398 Transactions. — Miscellaneous, 



Art. L. — On a System of Technical Education for Artizans. 



By C. W. Purnell. 

 [Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 3rd April, 1884.] 

 The discussion which has recently taken place on the suhject of the public 

 library has brought into prominence the fact that, twelve years ago the Pro- 

 vincial Council of Canterbury was enlightened enough to set apart no mean 

 area of the public estate as an endowment for primarily a School of Tech- 

 nical science. I do not propose to criticize the use to which that endow- 

 ment has hitherto been put further than to observe that no such school 

 exists, no attempt has been made to establish one, nor have any of the pro- 

 ceeds of the endowment been permitted to accumulate for the purposes of 

 such a school ; but I think that the time has arrived when active steps 

 should be taken towards opening technical schools in Christchurch and the 

 other large towns of the colony, and I invite you to consider the following 

 arguments in support of that proposal. 



Our costly and elaborate system of education will in the course of a few 

 years flood the country with highly-educated men, but highly-educated on a 

 literary type. From our primary schools upwards we insist that superior 

 knowledge shall mean superior scholastic attainments. Now, the bulk of 

 the male pupils attending our primary schools must expect to earn their 

 livelihood when they become men by manual labour. The manufactories 

 which are fortunately being established in all parts of the colony will form 

 the natural theatre of employment for a large proportion of these lads, and 

 should be the arena where those who possess superior abilities and energies 

 might reasonably calculate upon winning success. Yet the education 

 which they are receiving at the Government schools, does not in any way 

 fit them for becoming successful artizans. If a lad displays exceptional 

 ability at his tasks, his reward is a scholarship, whereby he is enabled, not 

 to acquire technical knowledge which would help him to obtain distinction 

 as an artisan, with the usual result of becoming in the long run an em- 

 ployer of labour, but to proceed with the acquisition of much book-learning, 

 tinctured probably with a dash of science ; his final reward being a Univer- 

 sity degree. Thus the end and crown of his mental toil, possibly of pecu- 

 niary sacrifices on his parents' part, is his removal from his natural sphere 

 of labour, where his talents if properly trained might have raised him to 

 prosperity and an honourable position ; while instead he must look for 

 occupation either to the professions, which are daily getting more over- 

 crowded, or to mercantile pursuits. If he chooses the former, he finds 

 himself confronted with a multitude of competitors, more lightly handi- 

 capped in the race of life than himself, and possessing friends capable of 



