November 14, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



779 



tured into sueli obedient academic ma- 

 chines, without initiative or invention or 

 individi^ality, 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, further- 

 more, 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' en- 

 gagement, receiving some very small wage 

 from the beginning, and without paying a 

 premium. To obtain such employment 

 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 ob- 

 tained employment in shops which had 

 already taken some of our students. It is 

 certainly very difficult to convince an em- 

 ployer that a college man will not be a 

 nuisance in the shops. In Germany 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 subscribers 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 educa- 

 tion 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 affairs, and 

 ignorant critics of their mismanaged col- 

 lege. I feel sure that if the true meaning 

 of technical education were understood, it 

 would commend itself to Englishmen. 

 Technical education is an education in the 

 scientific and artistic principles which 

 govern the ordinary operations in any in- 

 dustry. It is neither a science, nor an 



art, nor the teaching of a handicraft. It 

 is that without which a master is an un- 

 skilled master; a foreman an unskilled 

 foreman; a workman an unskilled work- 

 man; and a clerk or farmer an unskilled 

 clerk or farmer. The cry for technical 

 education is simply a protest against the 

 existence of unskilled labor of all kinds.* 

 To have any good general system the 

 employers must cooperate. Much of the 

 training is workshop practice, and it can- 

 not be too often said that this is not to be 

 given in any college. The workshop in a 

 college serves a quite different purpose. 

 Now how may the practice best be given? 

 I must say that I like the Finsbury plan 



* 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 very stupidest way. They 

 have called themselves ' scientific ' and ' theoret- 

 ical ' till these words stinlc 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 elec- 

 trical engineer is unsuccessful because he has no 

 business habits, he takes to calculation and the 

 reading of so-called scientific books, because it is 

 very easy to get up a reputation for science. 

 The man is a bad engineer in spite of his science, 

 but people get to think that he is an unpractical 

 man because of his scientific knowledge. I do be- 

 lieve that the unbelief in technical education so 

 very general has this kind of illogical foundation. 

 Pour hundred years ago if a layman could read 

 or write he was probably a useless person who, 

 because he could not do well otherwise, took to 

 learning. "V^Tiat a man learnt was clumsily 

 learnt; usually he learnt little with great labor 

 and made no use of i.t; therefore reading and 

 writing seemed useless. Now that everybody is 

 compelled to read and write, it is not a usual 

 thing to say that it hurts a man to have these 

 powers. 



