EDUCATION OP CHILDREN IN INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITIES,

1 Adam Street, Adelphi 30th August 1853. Bra—After constituting the State the guardian of all such children as may be devoid of friends capable of providing, or willing to provide, for their edu- cation, with a view to self-maintenance hereafter, and a knowledge of, and obedience to, such rules of life as general society may deem essential to its unity, the next consideration should be to gather those children together in sufficient masses to be able to pay for teachers out of their earnings at various kinds of useful employments: for if little children in cotton-mills and other private establishments can earn their living, there seems no reason why they should not do so in public ones.

By the term "educated classes," we are too apt to consider those only who can 'read and write and east accounts," and possess such other knowledge as may grow out of these primary elements,—which are not knowledge, but *imply the tools of knowledge, and by no means comprise that education which is essential to independence in life; as witness the hordes of educated peoplein Australia, who have left an unsatisfactory condition of existence here for a still more unsatisfactory state there. By education we must un- derstand, first, the power of tail-maintenance; and next, that general amount of knowledge of "men and things" which will enable each one to discover and attain the position for which he or she may be best fitted, in which they may tultivete.the whole of those natural aptitudes. Writers on political economy. have mostly laid great stress on the mutual advantage arising from a "division of labour." Now, although it is quite true that Robinson C'rusoe produced a less proportionate amount of material result by doing all things himself, than a hundred Robinson Crusoes would have done by doing one thing only, yet the individual Robinson Crime was upon the whole much more of a complete man than the individuals of the hundred would have been. Our existing system makes shoemakers, or fractions of shoemakers in subdivision, fractions of carpenters, fraotions of agriculturists, weavers and fractions of weavers ; but it does not make men. Our universities" are anything but universal; they profess to endow students with the circle of the abstract sciences, but they leave man himself as an ab- straction, were it not for what he acquires by other means than the regular courses. And so throu,ghout. It is by a chapter of accidents that the right man gets to the right position. And it is difficult to predicate from the youth what he will become in manhood. Dunces at school become clear- brained men hi life, and " first-elass" boys frequently become men of n class. This would not be, if when boys, they had a sufficiently extended sphere of action to find out their fitting occupation. So in humble life, the:diiision of labour into pin's-head and pin's-point makers produced only languid,drudges, human machines, essential to large manufacturing results in a bygone time, but incessantly cumbering the com- munity with paupers, utterly helpless when the particular employment was overdone. A woman emigrant in New York applied to the Mayor for relief. Re inquired of her if she tould de a number of useful things; all which were answered in the negative; and -When, to save time, he asked what she could do, the reply was, "Pack files." Not necessarily, but from neglect of train- ing, factory women have 'beau .iglissrant of domestic arts, and helpless out of their especial—not always vocation—but employment without vocation. The phrase vocation" or "calling" has lost its original meaning, and people take to, or are taken to, employments without having "any call" to them ; though the phrase has a meaning when a woman tells her husband—alas! no "house-bond "—You have "no call" to beat me.

This division of labour becomes every day less important as the drudgery is passed pver to machines, which will in time render obsolete the term "manufacture.' Stitching and weaving of all kinds, as a hand labour to earn wages, will be extinct. They will remain only as domestic arts or as initiative operations. Strictly speaking, it is not the division of labour that is the evil; that must always remain. It is the subdivision. Labour, like animals and vegetables, may he divided into classes and orders. Certain classes of work are ana- logous, and a better result on the whole would be produced by the facility for changing the employment, than by the dull inelastic system of exclusive work on one thing. Change of labour is rest ; and the tailor, or shoemaker, or carpenter, after a hard day's work, may play fives, or cricket, or skittles, as a recreation, and their strength be thereby recruited. In the practical education of children not intended for learned professions by their parents—who arrogate to themselves the power of interpreting na- ture—from five or six to fourteen is assumed to be the proper period for their learning all that can be had 'out of books, and from fourteen to twenty-one is assumed to be the period in which they are to learn trades. The eldest boy usually "follows " his father's trade—i.e. in many cases he follows and never "gets up" to it. In poor families all the boys " follow " the same trade, because there is no apprentice-fee to pay. At twenty-one, there are many more marred than made, passing through a baffling process of trying to fit themselves to a position for which they are unfitted by na- ture; and hence arises what has been called the "battle of life." " man is a sedges, and life is a taught." But finch a condition is abnormal to society. Education in the best sense is that in which the mind and body advance by equal steps; and in the education of the children of the State this is more likely to be accomplished than in already existing establishments. The County School should be an Industrial University for the world's work, in -which the students would earn their maintenance while acquiring. By merely giving these facilities, boys would learn from seven to fourteen all that they now acquire from fourteen to twenty-one. They would learn it as an amusement, a play, and not as a drudgery. Such a university would be *town in miniature. The students would perform every kind of labour essential to the maintenance and enjoyment of their existence.

First would come the arts of gardening and agriculture, and dairy and sheep

farming, with practical digging, ploughing, planting, milking, shearing, &c. These would be out-door classes. Analogous to them would be classes in- doors giving instruction in the mechanism of gardening and agriculture, and pointing out the processes whereby hand-tools could become machine- tools, and how the other powers of nature might best be substituted for animal power. There would also be chemical classes teaching how to analyse soil and climate, and to experiment upon the processes whereby vegetables may be improved for man's food so as to become quasi animal food, and solve the problem how we may best escape from the humiliating process of slaughtering the inferior animals and entombing them in our stomachs. We laugh at vegetarians and water-drinkers, as people who catlike beasts and drink like fishes, and yet look superciliously if not abhorrently on practical butchers. We shudder at the thought of ourselves slaughtering the lamb that we de- vour with carnivorous pleasure. Surely we ought not thus to make helots of our fellows—set them on to do agniue or bovine murder, and then hypo- critically hold them up to disapprobation. The butcher of the ox has a le- gitimate claim to be the carver at a Lord Mayor's feast. Better would it be had we arrived at another phase in man's progress, when he shall cease to make an integral part of himself of the "beasts that perish." Consecutive training in the actual, and stimulation of the faculties to the possible, would bring forth a goodly crop of boy students, the future improved food-producers of the community. We may be told that animals are the natural food of man, best adapted to assimilate : but it may be answered that bogs and swamps are a natural condition of the earth—which nevertheless man drains and dissipates, with unquestioned advantage to himself. There are more things in heaven and earth than have yet been mastered by our chemical philo- sophers; and even this England of ours, where the second nature of art has apparently dane so much, is but yet emerging from its chrysalis condition in attaining si better climate than Nature bestowed on the fifty-second degree of latitude.

Next to the production of food would come the classes studying the pre- servation of food ; giving a large scope for mechanical and chemical improve- ment. How economically to preserve grain and vegetables and animal or animalized substances in large quantities, so as to be independent of seasons of dearth, and with the least possible waste and destruction, is an important problem. It will be found that we are far from the maximum in these at- tainments.

The labours of these two classes, properly directed, would provide for the first want of the Industrial University.

The next consideration is clothing. Leaving out of consideration the

preparation of material—though that also is a fitting subject—there are shoes, stockings, and linen and cotton inner and outer clothing, and coverings for the head. Cutting out shoes and sewing or otherwise putting them together— cutting out clothes and putting them together—would furnish employment for the work-rooms. Independently of these practical classes, there should be other classes in which the principles of human clothing should be taught, pointing out to the students the path of progress. How to cover the body so as to exclude wet and cold, and heat without interfering with the natural exhalations or free movement of the limbs, with the, miaimum cost of labour, would be a very fitting problem to solve. Whether it ibe practicable to improve our vegetable productions so as to be independent of the skins or hair, far, or exudations of animals, for our clothing, is another question well worth serious thinking on, when a deficiency of wool "drives our manu- facturers to the use of "-shoddy," or old clothing, the materials of which are fitted for paper rather than cloth. There is ids° a. larger scope for the iinprovement of floor-covers, and of nocturnal clothinwhile aleeping, and the whole arrange,ment of beds or couches, so as best to ntaiutain warmth while effectually providing Tor the escape of bodily exhalations. In the machine processes for making miles of fiat cloth webs,-to cut up into pieces and atitch together to cover the rounded form of the human body, there is evidently an enormous waste of labour :13titching-nutchines are now

fast extirpating the hand-sewing processes, and the time is approaching when people will wonder why such human drudgery should have existed to give rise to Hood's "Soug of the Shirt." But there is a further move yet to make, in preparing garments by machinery without need of stitching, of which stocking-weaving is an approximation. The early Christians wore garments of this class ; and there is room enough for taste and skill in devi- sing succinct and fleeing raiment adapted to the various purposes of use and elegance, that will cast many of our present ungraceful and unwholesome garments into shade.

The third question is of light, fuel, and warmth—after " meat and clothes," fire. The preparation of tire-wood and matches, and various kinds of artificial fuel, might occupy practical.classes, as well as gas or other works for the sup- ply of light to the establishnient. The in-door classes would teach the ehe- mica' questions of light and heat ; the chemical properties of the coal used for producing gas, and heating retorts, and preventing the production of smoke ; the chemical treatment of the refuse, for manure or other pur- poses, the best arrangements for instantaneous light without deleterious manufacture, the respective advantages of coke and gas fuel, and the possi- bility of new forms of fuel and light. The next question is of buildings, dwellings, and workshops. The making of bricks or artificial stone, preparation of slate, and various wood and iron work, together with drainage and erections, are all processes for the practical classes. For the theoretical classes, there are the general purposes of building, durability of material, and shelter and warmth with light and ventilation, and baths. How best to make the buildings fire-proof; how to make the walls hotnoge- neous, impervious, and yet not too heavy ; how to make the roof most durable; how best to manufacture warm air to maintain a healthy warmth in the building ; how best to supply radiant heat, and how to get rid of mephitic air ; how to regulate dryness and moisture,—are all matters to be pointed out by the teacher as the scope and objects for improvement. And the processes for converting band-tools into machine-tools in the various practical operations should be pointed out, and also the processes of lifting materials during erection. The well-digging and lifting of water to the top- most height of the building, the steam-engine as a domestic utensil for labour-saving operations, should not be overlooked, reducing as far as may be the human drudgery.

It is not to be supposed that every individual would be capable of compre- hending and practising all these varieties of knowledge and art ; but it is most desirable that universities should exist where the whole round of the useful arts may be brought to bear upon one another, and where they may fall under the observation of boys whose imitative faculties will take up and apply them for what they are best adapted, and who would not necessarily confine themselves to one variety, but would take up all that are analogous to each other. Even employments apparently opposed would be found adapted to the same individual. The boy working in the garden would like to construct his tools in the workshop, and would in many cases make them better than the boy not understanding their uses.

We commonly use the word "teach" as an essential process in instruction. It is, however, quite certain that all learning worth the name is a process dependent on the learner and not on the teacher. The teacher may teach a lesson, but it does not therefore follow that the pupil will learn ; yet we know that numerous people acquire, without.any teaching, by the simple process of observation and imitation. In learning trades or handicrafts, it is not the master's word but the pupil's eye that instructs. A °rile- media may describe an art in whole pages and yet not teach it. For this reason, it is essential that boys should behold the whole circle of the useful arts, aild they will thus acquire those they are adapted for almost impercep- tibly. • Only the circle of the arts essential to their own maintenance, conducing to the production of food, clothing, light, fuel, and shelter, have been pro- posed ; but it is obvious that many arts and trades might be added to them connected with locomotion or taste. Some of the arts described are apparently better adapted for girls than for boys, but not necessarily so. There are many arts for which both sexes are also equally well adapted ; and that there should be an Industrial University adapted for girls as well as for boys will hardly be disputed. The difference in the two sexes as regards manual arts chiefly consists in the physical force required. Boys or girls brought up in such establishments would be independent and self-maintain- ing wherever they might reside, in England or in a colony. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, the mechanical and mental processes essential to the theory and practice of almost every art, would be acquired very rapidly by imitation under the stimulus to practice. The child gets to know the things at the same time that he spells their names, and learns arithmetic while measuring off lengths.

It is the want of the facility for seeing the round of arts that causes people to take to those they are unfitted for, and thus diminishes the total amount of production. In an Industrial University this evil would be provided against, at the same time that the establishment would be self-supporting. The surplus work would pay for the purchase of materials, and a certain amount of instruction in the arts of commerce would be induced.

It is probable that the establishment of such a university would bring pupils from all the industrial classes ; but the first claimants should be " those who have no helpers"—those without friends, or, still more unfortu- nate, those with discreditable relatives. It would be desirable that the com- paratively few without friends should not be regarded as objects of charity, but that they should be merged in the general industrial body, so that their origin might be forgotten. They ought not to be placed at a disadvantage by being brought up and marked as a peculiar class. By being mixed with others they would gradually resemble them. The evil habits would be swamped in the larger mass of better habits, and in a generation the class would disappear altogether. Children thus brought up would be incapable of living in the filth and squalor which are the usual concomitants of the lower thieving classes ; and as the total number of thieves lessened, the penal- ties would become proportionately more severe, from their greater conspicuous- ness. England is a valuable hive for industrial human energy to swarm from to Australia, Canada, and the United States ; and when the means of universal industrial education shall exist, very small will be the proportion of vicious emigrants or transports that she will send forth. Helping the Banks to snake paper money, or the Mint with an electrotype coinage, will become too beggarly a trade to be worth pursuing. The mode of working in such a university would not be difficult A per- centage on the result of the work would afford ample-means of paying the teachers or pattern-setters for initiation. The higher branch of teachers, the philosophical expounders of principles, it would be more difficult to attain, but doubtless the demand would call them forth.

In all such establishments the practical arts essential to national defence might be well and easily acquired. The gymnastics would be the efficient use of weapons, which those adapted might learn to manufacture and repair, perhaps also to improve. The regular gymnastics of the Industrial Univer- sity might-prove to be more useful than the irregular gymnastics of the Uni- versities in .which the abstract sciences are taught. Perhaps in another generation the misfitting of persons to their oecupations—the great source of evil—might become the exception instead of the rule, and progress be less impeded.