230 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Mar. 9, i8 



While our exports have suifered curtailment, the more 

 advanced of the Continental countries have not only 

 supplied their own markets with common goods, but 

 have opened up a most important export trade in 

 attractive goods and novelties which not only supersede 

 British goods in neutral markets but find their way in 

 ever-increasing quantities to our own. To put the case 

 briefly, I may say that the Technical Commissioners, in 

 conducting this branch of our inquiry, ascertained that 

 our imports of foreign manufactures, with some exceptions, 

 were not due to the longer hours and the lower wages of for- 

 eign operatives, as is generally supposed, but to the supe- 

 riority, attractiveness, or novelty of the goods themselves. 



We discovered, often to our great surprise, English 

 machines in foreign countries producing more eft'ective, 

 more attractive, and more saleable goods than were being 

 produced by English machines in competing establishments 

 in this country. In the second place, we found that the 

 special qualities which promoted the sale of foreign 

 products, so largely imported by the people of this 

 country, were due to the scientific or artistic training of 

 emploj'ers, foremen, designers, chemists, or workmen, in 

 the establishments where the goods were produced. In 

 every industry in competing countries abroad, those 

 persons who are responsible for the designing, shaping, 

 finishing, colouring, or making up of a fancy article, 

 whether it be in metal work, pottery, furniture, or a 

 woven or printed fabric, have almost invariably received 

 some training in art or science, or have gone through a 

 special technical school. In England, the majority of per- 

 sons holding similar positions have received no artistic or 

 scientific training whatever, except when, as often 

 happens, those positions are held by foreign designers or 

 chemists, or by Englishmen who have been trained in 

 foreign countries. 



And if we discovered that one of the chief causes of 

 our deficiency in the production of saleable commodities 

 was to be found in our lack of scientific or artistic 

 training, we discovered also that the superior " methods 

 of commerce," on the part of some of our neighbours, 

 was equally due to their more appropriate scholastic 

 instruction. The foreign correspondents in the mer- 

 chants' offices in our large towns, who are employed 

 because Englishmen of equal linguistic ability and 

 training could not be obtained ; the foreign agents and 

 travellers from Germany and other countries, scattered 

 all over the world, pushing the business of their 

 respective firms and countries, have qualified for their 

 positions by a commercial training which has hitherto 

 been almost inaccessible to the Englishman. 



It is sufficiently humiliating to be compelled to 

 acknowledge that, in the industrial contest of to-daj', 

 English machinery is being employed to better and more 

 profitable account by some of our rivals than by our- 

 selves ; but it is infinitely more serious and more 

 humiliating to find that in the conditions of training 

 which best tend to promote future efficiency and success, 

 the rising generations of other countries are being far 

 better prepared than those of England. 



I believe that by carrying into operation a Technical 

 Instruction Bill, wise and just in its provisions, applying 

 to agriculture as well as to commerce, meeting the wants 

 of the artisan, the foreman, the commercial man, the 

 employer, and taking effect in every parish in the country, 

 new vigour and force will be given to our British indus- 

 tries, and the well-being and prosperity of the nation will 

 be materially increased. 



In considering this question, we must keep clearly 

 before us the fact that our aim is to develop, through^ 

 a more highly cultured people, our industrial system : to 

 regain of our commerce what we have lost ; to retain 

 and improve that which we hold. In so much as education 

 can help in this movement, then education must be 

 supplied, and with no niggardly hand. We have to cope 

 with countries which have organised their education as 

 thoroughly as they have organised their military systems, 

 and with the same regardlessness of cost; indeed, they 

 have found that the union of scientific knowledge with 

 practice, which forms the best equipment of nations in 

 the arts of war, also forms their most formidable equip- 

 ment in the arts of peace. 



In suggesting a programme I go far beyond the Tech- 

 nical Instruction Bill of the Government, which was 

 submitted to the House of Commons and withdrawn after 

 passing its second reading last Session. 



Briefly, the object of the Bill was to enable a local 

 authority — a School Board, or Council of a Borough 

 where there is no School Board — to supplement by tech- 

 nical instruction the elementary education supplied in 

 its district. Power was given to each district to provide 

 technical schools out of the local rates ; to combine for 

 the purpose with any other local authority, or to contri- 

 bute to the maintenance, or provision and maintenance 

 of any technical school with the sanction of the Science 

 and Art Department. The conditions required were that 

 each scholar receiving local aid should have passed the 

 Sixth Standard of the Education Code, and that each 

 school provided under the Act should be conducted in 

 accordance with the minutes of the Science and Art 

 Department, which were to be fulfilled by such a 

 school in order to obtain a grant from that Depart- 

 ment. 



To provide for objections on the part of ratepayers, 

 power was given, under clause 3 of the Bill, for opposi- 

 tion to its adoption by a written requisition of fifty rate- 

 payers demanding a poll of votes of the locality. This 

 clause, however, did not apply to the metropolis, nor was 

 it included in the Bill for Scotland. 



The term " Technical Education " was defined as 

 instruction in the branches of science and art with 

 respect to which grants are or may be made bj' the 

 Science and Art Department, and I propose to adopt the 

 same term in my own suggestions which follow. 



I will not comment upon the Bill, further than to 

 express a hope that the provision for a poll of the rate- 

 payers — which seemed to have been inserted in order to 

 tempt localities to refuse to carry it into eftect — will not 

 appear in the new Bill. 



In order to bring our system of education into harmony 

 with the immediate wants of each locality, and to enable 

 our people, consistently with our national habits, to 

 obtain such technical training as will materially help them 

 in the practical work of life, the following educational 

 provisions are necessary : — 



First, as to Elementary Education — under School 

 Boards and voluntary school managers. 



1. Infant Schools. — The introduction of the Kinder- 

 garten methods of instruction should be everywhere 

 encouraged, as tending to the development of skill and 

 observation on the part of the children. 



2. Elementary Schools. — 



(a.) That drawing be taught universally to boys and 

 girls, and that the teaching of modelling be encouraged 

 by grant. 



