234 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
of technical instruction. The need is admitted, though there is here and 
there some lingering reluctance to set about devising methods for meeting 
it. The method officially favoured is the advisory committee of manu- 
facturers and employees. My own experience in connection with the 
boot and shoe industry, however, leads me to advocate the direct repre- 
sentation of the manufacturing interest on the management committee of 
the institution or department. ‘There is the same time-lag in the manu- 
‘facturer’s notion of what the schools are doing, the existence of which 
in the mind of the general public I have already referred to. That time- 
lag is quickly recovered where there is immediate contact with the institu- 
tion itself. Not only does responsibility put a keener edge on service of 
any kind, but advice is tendered more carefully and is generally more 
practicable where that responsibility exists. The typical manufacturer 
is accustomed to see to the carrying out of his own ideas ; he does not 
take kindly to sitting in another room and framing recommendations 
which a committee of management can ignore if it chooses, and is some- 
times even disposed to regard as critical of its own action, or more usually 
inaction. For there is a type of public man which has a great capacity for 
deluding itself into the belief that popular election at once endows the 
elected representative with knowledge adequate for the performance of 
any public duty. Therefore let the manufacturers and employees have 
their representation on the governing body of the technical school or 
college, sharing in the give and take of its discussions, and in its responsi- 
bility for the conduct of the school. The ultimate power of the purse 
can easily be retained for the local authority by requiring an annual 
estimate of expenditure classified under appropriate headings, which 
when approved, must not be exceeded without going through the process 
of the supplementary estimate. 
Technical education in this country rests upon a voluntary basis. As I 
have shown, it owes little to suggestion or consistent stimulation from 
above. ‘The old term ‘ further education ’ would be a better description 
of it, for the desire to ‘ get on’ and prosper is only part of the story. 
Its chief motive force still is the craving of the individual for self-im- 
provement. ‘The youth of ordinary elementary education, on whom it 
dawns at about eighteen or nineteen years of age that his prospects of 
economic advancement are small, bestirs himself to take advantage of it. 
But there are numbers of students who want to develop particular studies 
for their own sake, and again others who are not content to accept the 
riddle of this unintelligible world, which every man becomes aware of 
sooner or later, without making an effort to unravel it. ‘These conditions 
explain why further education is so largely part-time education. They 
also explain the great number of students to be found in the part-time 
classes and institutions of all kinds. There are now about a million of 
these students, of whom perhaps 50,000 are studying in their employers’ 
time, or partly so, during the day, and the rest are attending night schools 
in their own time. Contrast that figure of a million with the number 
of those who are engaged in pre-employment full-time vocational courses. 
There are hardly more than 30,000 of them. If we examine the position 
at the critical age of fifteen to sixteen years we find that there are no more 
