Purnell. — On Technical Education. 408 



permanently flourish in any country under the altered conditions of modern 

 times, it is essential that the workmen should receive a technical education, 

 and hence they treat it as one of their ordinary functions to supply this 

 want. A manifestation of this feeling was given when the French Govern- 

 ment, wishing to stimulate the watch trade in France, opened schools for 

 teaching watchmaking, the effect being to materially augment the home 

 production of watches, and to diminish the importation of watches from 

 Switzerland. The Swiss met this movement by reorganizing and enlarging 

 their technical school system, so far as it related to the watch manufacture, 

 and by this means recovered a part of their lost trade. In the United 

 States, too, although less has been done for the cause of technical education 

 than might have been expected from a people which has made such vigorous 

 exertions for the establishment of manufacturing industries, some thirty 

 technical schools are in full activity. Japan has a far greater number. In 

 1882 she possessed 98 technical schools, with 975 professors and teachers, 

 and which were attended by 8,828 pupils. 



Technical education must not be confounded with a scientific education. 

 Science forms an essential feature in the course of instructien given in a 

 technical school, but just so much science is taught as, and no more than, 

 the student requires to know for the proper comprehension of his trade. 



I will illustrate my meaning by quoting some remarks made by Mr. 

 Cosee, the then President of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, in 

 1879, when announcing the intention to establish technical schools for the 

 instruction of workmen engaged in the Pennsylvanian Iron Ore Works. 

 " Our idea is to make the course of instruction as complete as possible. In 

 mineralogy we shall require the student to become familiar with the prin- 

 cipal types of minerals only. In geology much attention will be paid to the 

 rocks and mineral deposits of Pennsylvania. We shall devote a large 

 amount of time to the subject of framing, ordinary foundations, and the 

 construction of such buildings as are required on our coalfields. In 

 machinery attention will be paid to pumps, hoisting engines, apparatus for 

 preparing coal, steam drills, etc. Mine surveying will be gone into with a 

 great deal of detail, and in chemistry we shall try to impress upon the 

 minds of the pupils those laws and phenomena which are of importance in 

 understanding the ventilation of mines and the use of water in steam 

 boilers." This course of instruction is to a considerable extent that of a 

 mining school, but it suffices to illustrate my meaning. 



The science which is wanted is not that which is supplied in our High 

 Schools and Colleges, hence it cannot be argued that I am asking for some- 

 thing which already exists. The object of a technical school is not to turn 

 out scientific men or artists, but competent practical handicraftsmen. In 



