Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 79

How Great Britain was Aroused

How Great Britain was Aroused.

"Now that I have explained how it is that I have become so interested in and enthusiastic about the subject of commercial education, I propose to tell you how in the last decade, or 15 years past, Great Britain has been aroused to the necessity for the education of its commercial men. The starting point goes back to 1895, about the time when England was at that juncture in its history known as 'the period of splendid isolation All the nations seemed to have set their faces against England. Russia, France, and Germany all showed a spirit of antagonism, and even the United States looked askance, and it was at this time that the British merchants began to arouse themselves to see what could be done to further commercial education. The London Chamber of Commerce set the ball rolling. It formed a committee of leading London merchants to see what could be done. At that time London merchants were almost wholly dependent upon French and German clerks for carrying on their correspondence in connection with their "foreign trade, and they began to understand that, if they were going to forge ahead as they should, that they must train their own men for the positions foreigners were occupying page 7 Accordingly, they instituted a junior examination, and later a senior examination. The junior examination was in the following subjects:—

Compulsory Subjects:
1.English Grammar and Composition.
2.Arithmetic.
3.Modern Languages.
4.Commercial Geography of British Isles, Colonies, and Dependencies.
5.Commercial History and Elements of Political Economy (its aims, production and distribution of wealth, exchanges, money credit, application of Political Economy to financial legislation).
Optional (two subjects in one group):
A.Mercantile—
1.Commercial Arithmetic.
2.Book-keeping.
3.Advanced Drawing.
4.Shorthand.
5.Typewriting.
B.Linguistic—
1.French.
2.German.
3.Spanish.
C.Mathemetical—
1.Algebra.
2.Geometry.
3.Trigonometry.
D.Scientific—
1.Chemistry.
4.Sound, Light, and Heat.
3.Electricity and Magnetism.
4.Botany.

Practical work also.