4 
On Technical Education. 
[August, 
schools suitable for the wants of each class of society, — 
they are of course far in advance of the English with respe(5t 
to education ; but their school system possesses another ad- 
vantage over ours, if we can be said to have a school system 
at all, which is even still more important : their system is a 
graduated or progressive one ; from the rudimentary lessons 
given in the elementary schools to the highest teaching given 
in their technical colleges or universities, it is on an ascending 
scale of instruction ; a student cannot pass from a lower to 
a higher course, as I have shown in a former article is and 
can be done in this country, unless he is fitted to take advan- 
tage of that higher course of instruction. There is in con- 
sequence a completeness in every stage of education, each 
school perfecting its pupils in the branches of education it 
gives : the pupils, when they pass to the next higher school, 
have not therefore to commence to relearn the subjects they 
were taught in the lower one, as is too commonly the case 
in this country. 
This admirable system of education, which has been deve- 
loped and so successfully carried out in Germany, has been 
framed, as Mr. Perry states in his article on German 
Schools,* by a succession of able statesmen and scholars, and 
is modified and expanded from time to time in accordance 
with the wants of the age. 
Although the many do not know what kind of education 
to demand, a reaClion has nevertheless set in against a purely 
classical training, and this reaction is not confined to the 
middle classes ; the dissatisfied are being propitiated by the 
introduction of one or more of the natural sciences and the 
modern languages into the ancient course of studies, even in 
schools like Eton and Harrow. It is desirable, no doubt, to 
modernise in part the system hitherto pursued in classical 
schools ; but this by no means does away with the necessity 
of establishing mercantile and manufacturing schools corre- 
sponding to those on the Continent. For to attempt to teach 
in the same school courses of instruction suitable for those 
intended for professional life, and for those intended for 
commerce and manufactures, would end in the ruin of the 
classical system, and would likewise fail in establishing a 
good system of modern education. 
The amalgamation of the old and the new, and the at- 
tempt to make the course of school studies suitable for the 
wants of all classes, must end in bringing the whole system 
of education into a chaotic state. “ It is easy,” Mr. Perry 
* Macmillan’s Magazine, 1877. 
