714 PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 



cards of the card-filing system pattern ; when a pupil intimates 

 that he or she is leaving school for good, certain particulars are 

 entered on the card, which is then sent to the ofiftces of the 

 Board, and there collated and cross-indexed with others. 



Any applications to the Board from employers for juvenile 

 assistants are intimated to likely ex-pupils in the order of receipt 

 of their cards. Pupils are invited to report the progress of their 

 search for employment to their teachers, and they are also ex- 

 pected to notify the Board when they have been successful, with 

 the nature of the employment taken up. As soon as this has 

 l^een done, the parents and the pupil are advised of the desir- 

 abihty of attending continuation classes ; suitable stibjects of 

 study are suggested, and the name of the nearest school or insti- 

 tution in which tuition is given is forwarded. The name and 

 address of the yoimg employee is sent to the headmaster of the 

 school named, and he writes inviting the pupil to call for advice. 

 In this wav the Edinburgh School Board have compiled valuable 

 statistics, while succeeding in making the evening continuation 

 courses as vital and sticcessful as may be expected of such a 

 voluntary system. The Board believe in the shop system of 

 vocational instruction, and have e(juip])ed eighteen workshops for 

 the additional instruction of apprentices employed in different 

 trades. These are night classes (held in a special building on 

 open ground at Tynecastle), but the Board are extending the 

 ground plan in pre]:)aration for the time when continuation teach- 

 ing bv daylight will be accepted as compulsory. The progressive 

 members frankly discuss the possibility under the Scotch Edu- 

 cation ( 1908) of allowing half-day employment, only, between 

 the ages of fifteen and eighteen, which would force up local 

 wages bv diminishing the supply of boy and girl labour. 



The system required for South Africa is the day trades 

 schools of Holland, prcx'iotis to employment . and the Munich 

 system of daylight continuation classes eoneurrcntly zvith em- 

 plownent. I do not advocate com]nilsion ; I do not think that 

 niachinerv could be found to give anything like full eft'ect to 

 the compelling clauses of an Act. I think it reasonable to expect 

 that the various unions of trades and associations of employers 

 should, give the eft'ect of compulsion, as is done in Holland, by 

 demanding from each juvenile a trades school certificate, and 

 by basing further promotion upon attendance at vocational — 

 not merely technical — continuation classes. The difficulties in 

 connection with vocational education, and particularly trades 

 schools, are many. For some time to come we may expect voca- 

 tional education to continue its present tendency to be academi- 

 callv theoretic and bookish, unless there is a frank recognition 

 that technical studies must blend intimately with the practice of 

 the trade to which they refer, unless there is that close correla- 

 tion between trade practice and trade theory which alone can 

 produce an effcient technology. It is admitted that the time is 

 not yet when a standard type of vocational education can be 



