224 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



all teaching and gmdance both in schools and universities that this 

 interpretation should be up to date. 



But we must carry this line of thought a step further. When the 

 university professor or research student synthesizes a number of dis- 

 coveries in physics or biology, he is not merely digesting information 

 received and passing it on to those who will have to teach it ; he is also, 

 by his very synthesis, profoundly influencing the direction of further 

 exploration and discovery. Synthesis and discovery react upon each 

 other. It should be the same with the more practical syntheses of 

 industrial practice. Universities and technical colleges should not confine 

 themselves to receiving information as to the type of organisation, both of 

 men and machines, adopted in the most up-to-date factories, and trans- 

 lating that information into a course of training for the men required by 

 such a factory. They should also make a deliberate effort to ensure, so far 

 as possible, that such courses of training react upon industrial practice, 

 and that those responsible for such courses are accepted by industry, not 

 only as subservient trainers but as intelligent ad^'isers. It is perhaps in 

 this respect that the relations between American universities and American. 

 in fl us try differ most markedly from the relations which prevail ixi this 

 country ; and our industry suffers in co)isequence. For instance, education 

 and industrial practice are at complete cross purposes in this country in 

 their treatment of technologists. Industry demands highly trained 

 technologists and the universities supply them, only to find that the road 

 to management in industry does not lie through the technical but through 

 the commercial side. The best imiversity men consequently find that 

 their technical qualifications are rather a handicap to their career, and 

 tend to pass over to the commercial side at the first opportunity. There 

 can be little doubt that our industrial practice in this respect is wrong ; 

 it is certainly at variance with the practice in every other great industrial 

 country. It is this sort of maladjustment to outside demand which 

 makes all the difference between good and bad education, and where it 

 exists it cannot be corrected by any initiative or originality in the school- 

 master. It can only be corrected by a persistent effort on the part of 

 universities and technical colleges to come to terms with the outside 

 demand represented by industrial and commercial firms, and a readiness 

 on the part of those firms to take a reasonable amount of educational 

 advice. 



I should, perhaps, apologise for having spent so unconscionable a time 

 in packing-up for my journey to a policy of higher education. But it has 

 seemed to me necessary to insist, even to the point of weariness, that such 

 a policy cannot be evolved by educators or politicians out of their inner 

 consciousness, out of any study by the teacher of adolescent psychology, 

 or out of any theorising by the politician about the rights of children or 

 parents. A policy of higher education must be built up in response to the 

 outside demand of the workaday world, that ' fair field full of folk, the 

 rich and the poor, each working and wandering as the world requires,' 

 where men are adding to the sum of human knowledge and human 

 activities. And I have wished, too, to point out that, in interpreting that 

 demand, universities and technical colleges will not be engaging in some 

 new and irksome ' serving of tables,' incongruous with their apostolic 



