7 92 Technical Education in [December, 
George Howell in the “ Contemporary Review ” for Octo- 
ber, 1877. 
The question now is, what modern substitute for the old 
system can be adopted to the wants and wishes of the nine- 
teenth century ? Prof. Thompson’s investigations happily 
enable us to lay before the reader the adlual results of cer- 
tain experiments recently made in France with a view to 
organising a new system of apprenticeship that shall be 
more in accordance with the social conditions of the present 
day. These results prove that the systematic instruction of 
apprentices is possible in several different ways ; that ap- 
prenticeship schools afford a most satisfactory way of 
attaining this result ; and, lastly, that the new system solves 
the problem involved in the decay of the old apprenticeship. 
The problem to be solved, stated briefly, is this : — How to 
give artizan children the technical training and scientific 
knowledge which their occupation demands, without de- 
taining them so long at school as to give them a distaste for 
manual labour. The problem may be solved in four ways, 
all of which have been tested : — 
First. We may apprentice children at an earlier age than 
at present, making it obligatory that all through their 
apprenticeship ^they shall every day have a certain 
number of hours of schooling in a school attached to 
the workshop. 
Secondly. The children may be kept at school for a longer 
period, on condition that they shall pass a certain 
amount of time in a workshop attached to the 
school. 
Thirdly. We may organise a school and workshop side by 
side, an equal number of hours being devoted to 
manual labour and study. 
Fourthly. We may send the children for half the day to 
the existing schools, and the other half to work half- 
time in the workshop or factory. 
The first of these plans strongly commends itself to our 
attention, for the knowledge imparted in the school could be 
correlated to the work done in the facftory, to the manifest 
benefit of both the employer and the employed. This 
system has been tried in France for the last thirty years, 
and the establishment of MM. Chaix and Co., the French 
Railway Guide printers, may be cited as a type of the 
whole. MM. Chaix’s typographical school — for such it 
really is — has been in existence for seventeen years, and has 
