TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION.
RECENT discussions in the London School Board and other public bodies have called public attention to the abortive Technical Education Bill of last Session, and rendered necessary a careful consideration of the conditions under which that measure might in the next Session be usefully revived and newly shaped. There is much vagueness and confusion in the popular conception of "Technical Education," both as regards its ends and its means. By some it is understood to mean that definite instruction in special handicrafts which makes all the difference between the skilled and the unskilled workman. Foreign artisans, it is urged, are competing with those of England with success, because they are better instructed ; and if we are to hold our own in the markets and the industries of the world, we can only hope to do so by giving to our work- men systematic training not only in the trades they respectively follow, but also in the chemistry, the mechanics, or other sciences which are most nearly akin to those trades. Other advocates of technical instruction take a wholly different view of its functions and aims. They say that without special reference to the claims of this or that particular form of industry, all scholars should be trained to manual exercise and to the right use of their fingers and their eyes. It has hitherto, they urge, been a great defect in our system of education that it has addressed itself chiefly to the memory and intelligence, that it has concerned itself too much with books and too little with things, and that it has neglected the kind of training which gives dexterity and physical capacity, which quickens the senses and develops the taste, and so prepares the pupil more completely not for carpentering or weaving in particular, but for any form of industry in which bodily power and resource are needed. There is a third class of advocates of technical education, whose real motive is founded on a deep distrust of the intellectual instruction of the poor, and on a wish to discredit it. They think, though they hardly like to avow it openly, that the children of working men are being too well taught, that they ought to remain as a class "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and that any intellectual ambition which might make the scholars in elementary schools formidable competitors with the children of the middle classes in the race of life should be severely repressed. To persons of this class the popular move- ment in favour of some undefined sort of "technical instruc- tion" which will help to keep the children of the poor "in their proper stations," mainly occupied in mechanical work, and influenced as little as possible by the love of books, and by those ideals and aspirations which are generated by the love of books, possesses considerable attraction. They ask for technical instruction for the humbler classes not as a new educational instrument, or as a source of new strength to the nation, but as a means of perpetuating existing social distinc- tions, and of preventing the professions and the more liberal departments of human employment from being crowded or overstocked.
Now, of these three classes of persons, it is manifest that the Bill of the Government, as presented last Session, will meet the views mainly of the first. It proposes to empower Municipalities and School Boards to set up apprentice schools, trade schools, Fortbildungsschulen of the German type, for practice in the use of tools, in drawing, in mechanics, and special forms of skilled industry ; and it provides that through the agency and under the supervision of the Science and Art Department, such schools shall receive aid, countenance, and substantial grants from the State. There can be little doubt that this measure would, if carried, prove to be fruitful of valuable results. It would encourage local bodies to set up schools specially adapted to the trades and industrial conditions of the various districts of England, and would greatly multiply such schools as the trade schools of Bristol and Keighley, the Ecole Industrielle of Brussels, and the Ecoles Professionelles of France and Switzerland.
But to the second of those classes which we have desciibed —to the advocates of a well-ordered system of manual training as an organic part of general education—the Bill as introduced by the Government last year will hardly bring much satisfac- tion. It assumes that the sort of technical training for which it makes provision will not commence until the scholar has passed
the sixth standard ; in other words, until he shall have reached a reasonable proficiency in the usual subjects of elementary instruction,—in reading, writing, and arithmetic, in the English language, in geography, history, or elementary science. It does not permit the substitution of any form of Hand- arbeit for one of the time-honoured themes of ordinary instruction. It does not even provide for the recognition of such exercise among the optional "class-subjects." Still less does it contemplate a total bouleversement of the ideal of elementary education, such as Lord Meath, Mr. Samuel Smith, and other enthusiastic advocates of industrial training demand. And it must be owned that there is some extravagance in the form in which the demand is often made. Punch depicts the journeyman carpenter with his basket of tools on his back, claiming to dethrone the pedagogue, and to take the poor man's child and see what he can make of him If this means anything—and to do Punch justice, there is generally a serious meaning in his cartoons—it means that, for the English child, the reading and arithmetic, the knowledge of the words he uses and of the world he lives in, which it is the schoolmaster's busi- ness to impart, is of less importance to his future well-being and usefulness as a citizen than the possession of manual skill. What is more, it means that, in some way or other, these two forms of education are alternative, or at least inconsistent with each other, and that the boy who has not learned what the schoolmaster has to teach is more likely than one who has learned it to become a capable and skilful workman. If this be gravely put forth as argument, we have only to say that all experience confutes it. Ever since Socrates paid his memorable visit to the Athenian workshops, it has been a familiar result of observation that your mere artisan, though skilled, may possibly be a very poor creature, borne' right and left by the traditions of his craft and by rules-of-thumb, and with very muddled and imperfect ideas about matters outside his own trade. The use of tools, though a good thing, is not the highest thing to be desired in the equipment of a citizen, and it is only in a very limited degree that it could be introduced with advantage into any rational scheme of general education. The difference between a handy man and an unhandy man is unquestionably of some importance in all conditions of life ; but the difference between an intelligent well-read man, and one whose mental faculties have not been broadened and cultivated, is of ten times more importance, both in the lower and the higher ranks of life. We are not without some very significant experience on this point. In girls' schools we have long had a form of technical instruction of undoubted utility. Needlework is not only a beautiful art, but a necessary of our domestic life. It has received a large, perhaps an inordinate, share of atten- tion in all the elementary schools of the country. In villages in which the influence of Lady Bountiful or the Vicar's wife is dominant, nearly the half of every day is spent by little girls not in being taught to sew, for that might be effectively done in one-third of the time, but in mere dawdling over needlework, and in the manufacture of garments for sale or for home use. From the point of view of those who desire to make the primary school effective as a preparation for the duties and responsibilities of an intelligent life, the amount of time and effort thus spent appears to be out of all proportion to the value of the results produced. In fact, experience shows that needlework does little or nothing to improve the general capacity of the learner, and that proficiency in this one art may easily co-exist with dullness and mental vacuity, and with complete helplessness in regard to all the other duties and claims of life.
But while such considerations as these may well serve to moderate the extravagant estimate which some persons have formed respecting the educational value of mere handicraft, it may be admitted that some forms of manual exercise might usefully be introduced into elementary schools, and if wisely harmonised with the rest of the instruction, might give to our whole scheme of primary studies a more complete and practical character. We shall never, it is true, be able to discover any form of handwork as universally applicable to the future destiny of all boys as needlework is to the domestic needs of all girls ; but modelling, drawing, the making of artistic patterns in paper, or carving in wood, might,
within certain reasonable limits, form part of an ele- mentary school course, and would, if rightly connected with accurate measurement and with a knowledge of geo- metry and of the principles of art, have a reflex action of considerable value on all other lessons, and on the general intelligence of the scholar. The object-lessons and the varied and interesting manual employments which, under the stimulus furnished by Mr. Mundella's Code, have done so much to transform and brighten the infant-schools throughout the whole country, might with great advantage be extended, mutatis mutandis, all through the course of the upper school. It may be hoped that the revised Technical Instruction Bill will at least enable school-managers who desire to adopt this view, and who have devised a satisfactory course of manual exercises, to have such teaching recognised. It has been urged with some truth that if this is to be done well, it must be effected not by relegating every subject which can claim to be included under the head "Technical Training" to the separate supervision of the Science and Art Department, but by enlarging the conception of elementary education authorised by the Education Department itself. Nothing distracts a teacher or dislocates the machinery of a school more than the responsibility to different and independent authorities for different departments of the scholars' work. It is important to preserve the unity of our system of primary education, and to avoid any measure which would weaken the just influence and authority of the Education Department and its officers. It is not, therefore, by handing over the boys and girls of a school to artisans and specialists, but by a due recognition of the claims of both head and hand in our school work, and especially by obtaining teachers who are qualified to make manual training and mental training parts of a coherent and well-ordered educational system, each in its own way helpful to the other, that the problem now before the public can be most satisfactorily solved.
As to the third of the classes which we have described, consisting of those who, under the demand for technical educa- tion, cover the desire to check the intellectual improvement of the children of the poor, and to keep them from seeking other than mechanical employments, it may be hoped that all the best friends of national education will repudiate their aims and decline their co-operation,—
" Non tali snaffle, bee defensoribus labia, Tempne eget."
Subject only to the inevitable limitations of age and oppor- tunities, the true educational reformer will recognise the claim of every English child to the best and most generous education he is able to receive. Whether we are legislating for Eton or for the humblest ragged-school, it behoves us to bear in mind that the first business of a school is to communicate the elements of truth, to awaken the faculties, to stimulate thought, and to place in the hands of the pupil the instru- ments of future acquisition. As a secondary and subordinate object, we may well aim also at imparting more of tactual and visual power, a fuller acquaintance with the material forces in the world, and greater skill in handling them. This part of training has been too much disregarded, and has a rightful claim to recognition. But to assign to it the first place in a scheme of either primary or secondary education, would be to disregard all the best lessons of experience, and to bring about a mischievous reaction.
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