LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 379 



THE DISTINCTION" BETWEEN THE LIBERAL AND THE 

 TECHNICAL IN EDUCATION 



By Professor PERCY HUGHES 



LEHIGH UNIVERSITY 



THE terms liberal and technical do not distinguish two types of 

 educational practise, but two tendencies in and functions of any 

 part of the educational process. For at the present time any type of 

 liberal education includes of necessity education for efficiency in some 

 art, in the broadest sense of that term ; while the existent types of tech- 

 nical education involve training that goes far to realize liberal ideals.. 



But, in any education, the tendency to emphasize the technical at 

 the cost of the liberal function of that education is confronted with the 

 reciprocal striving of the liberal tendency and ideal to maintain its 

 ancient eminence and prerogative. The technical aim is to fit the indi- 

 vidual to take his place in the social scheme of toil through efficiency in 

 some art, whether it be teaching or engineering, medicine or " business/* 

 The liberal purpose is the realization in each individual of the highest 

 manhood, of those ideals of character and personality which alone make 

 the toil and sacrifice of society meaningful and worth while. It is pos- 

 sible that these two tendencies should cooperate and indeed proceed' 

 along identical lines of educational effort now, as they have done in 

 times past. But it seems that under modern conditions which the 

 school can neither at once change nor at all afford to disregard, the 

 demand for technical efficiency is necessarily antagonistic to liberal; 

 aspiratipn — not indeed at all points, but in many respects. 



I believe that it is of the greatest importance clearly to formulate- 

 and contrast these two tendencies in modern education, so that, in- 

 answer to the perfectly clear and exceedingly insistent demands for 

 technical efficiency, there may be set forth ideals of liberal education' 

 which shall be well understood by all interested in education, and shall' 

 appeal to all as imperative and urgent. 



Disregarding, therefore, accidental, partial and temporary phases 

 of liberal education, we note, in the first place, that in styling an educa- 

 tion liberal we thereby associate it with liberalism in politics, in philos- 

 ophy and theology, and in men's personal relations to each other. In- 

 each case liberalism seems fundamentally to denote freedom, that is, the 

 conditions that make for the development and realization in each indi- 

 vidual of that character and personality which is his true nature. A 

 similar argument leads to the conclusion that the technical in educa- 



