TECHNICAL EDUCATION 169 



appeared, none but the mother or fundamental sciences are 

 taught, and the three forms of drawing have one-third of the 

 whole school time allotted to them. Architectural drawing is 

 no doubt a misnomer ; by this is meant the drawing of ordinary 

 buildings. 



In the higher course lessons are added in the knowledge of 

 machinery and in mechanics two very different things in 

 chemical technology, physical technology, the construction of 

 buildings, the knowledge of materials, and chemical analogy ; 

 but drawing has still one-third of the whole school time given 

 to it. 



In the Edinburgh hospital only the least useful form of 

 drawing was taught ; it got two hours a week, and all the 

 inspector could say of it was, that the course was well adapted 

 to develop any power in this direction which a boy might 

 possess. 



Can any Englishman doubt which of these two courses of 

 study is best adapted to train either foremen or manufacturers ? 

 who does not know that the little Latin will vanish without 

 leaving even a tincture of literary training ? that the French 

 will never be learned in any form which can be practically used, 

 and will never be required by nineteen out of twenty pupils. 

 What foreman has any need of French ? Who really thinks 

 that dancing and singing are to be compared in value with any 

 one of the subjects in the Prussian course ? Why, then, do not 

 our great industrial schools boldly throw off these traditional 

 bonds, and follow the well-tried course of the German schools ? 

 At one time Latin was the one thing which could be accurately 

 taught, and was therefore the one means of mental culture. 

 Long after this ceased to be true it remained a necessary pur- 

 port to a rise in social position ; but except for the Church, who 

 now can suppose that a knowledge of Latin is likely to aid an 

 ambitious vouth to rise in life as a knowledge of phvsics and 



A v 



Chemistry would aid him ? 



I am the last man to decry literary cultivation, but Latin, 

 as taught in middle-class schools, gives no literary culture ; 

 French gives still less ; and I call, therefore, on all interested 

 in middle-class education to give literary culture through the 

 mother tongue, and mental culture through natural science, 



