726 REPORT— 1902. - 



standardisation. Gymnasien and polytechnic systems are standardised in Ger- 

 many, and there is a tendency to import them into England ; but in my opinion 

 we are very far indeed from knowing any system which deserves to be standard- 

 ised, and the worst we can copy is what we find now in Germany and Switzer- 

 land. What we must strive for is the di.scovery of a British system suiting the 

 British boy and man. The English boy may be called stupid so often that he 

 actually believes himself to be stupid : but of one thing we may be sure, he will 

 find in some way or other an escape from the stupefying kind of school work to 

 which the German boy submits. And if it were possible to make the average 

 Engiish hoy of nineteen pass such a silly school-leaving examination as the German 

 boy,^ and to pass through a polytechnic, I am quite sure that there would be little 

 employment among common-sense English engineers for such a manufactured 

 article. But is it possible that British boys could be manufactured into such 

 obedient academic machines, without initiative or invention or individuality, by 

 teachers who are none of them engineers ? No, we must have a British system 

 of education. We cannot go on much longer as we have done in the past without 

 engineering education, and, furthermore, it must be such as to commend itself to 

 employers. Of my Finsbury students I think I may say that not one failed to 

 get into works on a two or three years' engagement, receiving some very small 

 wage from the beginning, and without paying a premium. To obtain such em- 

 ployment was obviously one test of fitness to be an engineer, because experienced 

 men thought it impossible. One test of the system was the greater ease with 

 which new men obtained employment in shops which had already taken some of 

 our students. It is certainly very difficult to convince an employer that a college 

 man will not be a nuisance in the shops. In Germanj' and France, and to a less 

 extent in America, there is among employers a belief in the value of technical 

 education. In England there is still complete unbelief. I have known the sub- 

 scribers of money to a large technical college in England (the members of its 

 governing board) to laugh, all of them, at the idea that the college could be of any 

 possible benefit to the industries of the town. They subscribed because just then 

 there was a craze for technical education due to a recent panic. They were 

 ignorant masters of works (sons of the men who had created the works), ignorant 

 administrators of the college afl^airs, and ignorant critics of their mismanaged 

 college. I feel sure that if the true meaning of technical education were under- 

 stood, it would commend itself to Englishmen. Technical education is an educa- 

 tion in the scientific and artistic principles which govern the ordinary operations 

 in any industry. It is neither a science, nor an art, nor the teaching of a handi- 

 craft. It is that without which a master is an unskilled master ; a foreman an 

 unskilled foreman ; a workman an unskilled workman ; and a clerk or farmer an 

 unskilled clerk or farmer. The cry for technical education is simply a protest 

 against the existence of unskilled labour of all kinds. '^ 



' The following is, I understand, a stock question at certain gj'mnasien : ' Write 

 out all the trigonometrical formulas you know.' I asked mj^ young informant, ' Well, 

 how many did you write ? ' ' Sixty-two ' was the answer. This yoimg man informed 

 me that a boy could not pass this examination unless he knew ' all algebra and all 

 trigonometry and all science.' Strassburg geese used to be fed in France ; now they 

 are fed in Germany. German education seems to be like smothering a fire with too 

 much fuel or wet slack which has the appearance of fuel. 



- I have pointed out how natural it is that business men should feel somewhat 

 antagonistic to college training. Poorly paid unpractical teachers, with no ideas of 

 their own, have in the past taught in the veiy stupidest way. They have called 

 themselves ' scienf ific ' and ' theoretical ' till these words stink in the nostrils of an 

 engineer. When I was an apprentice, and no doubt it is much the same now, if an 

 apprentice was a poor workman with his hands he often took to some kind of study 

 which he called the science of his trade. And in this way a pawkiness for science 

 got to be the sign of a bad workman. But if workmen were so taught at school that 

 they all really knew a little physical science, it would no longer be laughed at. 

 When a civil or electrical engineer is unsuccessful because he has no business habits, 

 he takes to calculation and the reading of so-called scientific books, because it is 



