PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 



By William James Horne, A.MJ.E.E. 



I have chosen a popular title for the remarks I am about to 

 trouble you with, because I wish to interest that grreater number 

 of parents whose children will l^ecome skilled artisans, working 

 agriculturists or qualified clerical employes. Intended to catch 

 the eye, this title does not define sufficiently clearly the scope 

 of my observations: briefly, I wish to discuss the possibilities and 

 requirements of vocational education. At this distance from 

 the centre of things.* my ideas may be but crudely ex])ressed, 

 and my remembrance of the work of others, here and elsewhere, 

 somewhat sketchy. If 1 am able to say anything in a manner 

 sufficiently new to interest educationists, I shall be doubly 

 rewarded. 



When we regard a system of national education from out- 

 side, it is important to consider first the minimum attainment 

 that it should aim at; secondly, the maximum achievement that 

 ought to be its ideal. Tlicre may be no limit to the ideal; but 

 it seems to me that the lowest minimum we can allow is that 

 the girls should become fit for motherhood and be mentally and 

 technically fitted to manage a household, and that the boys 

 should become fit for fatherhood and be mentally and techincally 

 fit to earn a living wage in some department of labour. That is, 

 each sex qualified to carry on the daily round in its own sphere, 

 and maintaining a cheerful temper in doing so. Now nothing 

 is more certain that the child whose education is stopped at the 

 age of thirteen, fourteen or fifteen, cannot have received this 

 minimum. That parent wdio says to the young boy or girl of 

 fifteen: "You ha\e learnt enough foolishness at school, it is 

 time you went to work," does an incalculable injury to the child 

 and to its future \alue to the country. That parent who asks : 

 "Why don't they teach children .something useful at school?" 

 — meaning thereby a course of instruction that will create a 

 demand for the child in the labour market, commercial or other- 

 wise, does not understand the functions and necessary limita- 

 tions of the ordinary school. The worst of talking about 

 education is that so many still think of it as something put into 

 the mind instead of as something drawn out of it ; that, in fact, 

 the school is a kind of glorified warehouse dealing in intangible 

 materials of which the pupils receive an assortment in quarterly 

 instalments, which they will be able to retail at considerable profit, 

 at some future fixed date in the examination market, even if 

 the goods delivered by the pupil are considerably reduced in 

 value bv the process. This attitude of mind, of course, is not 

 conducive to education, and can only lead to the very state that 

 jiarents and employers are ever ready to complain of, namely, 

 scrappv knowledge on the part of the scholar. South Africa 



* This paper was written in German South-West Africa. 



