EDUCATION-COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 307 



of age compares favorably with the best product of skilled 

 labor. In addition to these schools there are also in France 

 the professional schools (ecoles primaries superieures pro- 

 fessionelles) under the department of primary instruction, 

 which aim to give a certain amount of technical instruction as 

 a preparation for apprenticeship. 



If, then, our industrial and social development as a nation 

 demands highly specialized technical training, we have the ex- 

 perience of an alert and fearless nation as a guide. We have 

 for observation the manual training through all the grades of 

 the elementary school, and the technical training in the supe- 

 rior and practical schools. Their mistakes can be avoided, 

 their successes adopted. But do our needs demand it? That 

 is the question. The preliminary report of a committee of the 

 Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, made in 

 New York in July, 1900, on " American industrial education: 

 what shall it be?" is presumably the strongest expression to be 

 found for the necessity of manual and technical training in our 

 schools, inasmuch as the sympathies and work of the society 

 are entirely in that direction. Yet nowhere do we find a state- 

 ment that it should displace any portion of the liberal and 

 cultural education which is offered to the pupils of our schools, 

 but, on the contrary, it is distinctly stated that it must be 

 entirely supplemental to the mind informing and mind de- 

 veloping education. Lest there should be any misunder- 

 standing, there is set forth in italics the sound doctrine that 

 "in America all schooling should lead primarily to the eleva- 

 tion and development of the individual, and only secondarily 

 to a greater material prosperity." 



The committee further frankly states its inability, to agree 

 on the extent to which industrial training should be intro- 

 duced in the various grades of schools, but confines itself 

 rather to a discussion of the schools wherein all are agreed it 

 should find some place. If, then, a committee of specialists 

 cannot agree on this point, there is little likelihood that the 

 great body of schoolmen or the general public will do so. 

 There is probably little desirability that they should do so. 

 Such a consensus of opinion would argue an industrial condi- 

 tion in this country which we do not want to contemplate. 



