Colleges and their Teaching.

We have avoided in the foregoing statement making special observations on the merits or defects of the various scientific and technical colleges and schools which are at work or in course of establishment in this country, but we think it due to those who have founded and those who are conducting these excellent institutions to state that all of them, in each of the three divisions of the United Kingdom, are, in spite of limited means, producing good results. It is most praiseworthy on the part of the professors and teachers that they devote themselves to the important work of tuition for salaries so small as those which they as a rule receive, when many would, by employing their scientific and technical knowledge in private enterprise, obtain much larger pecuniary remuneration. We may remark concerning the colleges that it is not necessary that all of them should be of the highest type. To enable the relatively small number of persons capable of occupying the highest industrial positions to acquire the most complete education of which modern science admits, only a few well equipped institutions of high rank are needed. It is, however, of national importance that these few should be placed in such a position of efficiency as to enable them to carry out successfully the highest educational work in the special direction for which circumstances, particularly of locality, have fitted them. Your commissioners believe that no portion of the national expenditure on education is of greater importance than that employed in the scientific culture of the leaders of industry. Your commissioners fear that the belief in the efficacy of training of this highest character is, in England, at present small among those whom it will ultimately benefit; and yet there are few countries? in which so many investigations have been made the practical bearings of which were not at the outset apparent but which have in the end led to the most important practical results. The discovery by Faraday of magneto-electricity and by Joule of the mechanical equivalent of heat at once occur as examples. The Englishman is accustomed to seek for an immediate return, and has yet to learn that an extended and systematic education up to and including the methods of original research is now a necessary preliminary to the fullest development of industry. It is, among other elements of progress, to the gradual but sure growth of public opinion in this direction that your commissioners look for the means of securing to this country in the future, as in the past, the highest position as an industrial nation.

We desire to express our satisfaction at the recent establishment of weaving and dyeing schools in the north of England, and of mechanical laboratories in several localities. The utility of weaving schools to proprietors and managers of factories, and to merchants who desire to become acquainted with the processes of the manufacture of the goods in which they deal, has been so clearly demonstrated on the continent that we need adduce no further arguments in their favor. The weaving and dyeing schools of Leeds have been established and are maintained entirely by the Clothworkers' Company of London. We regard this as one of the most useful and appropriate purposes to which a portion of their funds could have been devoted. The mechanical laboratoriesand mechanical drawing schools at Nottingham, Sheffield, Huddersfield, and elsewhere will be of the greatest service in enlarging the knowledge and experience of young artisans who are kept continuously at one branch in their daily work.

The teaching of art and science subjects in the training colleges of Great Britain for elementary school teachers is very defective. The inspection on the part of the Science and Art Department has until lately been greatly neglected, owing to the divided responsibility for the college? of the Education Department and the Kensington authorities. The answers received by the examiners to such questions as the following: " Write out the heads of a lecture to an elementary class on the chemical and physical properties of water, mentioning the experiments which you would show and page 50 your object in showing them," prove conclusively that the students have no idea as to how such a simple mutter ought to be brought before a class. It would greatly conduce to sound and efficient training in science, and particularly in the methods of teaching if those students in training who have shown an aptitude for science work could be sent annually to the Normal School of Science at South Kensington or to other approved efficient institutions. The provision for art teaching in most of the training colleges is inferior even to that at present made for science, and an entire reform In this respect is urgently needed; and similar measures should be taken for systematic instruction in art as in science. Considerable attention is as we have said elsewhere, paid to drawing in the Normal School in Dublin, where it is taught by a competent art master.

The school boards of our great cities are fully alive to the defective character of the instruction of pupil teachers. In London. Liverpool, and elsewhere they have endeavored to apply a partial remedy by introducing joint instruction, under special teachers qualified in each subject, instead of having each headmaster to instruct the pupil teachers of his own school in every subject. The Education Department has also taken a small step in the right direction by somewhat limiting the number of hours that the pupils may be employed in teaching, so as to give them a little more leisure for learning. No considerable improvement can, however, be expected until the great school boards are authorized to establish colleges for training teachers. These colleges would be day schools and need not receive from the State enormous capitation grants like those now given to the English denominational training colleges, but only small allowances like those granted to the day students in those of Scotland.