SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 411 



Difficulties. 



1. Administrative. 



(o) Independent control of primary and secondary education by Provinces. 

 (6) Recent decision transferring control of all ' vocational ' education to Union. 

 No organic relation between this and Provincial primar}' and secondary system. 



2. Industrial. 



Limited local field of most apprenticeship Committees. Yet Act empowers them 

 to recommend to Minister (Labour) the number and nature of technical classes to be 

 attended by apprentices. Results in great diversity of claims on Union Education 

 Department for technical school provision. Steps taken to meet this (Central Advisory 

 Committee on courses and syllabuses). 



Co-operation of Technical School with Industry. 



1. Administrative centralisation of (a) Technical education under Union Minister ; 

 and {b) Labour organisation under Minister of Labour, avoids some of the difficulties 

 met with elsewhere. 



2. Organisation of industrial personnel under Conciliation Act and Apprenticeship 

 Act facilitates co-operation with education and serves to promote better understanding 

 by Industry of aims and methods of technical education. Lead given bj- Government 

 as employer in this respect. 



3. Supreme need for a worked-out ' philosophy ' of education from Industry 

 itself. Danger of the imposition upon industry of the formal and traditional concep- 

 tions of ' scholastic ' education. Illustration from marked distaste of technical 

 school pupils for so-called ' cultural subjects ' and strong preference for ' trade 

 subjects.' Whole conception of ' subjects ' as derived from pedagogic tradition of 

 the past needs to undergo drastic revision. Impossible to define proper place of public 

 education authority in technical education until organised industry has come to full 

 consciousness of its own educational need in relation to the need of the community as 

 a whole. 



(b) Mr. G. Fletcher. — Some Essays in Education for Industry. 



At the 1905 Meeting of the Association in Cape Town, the author read a paper 

 on ' Technical Education in a New Country.' In the sphere of technical education 

 both Ireland and South Africa might fairly be regarded as ' new ' at this period. 

 But the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century has seen noteworthy developments in 

 both countries, and this seems a fitting occasion on which to compare notes on the 

 progress made and difficulties experienced by those engaged in work of national — 

 even international — importance. Such a comparison should be especially fruitful 

 between two countries which, in the field of technical education, have many points 

 in common. In both the staple industry is agriculture, but a curriculum of agri- 

 cultural education suited to one country would prove unsuitable to the other. South 

 Africa is a growing country, and the trend of movement is towards the land. In 

 Ireland it is away from the land. The population has fallen by emigration from 

 over eight millions in 1840 to less than half, and is still falling — happily at a lower 

 rate — and this exodus is mainly from agricultural areas. Hence it is that a form of 

 education exclusively agricultural in rural areas, must leave a large proportion of 

 the people unfit to earn a living in towns, except by hard manual labour. 



The first decade of the operations of the Department of Agriculture and Technical 

 Instruction for Ireland was marked by a multiplication of Technical Schools, but 

 these scarcely touched the needs of rural areas and a comprehensive system of 

 ' itinerant ' teaching with ' Winter Schools ' of Agriculture was adopted. This 

 teaching comprised courses of instruction- — varying from six weeks to three months or 

 more — in Manual Instruction in Wood, Building Construction and, latei', in Com- 

 mercial subjects, with Domestic Economy for women. A comprehensive Scheme for 

 the training of teachers in these subjects was adopted. 



This work in rural areas was supplemented by the encouragement of rural 

 industries for which Ireland was renowned. There were numerous small industries — 

 lace and crochet, ' sprigging ' and other forms of embroidery, hand-loom woollens, 

 hosiery and the like, and these afforded a useful supplement to the income of the 

 small farmer. A large amount of public money was expended in the encouragement 

 of these, but they have gone backward. Lace and crochet making has suffered from 



