56 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



science to scholars who have no elementary knowledge of the particular 

 science, and whose general capacities have never been sufficiently de- 

 veloped. Students are invited to climb the higher rungs of the 

 ladder of learning who have never trod the lower. But science cannot 

 be taught to those who cannot read, nor commerce to those who cannot 

 write. A few elementary lessons in shorthand and bookkeeping will 

 not fit the British people to compete with the commercial enterprise of 

 Germany. Such sudden and random attempts to reform our system of 

 technical education are time and money wasted. There are grades and- 

 types in technological instruction, and progress can only be slow. It 

 is useless to accept in the higher branches a student who does not come 

 with a solid foundation on which to build. In such institutions as the 

 Polytechnics at Zurich and Charlottenburg we find the students ex- 

 clusively drawn from those who have already completed the highest 

 branches of general education; in this country there is hardly a single 

 institution where this could be said of more than a mere fraction of its 

 students. The middle grades of technological instruction suffer from 

 a similar defect. Boys are entered at technical institutions whose 

 only previous instruction has been at elementary schools and eve- 

 ning classes ; whose intellectual faculties have not been developed to the 

 requisite point; and who have to be retaught the elements to fit them 

 for the higher instruction. In fact there is no scientific conception of 

 what this kind of instruction is to accomplish and of its proper and 

 necessary basis of general education. 



Yet this is just the division of higher education in which public 

 authority- finds a field for its operations practically unoccupied. There 

 are no ancient institutions which there is risk of supplanting. The 

 variety of the subject itself is such that there is little danger of sinking 

 into a uniform and mechanical system. What is required is first a 

 scientific, well-thought-out plan and then its prompt and effective 

 execution. A proper provision of the various grades and types of 

 technological instruction should be organized in every place. The aim 

 of each institution should be clear; and the intellectual equipment 

 essential for admission to each should be laid down and enforced. 

 The principles of true economy, from the national point of view, must 

 not be lost sight of. Provision can only be made (since it must be of 

 the highest type to be of the slightest use) for those really qualified to 

 profit by it to the point of benefiting the community. Evening classes 

 with no standard for admission and no test of efficiency may be valu- 

 able from a social point of view as providing innocent occupation 

 and amusement, but they are doing little to raise the technical capacity 

 of the nation. So far from 'developing a popular demand for higher 

 instruction' they may be preventing its proper growth by perpetuating 

 tlie popular misconception of what real technical instruction is, and 



