SB 
Magazine  of  the  School  of  Agriculture. 
system — the  pioneers  of  technical  education — 
were  unable  to  influence  the  prevailing  views 
as  to  education  to  any  considerable  extent 
during  their  lifetime,  however  much  they  may 
have  revolutionized  the  entire  course  of  edu- 
cation in  Europe  since  then.  It  was  net  in- 
fantile education— not  ‘‘learning  combined  with 
play  ” — “ teaching  without  tears  ” — which  many 
people  conceive  to  be  the  essence  of  the  Kinder- 
garten system,  but  a complete  undermining  and 
uprooting  of  the  fossilised  mediaeval  system  of 
teaching  for  one  more  in  harmony  with  a true 
philosophical  recogntion  of  the  true  object  of 
education,  which,  as  Herbert  Spencer  has  well 
defined  it,  is  to  prepare  one  for  complete  living, 
having  reference  to  the  activities,  the  needs, 
the  life-interests  of  the  individual.  Frdbelsim 
is  not  child’s  play  but  a system  of  education 
intended  to  mahe  men,  as  Erobel  has  it  “ whole 
complete  men — men  who  can  observe,  learn  by 
experience,  and  act  up  to  their  convictions.”  It 
is  a harmonious,  all-sided,  all-round  education, 
which  aims  alike  at  intellectual  growth,  in- 
crease of  will-power,  and  skill  in  the  use  of  the 
hands  and  tools.  It  is  the  manual  training  move- 
ment, part  and  parcel  of  this  all-sided  edu- 
cation, which  forms  the  germ  of  all  the  tech- 
nical education  of  the  present  day.  Next  to 
Erobel,  the  man  to  whom  we  owe  the  present 
“ new  departure  ’’  in  education,  is  one  whose 
name  is  hardly  known  beyond  the  country  of 
his  birth, — Uno  Cygmeus,  Rector  of  a Normal 
school  in  Finland,  who  was  born  in  the  early 
part  of  the  century,  and  who  died  just  10  years 
ago  ; the  first  to  found  a Manual  Training  School, 
which  has  been  so  eminently  succesful  as  to 
furnish  a model  for  an  immense  number  of 
similar  schools  in  Europe  and  America.  The 
principle  upon  which  liis  system  was  based  was 
that  education  of  the  young  must  aim  not  at 
one-sided  intellectual  training,  but  at  the  har- 
monious strengthening  and  exercise  of  man’s  in- 
born powers,  with  constant  consideration  of 
practical  aims  in  life.  It  is  the  system  of  Erobel 
carried  on  to  a higher  stage  of  a child’s  edu- 
cation. It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  we 
have  not  a single  infant  school  on  the  Kinder- 
garten system  in  this  country  if  only  to  serve 
as  a model  for  primary  instruction  in  other 
schools. 
Herbert  Spencer,  whose  definition  of  education 
I have  already  given  you,  arrived  by  a different 
process  of  reasoning  from  Erobel  at  the  same 
result  as  to  the  true  object  of  education. 
He  places  the  usefulness  of  a study,  i.e., 
its  practical  science  in  life  in  the  fore- 
ground, in  the  choice  of  subjects  for  instruc- 
tion, and  finds  also  that  the  very  subjects  which 
are  best  worth  knowing  are  also  the  best  aids 
to  mental  discipline.  Herbert  Spencer  goes  even 
further  than  this,  for  in  a private  conversation 
with  Mr.  Oscar  Browning,  the  latter  relates 
how  he  (Mr.  Spencer)  had  maintained  that 
schools  were  an  excrescence  and  an  impertinence, 
the  only  real  education  being  that  gained  by 
life  and  experience. 
But  the  causes  which  brought  about  the 
necessity  for  a special  kind  of  training,  a 
new  system  of  education,  were  not  the  theories 
of  philosophical  doctrinaires  like  Rousseau,  nor 
the  far-seeing  wisdom  and  practical  views  of 
educational  reformers  like  Comenius  and  Locke, 
like  Pestalozzi  and  Erobel,  nor  even  the  pres- 
sure of  enlightened  and  educated  public  opinion. 
The  true  causes  were  the  changed  conditions  of 
trade  and  commerce,  due  to  the  invention  of  the 
steam  entjine  and  the  introduction  of  labor-saving 
machinery  whereby  not  production  only  but  distri- 
bution of  articles  of  industry  and  locomotion  and 
inter-communication  between  distant  nations  were 
stimulated  and  facilitated  to  an  enormous  degree. 
Time  out  of  mind  splendid  houses  were  built,  and 
beautiful  clothes  woven  and  dyed,  and  ships  built, 
and  roads  made,  and  all  manner  of  articles  of  com- 
fort and  luxury  produced,  but  with  the  in- 
troduction of  steam  thousands  of  articles  are 
manufactured  now  by  machinery  for  one  that  a 
workman  could  turn  out  by  hand  in  the  same 
space  of  time.  The  old  relations  between 
master  and  pupil  in  the  workshop  have  also 
changed  into  those  of  capitalist  and  labourer. 
The  former  has  no  time  to  teach  the  latter,  and 
owing  to  the  great  principle  of  division  of  lubor 
in  all  large  manufacturing  establishments  the 
workman  himself  having  only  a minute  piece 
of  work  to  attend  to,  which  he  has  constantly 
to  repeat,  learns  nothing  of  the  processes  of  the 
trade  or  the  structure  of  the  machinery  in  which 
he  is  engaged,  nor  can  any  other  workmun  find 
time  to  teach  him.  Then  again  the  demand  for  in- 
telligent workmen  trained  in  science  with  a 
knowledge  of  drawing,  or  possessing  manual 
skill  or  artistic  invention — for  foremen  and  mana- 
gers and  masters  to  superintend  and  direct  the 
work  in  large  factories,  is  greater  than  the  sup- 
ply. New  needs,  new  duties  arise  daily  which 
the  ordinary  training  in  the  elementary  and  even 
higher  schools  fails  to  meet.  That  training 
was  found  to  be  far  too  general,  too  aimless, 
too  illl-adapted  for  the  new  demands  of  indus- 
trial life  in  the  changed  and  ever-changing  con- 
ditions of  society,  and  a system  of  education 
more  special,  more  practical,  though  not  less 
disciplinary  than  purely  intellectual  culture  had 
to  lie  devised.  Children  had  to  he  trained  for  the 
work  in  which  they  were  likely  to  be  engaged, 
workmen  to  be  taught  the  processes  of  manu- 
facture or  the  details  of  the  craft  iu  which 
they  were  employed,  artisans  to  be  perfected 
in  the  designer’s  art,  pupils  training  for  com- 
mercial life  to  have  their  studies  liberalized, 
and  students  seeking  a higher  education  in 
practical  science  to  he  helped  and  encouraged  to 
advance  higher.  Accordingly  various  kinds  of 
teaching  institutions  were  established  to  provide 
for  these  various  classes,  and  in  a very  short 
space  of  time  Manual  training  school  for 
boys,  schools  of  design  for  -artisans,  evening 
classes  for  workmen,  and  colleges  and  insti- 
tutes for  foremen,  teachers,  engineers  Ac. 
sprang  up  rapidly  in  the  chief  educational 
centres  in  Europe  and  America. 
On  the  Continent,  in  France  and  Germany  and 
Italy  these  schools  and  teaching  institutions  are  ar- 
ranged on  a perfect  system  of  gradation  beginning 
with  the  elementary  schools,  and  rising  through  a 
series  of  evening  continuation  classes  and  In- 
termediate schools  (Trade  or  Commercial)  to 
the  highest  stage — the  Polytechnic,  equivalent 
to  a University  in  its  functions.  In  Great 
Britain  there  is  an  absence  of  this  systematic 
arrangement  and  subordination  of  schools,  the 
