RELATION OF HIGH SCHOOLS TO TECHNICAL COLLEGE. 57 



have practical warnings all around us : how is it that our best 

 telephone systems are of Swedish origin? Why is our best motor- 

 car engine of Continental make ? What is the reason for the fact 

 that the best mathematical treatises on steelwork for buildings 

 and the new svstem of re-inforced concrete are by ( ierman and 

 Norwegian engineers ? 



Air. Dooley. philosopher, answers, " it is education that 

 makes the nation " ; let us get to the necessary education. The 

 high school must increase the breadth and depth of its curriculum 

 in order to allow the University technical college to maintain its 

 proper status among the highest technical institutions of other 

 countries. Before I go on to consider how a beginning in this 

 direction can be made in South Africa, let me refer to an attitude 

 of mind very common to us. 1 again quote Professor Sir J. J. 

 Thomson : — 



The training tliat is wanted is one that will train the boy to think 

 about things, one that will train him so that he will get the whole weight 

 of his mind upon the problem he is tackling. If he has got this power, 

 then it is not a matter of primary importance as to what may have been 

 the nature of the studies by which he has attained it. A boy who has this 

 power is far more likely to make a good engineer, even though his training 

 has been wholly classical, than one without it, even though he has studied 

 the whole gamut of sciences. 



The attitude of mind to which 1 refer is that the classical 

 education already existing is sufficient for our purpose. Such an 

 argument, of course, ignores Professor Thomson's preliminary 

 hypothesis about the existence of the power to think about things : 

 also it would make no provision for the brain without a bent to 

 classics, and which might be groping in the dark for expression ; 

 again, it groups the brilliant and the mediocre together, probably 

 with more harm to classics than to technics. The better plan is to 

 give a boy a general education mainly literary up to certain age 

 — the age really depends upon the boy — watch him closely when 

 this time arrives, and then continue his education according to 

 his bent. It, therefore, follows that an applied mathematics and 

 science side must be added to the present high school system. 

 Such an addition is indicated in the following resolution of the 

 Conference on Technical Education called by the Alinister for 

 Education, the Honourable F. S. Alalan, in 191 1, at Pretoria: — 



That .... in the opinion of this Conference the main entrance 

 to a technical university course should be through the science side of the 

 ■ordinary high school or equivalent institution.* 



I have now to quote the highest British authority I know con- 

 cerning the preparatory education of the engineer — the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers, England— from the report of their Com- 

 mittee upon this subject : — 



*Blue Book No. U.G. 2/12. " Conference on Technical, Industrial 

 and Commercial Education held at Pretoria." 



