PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 619 
sensible mathematics, They also formulated one recommendation so vital that it 
must be quoted in full :—- 
‘A leaving examination for secondary schools, similar in character to those 
already existing in Scotland and Wales, is desirable throughout the United 
Kingdom. It is desirable to have a standard such that it could be accepted by the 
Institution [of Civil Engineers] as equivalent to the Studentship Examination, and 
by the Universities and Colleges as equivalent to a Matriculation Examination.’ 
One may well wonder why such a reasonable recommendation has not long 
ago been carried out by the Board of Education. Perhaps it has been too busy 
over the religious squabble to attend to the pressing needs of the nation. 
The second set of recommendations relates to engineering training. It begins 
with the announcement that ‘long experience has led’ to general agreement 
among engineers as to the general lines on which practical training should 
proceed’; but goes into no recommendations on this head beyond favouring four 
years in workshops, on works, in mines, or in offices, expressing the pious desire that 
part of this practical training should be obtained in drawing-offices, and suggesting 
that during workshop-training the boys should keep regular hours, be subject to 
discipline, and be paid wages. It then lays down a dozen recommendations as to 
the ‘academic’ training suitable for the average boy. He should leave school 
about seventeen; he should have a preliminary year, or introductory workshop 
course of a year, either between leaving school and entering college, or after the 
first year of college training. If the workshop course follows straight on 
leaving school there must be maintenance of studies either by private tuition 
or in evening clases, so that systematic study be not suspended. For the average 
student, if well prepared before entering college, the course should last three 
academic years (three sessions); in some cases this might be extended to four 
or shortened to two. A sound and extensive knowledge of mathematics is — 
necessary in all branches of engineering, and those departments of mathematics 
which have no bearing upon engineering should not claim unnecessary time 
or attention. The Committee strongly recommends efficient instruction in 
engineering drawing. The college course should include instruction (necessarily 
given in the laboratory) in testing materials and structures, and in the principles 
underlying metallurgical processes. In the granting of degrees, diplomas, and 
certificates, importance should be attached to laboratory and experimental work 
performed by individual students, and such awards should not depend on the 
results of terminal or final examinations alone. 
All this is most excellent. It will be seen that it is entirely incompatible 
with the premium-pupil system, which may therefore be regarded as having been 
weighed and found wanting. For two things clearly stand out ; that the young 
engineer must be college-trained, and that when he goes to works he should be 
regularly paid. It would have been well if the Committee could have been 
more explicit as to the proper course of workshop training; for instance as to 
the systematic drafting of the young engineer through the shops—forge, foundry, 
pattern-shop, fitting-shop, &c., and as to the proper recognition of the duty of 
the shop-foreman to allocate work to the novice in suitable routine. These are 
doubtless among the matters in which ‘long experience has led engineers to 
general agreement.’ But this being so, it would have been well to state them 
authoritatively. A notable feature of this report is its healthy appreciation of 
the advantages of training, and an equally healthy distrust of the practice of 
cramming for examinations. So soon as any subject is crammed, it ceases to 
afford a real training. ‘Nature provides a very convenient safety-valve for 
knowledge too rapidly acquired.’ It is even whispered that a new species of 
crammer has arisen to ‘prepare’ candidates in engineering for the graduate 
examinations of the Institution of Civil Engineers. The distinguished framers of 
this epoch-making report on the education and training of engineers at least 
give no countenance to any such parasitical development. For the scheme of 
education and training at which the Committee has aimed is genuinely scientific, 
a happy federation of the theoretical with the practical. It seeks to place the 
