602 



NATURE 



{Oct. 27, 1881 



all living men Dr. Siemens has the best right to speak 

 upon the relations between scientific education and the 

 scientific industries. Himself a product of the educational 

 system of Germany, and one of the foremost, if not in his 

 own line the foremost, of scientific men in the industrial 

 world, and in the land of his adoption, he yet uses no 

 unmeaning terms when he tells us that the particular form 

 of technical education afl'orded by that characteristic in- 

 stitution, the German Polytechnicum, " is certainly inap- 

 plicable to the condition of things which we find in this 

 country." 



The argument with which Dr. Siemens enforces this 

 view is, so far as we are aware, a novel one from the edu- 

 cational point of view. He assumes frankly and without 

 disguise that in any industry which is, like the railway 

 system of Germany or our own telegraphic system, a 

 Government monopoly, there is essentially a tendency to 

 discourage improvements or any thing savouring of novelty 

 or innovation. He also assumes that the system of 

 "polytechnic" education fosters a like tendency, inas- 

 much as he thinks that, as administered in Germany, this 

 system turns out students destitute of originality, and 

 dogmatically persuaded that the particular machines or 

 processes they have studied in the Polytechnicum are 

 embodiments of perfection proved and established like 

 propositions in Euclid. From these two premises the 

 inference logically follows that although the Polytech- 

 nicum may be all very well for turning out young men 

 fitted for Government appointments in a country where 

 railways, mines, and factories are State establishments, 

 such an institution is inappropriate in a country like 

 England. 



There is doubtless much force in this position, though 

 the contrast between industrial conditions in Germany 

 and England is hardly fairly represented by so sweeping 

 a generalisation. If in a land of strong tendencies toward 

 monopolism and conservatism the system of technical 

 education has taken a similar bias, we should be disposed 

 to argue that a complete system of technical education 

 would, in a country where industrial enterprise is freer, 

 tend toward a freer development. 



On the other hand. Dr. Siemens sees plainly the in- 

 herent badness of the condition of things in England, 

 where technical education has so long been neglected. 

 He condemns in toto the old system of binding a lad to 

 an apprenticeship of seven years' drudgery and mechani- 

 cal routine, causing him, as such a system does, to give 

 up thinking altogether; and is in favour of a much 

 shorter term of pupillage. 



Though he is not very explicit on the point, it is not 

 difficult to gather the general drift of Dr. Siemens' views 

 as to what system he would adopt in preference to the 

 method of the German Polytechnic Colleges. Firstly, 

 he would have science-teaching systematically incorpo- 

 rated in the educational curriculum of every school in 

 the manner in which we have for years advocated, and in 

 which Sir John Lubbock and many others have advocated 

 it. He would also have science taught by practical work 

 in chemical, physical, and mechanical laboratories 

 attached to the schools. In the case of the industrial 

 classes he would have mathematics and natural science 

 taught to all lads before the age of fourteen, and would 

 fix that as the minimum a;/e at which they should be 



admissible to work in mines or factories. Were this 

 done, he thinks a three years' apprenticeship would be 

 amply sufficient to learn any mechanical trade ; and he 

 would lay upon the employer the responsibility of seeing 

 that during this term the apprentice spent his even- 

 ings and his Saturdays in diligent attendance at some 

 technical or technological class where the principles 

 underlying the operations of his business would be taught 

 him. 



We cannot too heartily endorse this last suggestion, 

 which is now the more appropriate when not only in the 

 metropolis but in all our chief towns and cities such 

 classes for pure and applied science are being held under 

 the auspices of the Science and Art Department and of 

 the City and Guilds' Institute. 



Another point on which Dr. Siemens speaks with 

 weight is the importance of providing an adequate supply 

 of trained teachers. Those who know the history of the 

 attempts to render the teaching of the science classes 

 under the Science and Art Department of greater effi- 

 ciency, will heartily unite in the satisfaction expressed by 

 Dr. Siemens concernmg the reforms now in progress by 

 which the Royal School of Mines and its associated 

 science classes will be reorganised and developed into 

 a Normal School of Science. The neglect and 

 apathy of previous Governments have been indeed 

 deplorable ; but it is to be hoped that the greatest of 

 the acknowledged defects of the national system of 

 science-teaching are now in a fair way to be efficiently 

 remedied. 



Dr. Siemens points out that while laboratory work in 

 schools is necessary it is comparatively inexpensive, being 

 elementary in character. But for the efficient training 

 not of teachers alone, but of students who have advanced 

 beyond first principles, the delicate and elaborate ap- 

 pliances of exact science are more than ever essential : 

 and for that reason "very complete laboratories are of 

 great importance at the universities and superior colleges, 

 where exact science and independent research take the 

 place of mere tuition of first principles." We trust these 

 words will not be lost in the places where they are most 

 needed. When we look at the large and complete equip- 

 ment of the mechanical, physical, and chemical labora- 

 tories of the colleges and universities to be found in every 

 large town in Germany, France, and Switzerland, and 

 compare them with the utterly shabby and insignificant 

 dens which go by these names in the science colleges of 

 Newcastle, Bristol, and Leeds, we feel that by no means 

 the least important point of Dr. Siemens' discourse is the 

 paragraph we have quoted above. 



The concluding remarks, in which Dr. Siemens alluded 

 to the Electrical Exhibition in Paris as pointing the moral 

 of the inevitable changes and improvements which are 

 continually invading every branch of industry cannot fail 

 to impress many whose experience will confirm the truth 

 of the observation. The plain fact remains that in 

 the race of industrial improvements England cannot 

 afford to stand still. And if the Continental nations 

 have in some respects stolen a march upon us in 

 these last years, it is not yet too late to organise and 

 develop a system of technical education of our own 

 adapted to our own special industrial conditions and 

 needs. 



