TRADITION IN EDUCATION 



A PLEA FOR A MODIFIED CURRICULUM AND FOR 

 THE GENERAL RECOGNITION OF MANUAL 

 INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 



By T. S. USHERWOOD, B.Sc. 



" Whoever has attempted to bring about any sort of reform . . . knows well 

 that his chief difficulties lie, not in the ignorance of those he would influence — 

 for facts, however laboriously gathered, are readily imparted — but rather in the 

 mental states engendered by an education which does little to create a habit of 

 open-mindedness to new ideas." — Archdall Reid, Heredity. 



Recently it was the writer's good fortune to be present at the 

 Conference on the Education and Training of Engineers held 

 at the Institution of Civil Engineers. To judge from several 

 of the communications considered by the section concerned with 

 General Education, it would seem that civil engineers, alike 

 with the general public, are not only unacquainted with modern 

 developments in elementary and secondary education but are 

 almost wilfully blind to the signs of the times. It was urged 

 repeatedly that it is necessary for the engineer to have culture, 

 that a sound general education was peculiarly desirable, yet no 

 word was said as to the cultivation of fingers. One would have 

 thought that the average engineer possessed the right type of 

 mind, the cultivated imagination and the freedom from prejudice, 

 to assess at its true worth such a subject — or rather such a dis- 

 cipline — as Manual Training ; but to judge from the absence 

 of all reference to this — the only logical — introduction to all that 

 the engineer holds specially sacred, we might have been living 

 in the Stone Age. A short criticism of some of the papers will 

 therefore serve as a peg whereon to hang an account of the 

 aims and methods of the advocates of Manual Training and 

 of some recent developments in its scope. 



The Conference was summoned "to consider the methods 

 of preparation to be adopted by those who contemplate entering 

 the engineering profession in compliance with the conditions 

 laid down by the by-laws for election into the Institution." 

 Now, whilst the justice of the plea for culture and the desir- 



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