PRACTICAL KDL'fATlUN. 7O3 



that intended for those beyond eighteen and holding correspond- 

 ing attainments, may be called " higher." Professional educa- 

 tion is usually classed as higher education ; that is, students be- 

 fore admission are expected to have completed their secondary 

 and, sometimes, their collegiate education. It is also true that 

 under some circumstances the character of the elementary and 

 especially of the secondary edtication given, is largely determined 

 by the probable or even actual reqtiirements of the profession to 

 be studied for in the future by the pupil. For example, pre- 

 paratory secondary education for the boy intending to adopt 

 engineering as profession should be carefully considered. I have 

 already had the honour of laying my views before you on this 

 point on a previous occasion.* In the professional division 

 the various University Colleges in the Union of South Africa 

 make ample preparation for the higher technological, literary, 

 and scholastic vocations ; it is. however, to the lower technologi- 

 cal levels or industrial divisions that the great majority of xouiilJ 

 people will gravitate, and it is to provide more extended oppor- 

 tunities in the primary-cum-secondary vocational field for future 

 wage-earners that Trades Schools have been established in the 

 Transvaal. In the industrial sub-division of agriculture we now 

 have under school conditions, controlled by the Agricultural 

 Department, the beginnings of higher grade agricultural educa- 

 tion and that of secondary-grade well established — these tenns 

 being fixed partlv by the age of the pupils and partly by the 

 qualitv of the general educational attainment required in the 

 pupils before admission to such Agricultural dtlleges as Elsen- 

 burg, Cedara. Potchef-stroom, etc. The primary grade edtication 

 is still limited, however, as far as the Transvaal is concerned, to 

 the manual work done in field and garden in all industrial schools 

 and in some country schools ; this might be taken up as a school 

 subjectt in certain of the larger country-town schools. 



Provision in the Transvaal is made for the commercial and 

 domestic divisions respectively by the Commercial Secondary 

 School and Schc^^l of Domestic Science, both in Johannesburg 

 and Pretoria. 



Vocational education has many difficulties inherent in it. 

 That acquired through actual contact with its form in the home 

 and in the workshop is strong in certain ways on the practical 

 side; its weak i)oints are — (i) the absence of theory, (2) its 

 inability to provide an adequate understanding of the laws and 

 princi})les underlying its practice, and ( 3 ) modern conditions — 

 e.g., cheapened production — narrow the practice given to some 

 restricted branch of a trade. On the other hand, the class-room 

 is particularly able in imparting the theory or abstract phases of 

 a vocation, and is onlv j)artially adapted to combine these with 



* ■■ The Relation of thf High School to the University 1 cchnical Col- 

 lege, '" Kept. S.A.A.A.S., Lourenqo ]\larques (191.3) 54-63- 



1 1 have sketched a suitable scheme in the pamphlet " The Trades 

 School in the Transvaal." Argus P. & P. Co.. Star Office, Johanesburg. 



