208 



NA TURE 



[April 15, 1909 



of even the poorest parents should not, by reason of his 

 leaving school at fourteen, lose his opportunities of reach- 

 ing the very top of the educational ladder ; and I am 

 anxious to lay the greatest stress on the desirability of 

 extensively drafting the very best evening students into 

 the technical universities. 



The second alternative for the boy of fourteen is to 

 continue his school life in a trade school to his seventeenth 

 year, when the final certificate will give him access to the 

 technical university after an apprenticeship or pupilage of 

 at least one, better two, years. This would be the easiest 

 and the more general road to the technical university ; 

 but, again, on leaving the trade school the student may 

 be apprenticed for three years, attending also the evening 

 classes, and he may qualify for the second year of the 

 technical university, or even obtain a maintenance scholar- 

 ship. 



The third way of reaching the technical university would 

 be through the grammar school or equivalent secondary 

 schools. The certificate of having passed a certain 

 standard either on the modern or the classical side would, 

 again, without further entrance examination, be accepted 

 as sufficient proof of adequate education, though for 

 engineering, building, and textile departments at least one, 

 but preferably two, years' practical work should precede 

 the university studies. 



The above forms an outline, though a very rough and 

 compressed one, of my ideas. Let us, in conclusion, con- 

 sider the most important question as to how the general 

 introduction of any such national scheme would affect 

 existing schools, and also the position of the technical 

 teacher. 



The majority of the existing technical day institutions 

 would cease to exist as such ; they have given conclusive 

 proof that they have no right of existence. They would 

 be transformed into trade schools for the daytime. The 

 evening technical classes, however, would not only be 

 maintained, but further developed, as they would grow 

 enormously in general importance. 



A number of the existing colleges and universities, 

 spread at sufficiently large intervals over the country, 

 would be developed into technical universities of the highest 

 order, challenging comparison, not only as regards equip- 

 ment, but in every other respect, with the very best 

 institutions of other nations. According to the nature of 

 the district, such technical university might be split up, 

 where necessary, and an engineering college be established 

 in one centre, a textile college in another, a mining college 

 in a third, &c. Thus regard could be paid to local re- 

 quirements to a considerable extent, while at the same 

 time abolishing the present disastrous multiplication of 

 efforts. The technical university should in its management 

 be independent of local authorities ; it should be entirely 

 self-governing, and be under the direct control of the 

 Board of Education. It should be permeated by a 

 thoroughly democratic spirit, and those recruited from 

 the technical evening classes by means of maintenance 

 scholarships should form a very large percentage of its 

 students. 



Now, as to the position of the technical teacher, will it 

 suffer or improve under such a scheme? 



The answer is obvious if wC' will only consider what it 

 is at present. The technical teacher is overburdened with 

 day and with evening work, in addition to which, as is 

 well known, he must spend a great deal of spare time in 

 private study if he wishes to keep up to date in his rapidly 

 progressing subjects ; but, in spite of this, his salary, on 

 the whole, is hardly better than that of the elementary 

 teacher. In the endeavour to economise at all costs, cor- 

 porations seem more and more jnclined to consider the 

 salaries of technical teachers as the most appropriate sub- 

 ject for curtailment ; and, further, it seems to me, the 

 technical teacher does not stand very high in the estima- 

 tion of either the general public or "the employer of 

 labour. 



Summing up, I find that his position is far from being 

 in accordance with the importance of his work with regard 

 to the life and development of an industrial nation. The 

 reason js obvious. As yet technical education itself occupies 

 a position far below that which is its due, and, of course, 



XO. 2059, ■^'OL. 80] 



the technical teaching profession is inseparably connected 

 with it. By lifting technical education up to its proper 

 level and making it a national affair you would make the 

 technical teacher a national or, to use the ordinary term, 

 a Civil Servant, and the technical teaching profession 

 would receive the recognition which it deserves, and which 

 it receives in other countries. 



That is, in my judgment, the only way in which English 

 technical Education may be enabled to exercise that amount 

 of guiding and enlightening influence which it must possess 

 if this industrial country wishes to maintain its front seat 

 in the council of the nations. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDVCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 

 At a meeting of the East Lancashire Branch of the 

 .'\ssociation of Teachers in Technical Institutions ori 

 .April 17 at the Municipal School of Technology, Man- 

 chester, Prof. W. W. Haldane Gee will open a discussion 

 on " The Optical Lantern and the Microscope, with 

 Special Reference to their Educational Uses." 



During the last three years an investigation has been 

 in progress in the United States to trace the cause of the 

 failure of the physics teaching in the secondary schools of 

 the country, and the educational journals have devoted 

 much space to the question. It now seems possible to 

 give a summary of the most important facts which the 

 inquiry has brought to light. When physics was first 

 introduced into American secondary schools, a distinct 

 effort was made to present it as a means of explaining 

 the various natural phenomena witnessed by the pupil in 

 his daily life. Few experiments were performed, and those 

 by the teacher with the simplest possible apparatus. Then 

 came the decree that methods must be changed so as to 

 meet the requirements of college entrance examinations, 

 and, as a result, pupils were on the one hand forced into 

 " inductive " or first-hand work, for which they were 

 quite unsuited, and on the other were overwhelmed with 

 mathematical formulse, in which the physics was buried 

 past disinterment. Now there is a strong desire to return 

 to the ideals which prevailed in the past, to sever the 

 school teaching from college control, to reduce the emphasis 

 now laid on mathematical formula; and on extreme 

 accuracy in experimental work, and to base the subject 

 on the daily experience of the pupils. The national com- 

 mission has our cordial support in its efforts at reform. 



The March number of the Psychological Bulletin is 

 devoted to child and educational psychology. Prof. O'Shea 

 writes of progress in this field, and puts his finger definitely 

 upon the necessity for the establishment of institutions for 

 educational research in which children of every age will 

 be available for observation and experiment. There are 

 many psychological laboratories, but no institution in 

 which the resources of the experimental psychologist are 

 solely devoted to the problems of the teacher. Perhaps the 

 nearest approach to this ideal is to be found in Leipzig, 

 where the enterprise of the teaching profession has estab- 

 lished a centre for scientific research into those unknown 

 forces with the behaviour of which the schoolmaster is 

 expected to have expert knowledge. Prof. Bagley's article, 

 on the psychology of school practice, gives an excellent 

 summary of recent work in this field, and admits the 

 importance of the evidence, which is steadily accumulating, 

 in favour of the doctrine of formal training, albeit in a 

 form less crude than that against which the Herbartian 

 has always tilted. The survey of work in Germany, 

 France, and elsewhere is useful, though the omission of 

 the name of Binet from that part which deals with French 

 activity in this direction is surprising. Prof. Earl Barnes 

 writes of England, and finds our national activities taking 

 traditional forms — Royal commissions, congresses, inter- 

 departmental committees. Public interest in psychological 

 questions is steadily growing in our country, forced upon 

 us " by a disorganised school system, by industrial stagna- 

 tion and an army of unemployed people, by the agitation 

 for woman's suffrage and by the unrest in India." Truly 

 outsiders see most of the game ! 



