NATURE 



457 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, i{ 



THE TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT. 



IN the Speech from the Throne at the close of the 

 session, Her Majesty is made to express satisfaction, 

 inter alia, with " the steps you have taken towards the 

 estabHshment of technical education in England and 

 Wales," and perhaps the words here placed in the 

 Queen's mouth will do as well as any others to express 

 the feeling with which the Government Bill was regarded 

 by the friends of technical instruction all over the country, 

 and by those who for years past have laboured in the 

 cause. Steps have been taken " towards " the establish- 

 ment of technical education in England and Wales, not 

 very complete or large steps, but still steps which show 

 that the Government, when time and opportunity arise, 

 are prepared to go further, and which pledge the present 

 Ministry, at any rate, to secondary technical instruction. 

 That the new Act goes no further is not necessarily due 

 to any lukewarmness on the part of the Vice-President of 

 the Council or of his colleagues. The circumstances of 

 the past few years were such that a very large amount of 

 legislation had to be proposed, and if possible carried, 

 during the session just ended ; and any Government 

 would naturally desire to avoid all contentious subjects 

 except those which imperatively called for treatment. 

 Unfortunately, nothing is easier than to revive in certain 

 quarters in the House of Commons the heated edu- 

 cational controversies of twenty years ago ; there are 

 still some men whose blood is fired by these antique 

 battle-cries, and who think it their duty to ride forth 

 to a war in which there is nowadays no real enemy. 

 We think that the friends of technical instruction have 

 every reason to be grateful to a Government which, with 

 many inducements to do nothing, have yet brought in and 

 passed a Bill which, with Sir Henry Roscoe's amend- 

 ments, was supported by all the members of the Royal 

 Commission on Technical Instruction who had seats in 

 the House of Commons. But, we hear it said, the Bill 

 is a very poor and small measure, while the subject is one 

 to be dealt with by a large, comprehensive, and elaborate 

 enactment ; the principle of the administration is all 

 wrong, for it divides technical education from the ordinary 

 •education of the country, — it should be administered by the 

 School Boards and by the School Boards only ; it is mere 

 paltry, tinkering legislation where it might be heroic, and 

 so on. No doubt in the best of all possible worlds the 

 matter would be different, but here below we have to 

 take things as we find them ; and amongst the things 

 which we find, is a legislative machine which labours 

 heavily and slowly, and which has to be manipulated with 

 a hundred and one different considerations in view. The 

 House of Commons is far, indeed, from being an ideally 

 perfect assembly for dealing with technical education or 

 any subject of the kind ; but in this, as in most other 

 matters in this country, where compromise governs in all 

 things, from the position of the Queen on the throne down- 

 wards, the question is not what we ought to have, but 

 what we can get. Things do not spring full-grown from 

 ■the brain of the British Jove ; we do not get complete, 

 Vol. XL.— No. 1037. 



exhaustive, elaborate legislative enactments from the 

 British Parliament ; finality is never written on any of 

 its proceedings ; it never seeks theoretical perfection. 

 First we get one small inadequate measure ; by and by 

 this is enlarged, amended, improved, supplemented, by a 

 succession of Acts, spread, it may be, overyears, and per- 

 plexing lawyers and administrators by their inconsistent 

 and contradictory provisions ; then last of all comes a 

 reforming official who elaborates all these scattered Acts 

 into one homogeneous statute, which he succeeds in 

 getting through Parliament just as the whole becomes 

 useless in consequence of some new policy or wave of 

 public opinion ; and then the process is all gone 

 through again. As to the objection respecting the 

 authority administering the Act, we must confess we 

 cannot attach any weight to it, in comparison with 

 the substantial concession to the demand for technical 

 instruction which it makes. It seems to us that it can 

 matter very little which particular one of our numerous 

 local authorities is to be the medium for passing on to the 

 public the benefits conferred by the Act. No doubt 

 the work is more within the scope of the School 

 Boards ; but to refuse those benefits because, for 

 reasons which are perfectly well understood by those 

 who have followed the discussion, they come from 

 County and Borough Councils and rural sanitary authori- 

 ties, would be absurd pedantry — almost a crime. One 

 member of the House of Commons was filled with dismay 

 at the prospect of the rural and urban sanitary authori- 

 ties raising technical institutes out of the public funds, 

 although he quite approved of technical instruction. It 

 does not appear that a technical institute will be any the 

 worse because the money with which it is maintained will 

 be raised by a number of men with one long name 

 rather than a number with another long name : the public 

 gets the institute all the same. Moreover, this point is 

 rendered of little or no importance, even in itself, by 

 the present position of local government in this country. 

 It is now in a transition stage ; most of the existing 

 machinery which has not already been taken to pieces 

 will certainly have to undergo that process in the course 

 of the next few years, and we feel no assurance at all that 

 School Boards themselves will not shortly disappear, to 

 be replaced by Education Committees of County and 

 Borough Councils, as existing sanitary authorities will 

 be supplanted by Sanitary Committees and sub-com- 

 mittees. From this point of view, even if a great 

 question of principle were otherwise involved, it would 

 not matter much which set of authorities under 

 took the task, seeing that all are likely to be equally 

 short-lived, and to be merged soon in the County or 

 Borough Councils, as the case may be. What satisfies 

 those true friends of our national progress who have 

 made this subject their own in Parliament, and who 

 are in specially favourable positions for judging what 

 is attainable, will probably satisfy most other sensible 

 advocates of technical instruction. In common phrase, 

 the Act is " something to go on with " ; it is even more, 

 because it is a pledge that the Government will go 

 further in due time. In an excellent and well-con- 

 sidered article on the subject, the Times (September 4) 

 says it "remains for us to make the best use of the 

 system about to be established, to take note of the 



