Till': TRADES SCHOOL IN THE TRANSVAAL. 2)49 



school by the proihiction of iiulcntures from those who claim to 

 have been recognised pupils. 



The law concerning- apprenticeship as it exists in the Transvaal 

 is given in Chapter III of Law 13 of 1880. Under the provision of 

 that Act (Master and Servant), no apprentice may be indentured 

 for a period longer than five years or beyond the age of twenty- 

 one years. The limits are thus the same under the Act irrespective 

 of the relative ease or difficulty of learning different trades. 

 Trades schools, therefore, provide a means of overcoming this 

 omission ; since these schools, taking young l)oys as they do 

 between the most important ages from an educational point of 

 view of thirteen and seventeen years of age, enable boys to be 

 indentured first as apprentices in the school and afterwards on a 

 second indenture with some commercial firm. I think I may sum- 

 marise the advantages of the trades school to the employer to be : — 



1. Economy in the cost of material wasted and in men's time, show- 



ing the apprentice the handling of the simpler tools, etc. 



2. A gain in the fact that the ex-trades school ptipil is able to do work 



of some value to his employer at any rate sooner than the fresh 

 from school apprentice. 



3. Relief from the trial system as the boy has been found lit for the 



trade he has entered. 



The advantages of the trades school to the l)oy and his 

 parents are (i) advice as to future employment, ad\ice on the 

 careers offered by difl:'erent trades, and advice on continuation in 

 education; (2) personal trial in one or more trades until the most 

 suitable one is found; (3) opportunity to see and understand the 

 other trades taught in the school ; ( 4 ) in addition to the specific 

 training given, he is able to gauge whether any employment that 

 may be open to him is likely to provide further training or to be 

 of a ''blind alley" nature; (5) he has been trained to the inter- 

 dependence between theory and practice, and is more suitable and 

 likely to take advantage of evening technical college courses; (6) 

 the better moral effect on young boys of training received in 

 special surroundings. 



In an address on technical education given by Mr. Stobie, a 

 member of the governing body of the Pietermaritzburg Technical 

 Institute, he pointed out a grave objection to present methods 

 of apprenticeship wdiich is really an argument for the establish- 

 ment of Trades Schools. Dealing with the serious drawbacks ex- 

 perienced by the technical educationist through the existing 

 apprenticeship system, he said : 



Technical instruction is an essential part of an apprentice's trainmg, 

 and no boy can gain a complete knowledge of a trade without it. Since 

 then these two parts, the practical and the theoretical, are both essential, 

 and a workshop must be considered a training school as much as the tech- 

 nical classes, the work that the apprentice is engaged upon on the theore- 

 tical or school side should be so organised as to run concurrently with 

 the instruction he receives in the shop, and should be treated in the same 

 way and regarded as part of his apprenticeship. Yet youths are paid to 

 learn one part of their trade, the practical, and at the same time them- 

 selves pay a fee Ui learn anotlier equally essential part, tlie tiienretical. 



