RELATION OF HIGH SCHOOLS TO TECHNICAL COLLEGE. 59 



proportion of students enter technical institutions ill-prepared, and at least 

 one year has to be devoted to instruction which ought to be secured 

 beforehand. Proper preparation is essential if students are to derive full 

 benefit from special instruction in applied science. Professors and 

 teachers ought not to be required to undertake subjects that should be 

 taught elsewhere, but should be left free to devote themselves to scientific 

 and technical instruction, which is their real work.* 



Yoti will see from the foregoing that a strong literary course 

 in the education of the future engineer is insisted upon. I have 

 already referred to the old dictum that " readynge maketh a full 

 manne." There is a utilitarian use also : the ability to write 

 reports and to use words in the right connection. Mr. Harrison, 

 in his paper which I quoted in the beginning, laments the inability 

 of the average engineer in this connection. 



ITow many engineers are there to-day, who are technically expert, 

 but who find the compilation of a report a most difficult and laborious 

 matter; some of them find it an impossibility to perform, and do not 

 hesitate to say so. . . . . It is not exactly literary style that is necessary, 

 although this has its value, but the perfect appreciation of any interpreta- 

 tions that may be made under subsequent circumstances. 



My experience tallies with Mr. Harrison's in this matter of 

 reports from engineers ; and I venture to give here two extracts 

 from such an one : — 



(a) Unslaked lime absorbed water with sluggish avidity and with an 

 absence of necessary chemical evolution and combustion .... 



{b) From chemical assays the constituent parts disclose no tangible 

 chemical combination tantamount to the attributes incorporated in 

 a good hydraulic limestone. . . . 



A more meaningless jumble could scarcely be imagined, but 

 I shall refrain from further remark on these extracts, except to 

 say that these were not compiled by an educated Kaffir, but by a 

 British-born engineer. 



I pass on to consider the requirements indicated in the teach- 

 ing of mathematics. This .study must not be merely an intellectual 

 exercise, it must be taught as a tool ; thus, we have the elements of 

 trigonometry, logarithms and practical mathematics with geo- 

 metrical treatment asked for. Now, provision is made in the code 

 for trigonometry or a branch of applied mathematics as optional 

 subjects, and I think that these should at once be made compul- 

 sory in the science side of each high school. I need not detail ex- 

 actly what subjects would constitute the literary side and what the 

 science side ; that can be left to the principals of the schools con- 

 cerned. We do not force subjects ui^on the head-masters of these 

 schools, and rightly so. He has to be satisfied before he intro- 

 duces them that they are {a) generally cultural and educative, 

 (b) that there is a demand for them. In other words, there must 

 be an educated public opinion willing to realise the difficulties and 

 the requirements of an engineering education before innovations, 

 which appear to be departures from previous practice, can be in- 



* Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume CLXVI 

 part iv, 1905-190(5. 



