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 85

Best Modes of Advancing Technical Instruction

Best Modes of Advancing Technical Instruction.

In our relations with public bodies and individuals in this country during the progress oi our inquiry, the greatest anxiety has been manifested to obtain our advice as to the mode in which technical instruction can be best advanced, and we have to acknowledge the readiness of the Education and Science and Art Departments to receive aim act upon suggestions in matters of detail from individual members of the commission which it would have been pedantic to delay until the completion of our task. Among the suggestions which have thus been made was that of an exhibition of the school work of all nations, which His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has consented to add to the health exhibition of 1884. This exhibition will be an appropriate illustration of the account of foreign schools contained in the previous parts this report. Your commissions, during their continental visits, received from the authorities of technical school numbers assurances of their cordial support ani icoopeiation in such a display.

Thus, there is no necessity to "preach to the converted," and we may confine our-selves to such considerations as bear upon the improvement and more general diflu- page 43 sion of technical education at home in accordance with the conditions and needs of our industrial population.

In dealing with the question of technical instruction in this country we would, at the outset, state our opinion that it is not desirable; that we should introduce the practice of foreign countries into England without considerable modifies ion. As to the higher education, namely that for those intended to become proprietors or managers of industrial works, we should not wish that every one of them should continue his theoretical studies till the ago of twenty-two or twenty-three years in a polytechnic school, and so lose the advantage of practical instruction In our workshops (which are really the best technical schools in the world) during the years from eighteen or nineteen to twenty-one or twenty-two, when be is best able to profit by it.

We have, also, in the science classes under the Science and An Department (to the intelligent and able administration of which it is our duly to hear testimony) a system of instruction for the great body of our foremen and workmen, susceptible certainly of improvement, but which in its main outlines it is not desirable to disturb.

Moreover, in considering by whom the cost of the further development of technical instruction should be borne, we must not forget that, if it be true that in foreign countries almost the entire cost of the highest general and technical instruction is borne by the state, on the other hand, the higher elementary and secondary instruction in science falls on the localities to a much greater extent than with us; while, as to the ordinary elementary schools, the cost in Germany and Switzerland is almost exclusively borne by the localities; and this was also the case in France and Belgium until the people of those countries became impatient of the lamentable absence of primary instruction on the part of vast numbers of the rural and in some instances of the town population, an evil which large state subventions alone could cure within any reasonable period of time. With the exception of France, there is no European country of the first rank that has an imperial budget for education comparable in amount with our own. In the United Kingdom at least one-half of the cost of elementary education is defrayed out of imperial funds, and the instruction of artisans in science and art is almost entirely borne by the state. Hence it will ho necessary to look, in the main, to local resources for any large addition to the funds required for the further development of technical instruction in this country.

In determining what is the best preparation for the industrial career of those who may expect to occupy the highest positions, it is necessary to differentiate between capitalists, who will take the general as distinguished from the technical direction of large establishments, and those at the head of small undertakings, or the persons more especially charged with the technical details of either. For the education of the former, ample time is available and they have the choice between several of our modernized grammar schools, to be followed by attendance at the various colleges in which science teaching is made an essential feature, or the great public schools and universities, provided that, in these latter, science and modern languages should take a more prominent place. Either of these methods may furnish an appropriate education for those persons to whom such general cultivation as will prepare them to deal with questions of administration is of greater value than an intimate acquaintance with technical details. It is different in regard to the smaller manufacturers and to the practical managers of works. In their case, sound knowledge of scientific principles has to be combined with the practical training of the factory, and therefore the time which can be appropriated to the former, that is, to theoretical instruction, will generally be more limited.

How this combination is to be carried out will vary with the trade and with the circumstances of the individual. In those cases in which theoretical knowledge and scientific training are of preeminent importance, as in the case of the manufacturer of tine chemicals, or in that of the metallurgical chemist, or the electrical engineer, the higher technical education may with advantage be extended to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two. In the cases, however, of those who are to be, for example, managers of chemical works in which complex machinery is used, or managers of rolling mills, or mechanical engineers, where early and prolonged workshop experience is all-important, the theoretical training should be completed at not later than nineteen years of age, when the works must be entered and the scientific education carried further by private study or by such other means as do not interfere with the practical work of their callings. Many colleges of the class to which we have referred have already arranged their courses to meet these requirements, and some of them, as will appear from our reports of visits, have workshops for the purpose of familiarizing the students with the use of machine and hand tools.

It is to be regretted that nearly all of these very useful institutions Buffer more or less from the want of adequate funds to enable them to provide for such a staff of professors as is necessary for the proper subdivision of the various subjects taught, and for the equipment of museums, apparatus, and laboratories of the various kinds essential to the practical instruction of the student. In this respect the provision in page 44 this country compares most unfavorably with that in the universities and polytechnic schools of the continent, even in spite of recent munificent benefactions like those of the late Mr Charles Beyer of Manchester, the late Sir Josiah Mason of Birmingham, of the Baxter family at Dundee, the late Mr. Harris of Preston, the liberal gifts of Mr. Crawford to the Queen's College at Cork, and others. In speaking of benefactions, we do not overlook the noble endowment of Sir Joseph Whit worth for the encouragement of engineering by affording to able and promising young men especially of the class of artisans, the means of obtaining theoretical combined with practical training, the former in Institutions of the kind we have referred to.