at a conference, and I sat next to 1950 01:37:48,830 --> 01:37:53,500 a guy who was a deputy oil minister from Iran, which I 1951 01:37:53,500 --> 01:37:55,080 don't meet a lot of Iranian government 1952 01:37:55,080 --> 01:37:57,330 officials in my work. 1953 01:37:57,330 --> 01:37:59,180 And I was sort of like, this will be an interesting 1954 01:37:59,180 --> 01:38:02,260 conversation with the two of us are going to talk about. 1955 01:38:02,260 --> 01:38:04,450 And he was like, you're from MIT? 1956 01:38:04,450 --> 01:38:07,130 I went to the Iranian Institute of Technology, it 1957 01:38:07,130 --> 01:38:09,610 was all founded on MIT's principles. 1958 01:38:09,610 --> 01:38:13,500 And he was incredibly pleased to meet someone from MIT. 1959 01:38:13,500 --> 01:38:19,380 And sort of like a lot of the Iranian technocratic class, as 1960 01:38:19,380 --> 01:38:22,000 it were, were trained as engineers. 1961 01:38:22,000 --> 01:38:25,190 And, again, it has a lot to do with when countries got on the 1962 01:38:25,190 --> 01:38:27,330 steep part of the development curve. 1963 01:38:27,330 --> 01:38:30,800 And if it was after World War II, engineering is generally a 1964 01:38:30,800 --> 01:38:33,710 pretty high status thing in the field. 1965 01:38:33,710 --> 01:38:36,515 If they're older countries, it's going to be less so and 1966 01:38:36,515 --> 01:38:38,850 more political or financially oriented. 1967 01:38:38,850 --> 01:38:43,210 That's a broad generalization, but it's probably not that-- 1968 01:38:43,210 --> 01:38:46,800 PROFESSOR: It's interesting. 1969 01:38:46,800 --> 01:38:50,590 DAVID KAISER: I have one story that maybe we should end with 1970 01:38:50,590 --> 01:38:53,280 which was, I went to Yale as an undergraduate, and I was a 1971 01:38:53,280 --> 01:38:54,560 middle class kid. 1972 01:38:54,560 --> 01:38:56,360 And I remember going to graduation-- 1973 01:38:56,360 --> 01:38:57,900 has anybody here been to one of the MIT 1974 01:38:57,900 --> 01:39:00,050 commencements, by the way? 1975 01:39:00,050 --> 01:39:01,440 You'll all go in a couple years. 1976 01:39:01,440 --> 01:39:01,900 PROFESSOR: I hope you do. 1977 01:39:01,900 --> 01:39:04,130 DAVID KAISER: Hopefully, you'll all go. 1978 01:39:04,130 --> 01:39:08,780 So when I graduated from Yale, it was a beautiful May day, 1979 01:39:08,780 --> 01:39:11,260 and it had the feeling of sort of a garden party. 1980 01:39:11,260 --> 01:39:15,240 Everybody was incredibly well dressed and sort of very 1981 01:39:15,240 --> 01:39:17,850 polite and well behaved with the big hats on. 1982 01:39:17,850 --> 01:39:20,400 And you had the sense that these families had been to 1983 01:39:20,400 --> 01:39:23,260 Yale graduations many times in the past. 1984 01:39:23,260 --> 01:39:24,930 And it was very sort of contained. 1985 01:39:24,930 --> 01:39:27,210 And the clapping was sort of like this. 1986 01:39:27,210 --> 01:39:30,910 When you go as faculty or as students too to an MIT 1987 01:39:30,910 --> 01:39:34,170 graduation, you march down Memorial Drive in all the 1988 01:39:34,170 --> 01:39:36,590 regalia, and there's somebody in the front with the 1989 01:39:36,590 --> 01:39:37,390 processional. 1990 01:39:37,390 --> 01:39:40,180 And you don't really see any of the parents or any of the 1991 01:39:40,180 --> 01:39:44,510 audience until you turn off of Memorial Drive into the 1992 01:39:44,510 --> 01:39:46,700 Killian Court, right in the center there. 1993 01:39:46,700 --> 01:39:48,600 And it has this feeling, you feel like 1994 01:39:48,600 --> 01:39:49,670 you're at a rock show. 1995 01:39:49,670 --> 01:39:52,610 I mean the parents are just over the top. 1996 01:39:52,610 --> 01:39:56,050 And there's hundreds of them outside the gate because they 1997 01:39:56,050 --> 01:40:00,000 only get two tickets per grad, but they bring like 15 people 1998 01:40:00,000 --> 01:40:02,040 and cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and 1999 01:40:02,040 --> 01:40:02,380 everything. 2000 01:40:02,380 --> 01:40:04,820 And you really have the sense that it's like a huge 2001 01:40:04,820 --> 01:40:06,065 celebration. 2002 01:40:06,065 --> 01:40:08,480 And, to me, that always represents that kind of 2003 01:40:08,480 --> 01:40:11,910 different social standing where it's a really big deal 2004 01:40:11,910 --> 01:40:15,550 for families when their kids graduate from MIT whether 2005 01:40:15,550 --> 01:40:18,000 they're immigrants or not because-- 2006 01:40:18,000 --> 01:40:20,560 but it sort of represents something. 2007 01:40:20,560 --> 01:40:22,750 Sometimes that's a pressure that the students carry, which 2008 01:40:22,750 --> 01:40:23,540 is not so easy. 2009 01:40:23,540 --> 01:40:25,790 But it really represents something. 2010 01:40:25,790 --> 01:40:27,110 And it's a big celebration. 2011 01:40:27,110 --> 01:40:30,880 It's not nearly as much something that generations of 2012 01:40:30,880 --> 01:40:33,480 Smiths have done for all these years, and it's been expected, 2013 01:40:33,480 --> 01:40:35,480 and we're so proud of you, kind of thing. 2014 01:40:35,480 --> 01:40:37,015 And you'll see when you graduate, it 2015 01:40:37,015 --> 01:40:37,590 really feels that way. 2016 01:40:37,590 --> 01:40:39,250 There's 10,000 people there. 2017 01:40:39,250 --> 01:40:42,740 And they're just sort of like coming out of the woodwork and 2018 01:40:42,740 --> 01:40:44,440 climbing up the trees and everything. 2019 01:40:44,440 --> 01:40:45,540 And it's a very-- 2020 01:40:45,540 --> 01:40:48,320 to me that's the kind of ultimate MIT moment where-- 2021 01:40:48,320 --> 01:40:51,070 it's nice as a faculty member, you remember like what we were 2022 01:40:51,070 --> 01:40:54,360 working for all these years and I'm sure students as well. 2023 01:40:54,360 --> 01:40:59,020 PROFESSOR: Yeah, it's a good time, you'll enjoy it. 2024 01:40:59,020 --> 01:41:04,320 Alex will go up to get his diploma, or whoever, and 2025 01:41:04,320 --> 01:41:05,900 you'll hear people shouting from the 2026 01:41:05,900 --> 01:41:09,240 audience, that's my Alex. 2027 01:41:09,240 --> 01:41:11,896 And then other students are going, ah Alex, way to go, 2028 01:41:11,896 --> 01:41:12,780 blah, blah. 2029 01:41:12,780 --> 01:41:14,282 It's all very exciting. 2030 01:41:14,282 --> 01:41:18,660 DAVID KAISER: And they read every single name of the 2,000 2031 01:41:18,660 --> 01:41:22,670 or so people who graduate, which itself is quite an 2032 01:41:22,670 --> 01:41:25,680 accomplishment of logistics to make that work. 2033 01:41:25,680 --> 01:41:27,760 PROFESSOR: You'll have your hand shaken either by the 2034 01:41:27,760 --> 01:41:29,290 President of the Provost. 2035 01:41:29,290 --> 01:41:32,250 Isn't that they hand out every degree? 2036 01:41:32,250 --> 01:41:34,530 So, it's pretty cool. 2037 01:41:34,530 --> 01:41:38,200 When I went to Ohio State, there were like, I don't know, 2038 01:41:38,200 --> 01:41:40,250 5,000 people on the football stadium. 2039 01:41:40,250 --> 01:41:42,380 They are all down on the field and the President gets up, and 2040 01:41:42,380 --> 01:41:44,710 said, I hereby declare you Bachelor of Art. 2041 01:41:44,710 --> 01:41:45,300 Boom. 2042 01:41:45,300 --> 01:41:46,310 And that was done. 2043 01:41:46,310 --> 01:41:50,590 And everybody goes, OK, let's get the hell out of here. 2044 01:41:50,590 --> 01:41:52,110 It's very, very different.