Industrial Training and Technical Education. 21 



never be directly useful to the lads on discharge. These 

 Institutions ought to be expected and encouraged to turn out 

 thoroughly instructed and well behaved lads ; when they fail to 

 do this, it must be due either to inefficient management or to 

 want of funds. The Government grant is sufficient for main- 

 tenance, but the liberality of the public has to supply the plant 

 necessary for efficient teaching and for high class supervision. 

 It would perhaps reconcile the objectors to the slight com- 

 petition of these schools if arrangements could be made for the 

 Institutions to supply goods to the trade and leave the trade 

 to deal with the public. As these are the only schools in which 

 industries are taught, it is in the interest of all that they should 

 be models of efficiency, if only to shew the injustice of not 

 extending the same system to the honest poor. 



There is a proverb, in the Talmud I believe as well as in the 

 Vedas, that he who fails to teach his son a trade teaches him to 

 be a thief. Thus, taking the best Industrial Schools, you find 

 the son of disreputable parents, who have cost the public con- 

 siderable sums either as paupers or prisoners, discharged with 

 a trade, which, if well conducted, will ensure him an honest 

 Hvelihood ; while, on the other hand, the poorly fed son of an 

 honest working man will be discharged from his elementary 

 school having achieved the standards necessary for the Edu- 

 cation department, but which is almost useless to him for 

 carrying his mother's milk pails, or in running errands for 

 three or four shillings per week. Is it an exaggeration to say 

 that starting thus, the probability is that the son of the honest 

 working man will at last have to servethe son of the " ne'er 

 do weel " ? 



On visiting an elementary school after the third hour who 

 has not been struck with the listless, vacant look, or with the 

 idling of the pupils .? Is it reasonable to expect five hours 

 consecutive mental work from badly housed, badly fed children ? 

 It has been proved ad nauseam that the boys in a school, 

 worked on the half time system of half school work and half 

 industry, will attain a given educational standard as quickly as 

 the full timers and often sooner. What I plead for is that the 



