The Value of Technical Education.

The report shows that in the great majority of trades technical instruction should aim not at supplanting, but at supplementing the experience gained in the workshop. If a man is kept all his life performing no more than one or two operations, no amount of education will enable him to do them letter than he will do them after a reasonable amount of practice; while there are, as might be anticipated, cases in which men have been spoilt by spending over the study of principle a portion of their lives which ought to have been devoted to acquiring practice in details. "The weak point in the training of forein managers," said an engineer at Ghent, "is that they get too page 6 little practice in the shop, They go to the University or to the Polytechnic (school of applied science), and usually remain there till they are upwards of twenty. It is impossible for them at that age, and without experience in real work, to compete with practical men in the internal economy of the workshop." Another formidable objection to many of the schools is, that they do not study the art of cutting the coat according to the cloth. "There is," said a Belgian dyer, "a tendency in school teaching to aim at certain ends without considerations of economy in the means. A man may dye beautifully, but, if he cannot make the dyeing pay, his knowledge possesses no commercial value. In this respect the diploma men are often unsatisfactory." But allowing full weight to objections of this kind, which are amply set forth in the report, there is a great preponderance of opinion in favor of technical education for all classes of workers. Thus at Roubaix: "M. Delattre informed us that during the ten years that the technical weaving and dyeing school has been in operation great progress has been made in the dyeing industry. In every establishment where sons of employers, foremen, and workmen have attended the classes, good results have followed. In the dye works many of the young men can make their own preparations. There is less need of supervision; economy of production has, in many instances, followed attendance at school"; fewer mistakes have been made; and more reliable and more efficient work has been done." In Switzerland the advantages of technical knowledge seem to be still more firmly believed in. "When there was a movement in the Federal Council for lessening the grant to the chemical department of the Polytechnic, it was shown by undoubted evidence that page 7 within a few years the chemical laboratories had been the direct means of bringing capital into the country to the extent of millions of pounds sterling, and that their usefulness was crippled for want of better accommodation. The movement for lowering the grant was defeated, and a proposal was carried for the expenditure of L50,000 upon a new laboratory." The same importance is attached to elementary training, such as is given in the schools of industry, where boys are taught practically the use of tools, together with, so far as time allows, such sciences and languages as are likely to be most valuable to them. The English manager of a large engineering establishment says that several boys have come to him from the Industrial School of bis town and he has been delighted with them. "Instead of being raw, ignorant lads, unable to drive a nail or to use a file, they can begin work at once; they have been taught to use their hands, and most of them have excellent ideas about work. . . . He pointed to a youth under him now who makes sketches and drawings and calculations for him, and carries out his instructions like an experienced draughtsman; and this youth is no exception to the boys from the Industrial School." Where the experiment of technical education has been properly tried in England we find the same good results. The Oldham School of Science and Art, established by the late Mr John Platt, M. P., and other employers, was one of the earliest of such institutions; and in reply to a question about its influence on the industries of the town, Mr Taylor, engineer, said: "Very beneficial, I think. In the case of pattern-makers, for instance, they understand their work better than they did previously. It has caused the men to be more intelligent workmen, and to understand better the instructions given them, and the page 8 object had in view in the work performed, and they understand the working better. Our foremen draughtsmen are now all taken from the institution. Before the institution existed we used to get Swiss and French and Germans principally. Now there is hardly a foreigner in the town." Another employer added: "I can confirm this statement. The working mechanics are much more intelligent. Now a man can be sent out to work, and can transmit his views to the firm in writing, give sketches, and reason about matters. Formerly the man would have had to return to the works and get personal instructions in all cases of difficulty. The suggestions they make to remedy defects are more practical than before. Every man may now be equal in intelligence to what the master was before the school was established." This is all very well, but the best test of the value attached to technical education is the sacrifices that employers make to promote it and workmen to take advantage of it. Now, there are several striking instances of manufacturers who undergo considerable sacrifices for the purpose of training men, even when they cannot be sure of keeping them when their education is completed. The large sums expended on the Oldham school by the local employers are a case in point. At Bochum, in Westphalia, a school has recently been formed for the education of foremen in ironworks, and it is supported entirely by the iron manufacturers, who contribute in the ratio of the number of men they employ. In the engineering works of Messrs Hartmann and Co., at Chemnitz, in Saxony, it has long been a condition of the firm that apprentices should attend the classes of the technical school. On two evenings a week they are allowed to leave the works early that they may attend the night school, "which," the Commissioners observe, "in page 9 the light of English customs is a great concession, and an illustration of the advantages expected by this firm from the theoretical training of these operatives." In England itself, however, we have the most conclusive case of the value attached to technical teaching in at any rate one trade. Messrs Mather and Platt, engineers, Manchester, have established and bear the whole expense of a technical school for their apprentices. "Mr Mather," says the report, "stated that there were sixty-eight scholars in the school, which is designed to provide science teaching for the apprentices employed in the works. No strangers are admitted for instruction. The drawings are of work actually in progress in the works. The teacher lectures upon them, and explains and makes calculations, and the boys the next day at the works see the very thing they have heard about here. The teachers are draughtsmen in the works." These cases illustrate the interest taken in technical education by some of the most successful manufacturers. The next question is, what interest are the working classes likely to take in the subject? As a general rule, it appears that where suitable instruction is given there is no lack of learners. Many of the best institutions are overcrowded to such a point that it becomes almost as great a privilege to get admission to them as to one of the great English public schools. Throughout the report I do not remember one case in which a school once started has had to be given up owing to the apathy of those for whose benefit it was intended. There can be no doubt that there must have been such cases, but their un importance is very noticeable. The schools that are mentioned as insufficiently attended are, as a rule, either unsuited for popular requirements or beaten by the competition of other schools; the latter being frequently page 10 the case in Germany, where each small State used to start its own school, till the supply of highly-qualified men outran the demand —A fact well worth our notice, because when technical education obtains a footing in New Zealand we may expect the same results from interprovincial rivalry. The readiness with which the working classes have availed themselves of the technical schools is the more remarkable when we consider that the bulk of the students are working men, studying the principles of their craft after working hours—and hours that in many cases are half as long again as those of our own people. The hours of work on the Continent are from eleven to twelve and a-half a-day; about seventy-two hours a-week is the rule, and this allows for closing a little earlier than usual on Saturdays and Mondays. In English factories the average time is nine and a-half hours a-day. If, in the face of these long hours, European workmen avail themselves of evening classes, it is plain that the New Zealand workman may do the same if he finds it to his advantage. That he is prepared to do so is shown by the number of apprentices who at present attend our local drawing classes, and who have in the past attended the classes instituted by the Caledonian Society.