Puenell. — On Technical Education, 390 



assisting them to establish themselves in their avocations. If he turn 

 to mercantile pursuits for a livelihood, he discovers that his education has 

 unfitted him for commerce almost as much as it has done for manual 

 labour, and before he can hope for success in this direction, he will not only 

 have to learn everything peculiarly appertaining to ordinary business, but 

 he must likewise divest himself of the habit of mind which has been engen- 

 dered by his hardly- acquired literary accomplishments. 



A consideration of these facts leads to the conclusion, perhaps not a 

 particularly novel one, but still one which we have practically ignored, that 

 our secondary educational system is at fault, in that it casts all its pupils in 

 the same mould ; and while we need not interfere with, but rather for many 

 reasons which I shall not dilate upon, should carefully cherish the princi- 

 ples of literary training to which it now seeks solely to give effect, we ought 

 also to let it branch out in a fresh direction, so that it may supply the real 

 wants of the working as well as of the richer classes of the community, by 

 furnishing our artizans and their sons with a facile means of acquiring 

 special knowledge of a character which is likely to be useful to them in 

 their daily employment. What I ask is, that schools and colleges shall be 

 opened where artizans and trade apprentices can receive a technical educa- 

 tion suited to their respective callings, and distinctions acquired in which 

 shall be deemed of equal value with those conferred for literary attainments ; 

 in other words, new academical degrees should be founded for successful 

 students of technical science, which would give them an equal status in 

 our University with that held by the possessors of the present degrees. 



Besides the reasons already adduced, another and most cogent argu- 

 ment is available for this project. In England the apprenticeship system 

 which, until within the last few years, furnished a means whereby a 

 lad intended for an artizan was enabled to gain a competent knowledge of 

 his trade, has been much weakened, but in New Zealand it hardly seems to 

 exist in the proper sense of the word. Many a lad in this colony picks up 

 his trade haphazard, without indentures at all, while in cases where inden- 

 tures are entered into, both masters and apprentices commonly treat the tie 

 as a slight one, the indentures being made and cancelled, and the appren- 

 tice shifted and changed about from one master to another, in a fashion 

 calculated to prevent him both from acquiring a thorough knowledge of his 

 trade and from feeling a proper interest in it. This is largely due to the 

 unsettled habits of our population, but we need not trouble ourselves about 

 the cause. What we must keep in view is the effect upon the technical capa- 

 city of our future artizans. Lads brought up in New Zealand seldom stand a 

 fair chance of becoming first-class workmen, and while they enter upon their 

 career as artizans with an imperfect knowledge of their craft, they are doing 



