TECHNICAL EDUCATION FOR QUEENSLAND. 797 



Knowledge on such practical points as I have mentioned would 

 go far towards placing the technical college student in a better light 

 in the eyes of employers and their foremen. It would in most cases 

 save him from being set to the ignominious duties of sweeping, and 

 cleaning, which at present are necessarily imposed on every beginner 

 in order to give him time to become accustomed to his surroundings, 

 and sufficiently familiar with elementary portions of the work to allow 

 of his being entrusted with any tools or material upon which to 

 operate. It will not give him that skill which an apprenticeship will 

 give, but it will be less restricted in its utility. It should be realised 

 by parents that much of the value set upon apprenticeships is empty 

 prestige. A lad enters a workshop at the age of fifteen or sixteen. He 

 is too young, and generally too thoughtless, to be entrusted with any 

 work. His occupation is indefinite. He is put to menial work to keep 

 him out of mischief until he has learnt, by observation, sufficient to 

 become useful to a journeyman, running errands, heating or sharpen- 

 ing tools, looking on while the man does the work. The man has no 

 time to teach the lad, and seldom has the faculty of imparting- 

 knowledge. Eventually the lad takes to some particular work and 

 shows aptitude for it. Foreman and journeyman are all pleased to 

 let him keep to that work. His employer is getting remunerative 

 work out of him, while the lad is acquiring quickness at this one 

 particular operation. If at the end of his time he obtains a sub- 

 stantial increase in wages, he generally settles down to work in the 

 one gi'oove, and his mental progress ceases. If his employer cannot 

 see his way to give him the necessaiy wages, he leaves the shop, and 

 soon realises how little he has learnt. He finds there is far more work 

 to be done outside the workshops than inside them, that there are more 

 men employed in erecting and running machinery than in making it, 

 but that he requires more knowledge than skill to succeed outside. 

 That this is the case in the old country is proved by the discussion 

 which took place in England on the occasion of an address by the 

 President of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, when a leading 

 technical journal criticised his advocacy of German methods of teach- 

 ing manufacturing processes in specialised technical schools, saying, 

 " Many engineers never see tlie inside of a works after they have left 

 their apprenticeship, their lives being passed in erecting and running 

 apparatus made by other people." This statement applies with 

 greater force to the conditions prevailing with us. In taking this 

 point of view, I am assuming that we shall during a great many years 

 to come be users of imported machinery, but not to any great extent 

 makers of it. Therefore our technical training should aim at teaching 

 those matters which are incidental to the purchase and erection of 

 machinery, its maintenance in good working order, and its profitable 

 industrial use. It should also give our youth an opportunity of 

 learning the amount of chemistry and general physics necessary for 

 the carrying on of the chief industries of the country, giving a training 

 of a more complete kind in those branches of industry which have, in 

 this State, so far developed as to warrant final training to the point 

 of imparting the skill of the finished tradesman. At the present time 

 such a condition has been attained only in the mining and pastoral 

 industries, and to a certain extent in the sugar and daiiying industries, 

 and all of these industries are specially catered for by the agricultural 

 collesfes and schools of mines. 



