NA TURE 



§7 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1877 



TECHNICAL EDUCATION 



I^ROF. HUXLEY has seized the occasion afiforded 

 him by his promise to aid the Working Man's Club 

 and Institute Union by contributing to their present series 

 of fortnightly lectures, to state his opinion on a question 

 which, as we have already informed our readers, has 

 lately been exercising the minds of some of the most 

 influential members of various city companies. 



For some time past a joint committee, representing the 

 most important among these bodies, has been endeavour- 

 ing to obtain information as to the best means of applying 

 certain of their surplus funds to the assistance of what is 

 called technical education, and there is little doubt that a 

 proposal for a huge technical university, made some time 

 ago, and the discussion which took place in connection 

 with that proposal, has had somewhat to do in leading to 

 the present condition of affairs. 



Prof. Huxley and some four or five other gentlemen 

 have been appealed to by this joint committee to send in 

 reports on what they consider the best way to set about 

 the work, and it is from this point of view that Prof. 

 Huxley'* lecture is so important. It was not merely fresh 

 and brilliant and full of good things, as all his lectures 

 are, but is doubtless an embodiment of his report to the 

 joint committee. 



We are rejoiced, therefore, to see that Prof. Huxley is 

 at one with the views which we have all along expressed 

 in Nature, namely, that, after all, the mind is the most 

 important instrument which the handicraftsman, whether 

 he be a tinker or a physiuist, will ever be called upon to 

 use, and that therefore a technical education which 

 teaches him to use a lathe, or a tool, or a loom, before he 

 has learned how to use his mind, is no education at all. 



Prof. Huxley not only defined technical education as 

 the best training to qualify the pupil for learning techni- 

 calities for himself, but he stated what he considered such 

 an education might be, and how the city funds can be 

 best spent in helping it on. 



Besides being able to read, write, and cipher, the 

 student should have had such training as should have 

 awakened his understanding and given him a real in- 

 terest in his pursuit. The next requirement referred to 

 was some acquaintance with the elements of physical 

 science — a knowledge rudimentary, it might be, but good 

 and sound, so far as it went, of the properties and cha- 

 racter of natural objects. The professor is also of opinion 

 that it is eminently desirable that he should be able, more 

 or less, to draw. The faculty of drawing, in the highest 

 artistic sense, was, it was conceded, like the gift of poetry, 

 inborn and not acquired ; but as everybody almost could 

 write in some fashion or other, so, for the present purpose, 

 as writing was but a kind of drawing, everybody could 

 more or less be supposed to draw. A further desideratum 

 was some ability to read one or two languages besides 

 the student's own, that he might know what neighbouring 

 nations, and those with which we were most mixed up, 

 were doing, and have access to valuable sources of infor- 

 mation which would otherwise be sealed to him. But 

 above all- and this the speaker thought wai th« moit 

 Vol. xvii, — No. 433 



essential condition— the pupil should have kept in all its 

 bloom the freshness and youthfulness of his mind, all the 

 vigour and elasticity proper to that age. Pro^. Huxley 

 then went on to explain that this freshness and vigour 

 should not have been washed out of the student by the 

 incessant labour and intellectual debauchery often in- 

 volved in grinding for examinations. 



We gather from this part of the address— we shall refer 

 to the others by and by— that so far as Prof. Huxley's 

 advice goes we are not likely to see any great expenditure 

 of the money of the ancient city corporations either in the 

 erection of a huge "practical" university or in the 

 creation of still another " Examining Board." How then 

 does he propose to spend it ? 



Here we come to a substantial proposal, which Prof. 

 Huxley may consider to be the most important part of his 

 address. What is wanted, he considers, is some ma- 

 chinery for utilising in the public interest special talent 

 and genius brought to light in our schools. " If any 

 Government could find a Watt, a Davy, or a Faraday in 

 the market, the bargain would be dirt cheap at 100,000/." 

 Referring to his saying when he was a member of the 

 London School Board that he should like to see a ladder 

 by which a child could climb from the gutter to the highest 

 position in the State, he dwelt upon the importance of 

 some system by which any boy of special aptitude should 

 be encouraged to prolong his studies, to join art and 

 science classes, and be apprenticed, with a premium if 

 necessary. In the case of those who showed great fitness 

 for intellectual pursuits they might be trained as pupil- 

 teachers, brought to London, and placed in some col- 

 legiate institution or training school. In this way the 

 money of the guilds would be spent in aiding existing 

 teaching systems, in which, on the whole, an enormous 

 progress was acknowledged. 



It is true the architects of London would not have the 

 opportunity of immortalising themselves by erecting an 

 imposing edifice, but, on the other hand, the influence of 

 the Guilds might be felt whenever there was a handicraft 

 to foster, or a potential Watt to be sought out. 



We do not imagine that it is Prof. Huxley's idea that 

 there shall be no local representation of the city's new 

 activity and influence ; the reference to the training 

 of teachers, we fancy, and other remarks here and there, 

 seem to point to some such institution as the jfecole 

 Normale of Paris, where the best and most practical 

 scientific teaching could be carried on. Every one knows 

 how much room there is for such an institution as 

 this, but on this little money need be spent, '"so far as 

 bricks and mortar are concerned, as little money is 

 needed to equip such laboratories as are really meant 

 for work. 



There is an advantage in such lectures as these by no 

 means limited to the expression of opinion on the part of 

 the speaker. The slow and sure way in which science is 

 taking a hold upon our national progress is well evidenced 

 by the fact that the daily press can now no longer ignore 

 such outcomes as these, and hence it is that they do 

 good beyond the mere boundary of the question under 

 discussion. They show the importance of, and foster 

 interest in, the general question of intellectual and scien- 

 tific progress. 

 The Timts agrees in the main with the kind of educa- 



