1/11/08

The essay “Engineer’s and the New South Creed: The Formation and Early Development of Georgia Tech” by James E. Brittain and Robert C. McMath, Jr. is an interesting piece of writing that traverses the history of the founding of the Georgia Institute of Technology. There were many aspects and opinions that were considered when decisions about what kind of role the school would play were made. The results of these decisions determined how the school would contribute to the city of Atlanta and the New South.
Initially, the Georgia Institute of Technology was modeled after the Worcester Institute because of Worcester’s great success as a town after the installment of the school. The state of Georgia wanted similar success for the city of Atlanta so that it could be seen as a contributor to the industrialization of the South. The curriculum that resulted was one that taught all classes of people the benefit of work. This system seemed to break down the barrier between the two major classes and allowed lower class individuals to enter the world of engineering the same as their educated counterparts. Georgia Tech’s students in the institute’s first decade were given most of their engineering experience in the shop. However, after a fire destroyed that building, their studies were more directed to learning theories and concepts of how things work rather than to work those things. Georgia Tech succeeded in aiding the industrialization of the South and this is evident by the number of graduates that stayed in Georgia or in other southern states to work. The main point of the South’s motivation to have a technical school built was to help it compete with and become less dependent on the North.