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On Technical Education . 
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examples that those who are not endowed in a marked degree 
with the talents requisite for the task will not acquire them 
to the fullest extent by mere education ; how few, for ex- 
ample, of all the University men who have occupied the 
position of a teacher in our grammar schools have distin- 
guished themselves as educationists. The late Dr. Arnold 
is the one who obtained the greatest public reputation as an 
educator, and even he does not occupy a position in the first 
rank of educational philosophers. Mr. Herbert Spencer be- 
lieves, and I think rightly, that true education is practicable 
only by a true philosopher ; but that is evidently not the 
opinion of our Statesmen and Members of Parliament, 
otherwise they would never vote, year after year, the 
sums of money they do for a system — payment on results. 
— which must extinguish all philosophical spirit in the 
teachers. 
The qualifications required by both teachers and examiners 
are thus summed up by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his work 
“ The Study of Sociology ” : — “ It becomes clear,” he states, 
“ that those having supreme authority suppose, as men in 
general do, that the sole essential thing for a teacher or 
examiner is complete knowledge of that which he has to 
teach, or respecting which he has to examine. Whereas a 
co-essential thing is a knowledge of Psychology, and espe- 
cially that part of Psychology which deals with the evolution 
of the faculties. Unless by special study, or by daily ob- 
servation and quick insight, he has gained an approximately 
true conception of how minds perceive, and reflect, and 
generalise, and by what processes their ideas grow from 
concrete to abstract, and from simple to complex, no one is 
competent to give lessons that will effectually teach, or to 
ask questions which will effectually measure the efficiency 
of teaching.” 
The inspection of the classes under the Department and 
the examination of those taught in these classes are the 
next divisions of the Department’s plan we have to consider. 
The inspection and examination of the National Schools 
under the Education Department are combined ; but the two 
functions are not performed by the same persons in the 
Elementary Science Classes under the Department. Why 
the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education should 
combine inspection and examination in one set of schools, 
and not in the other set, is, to say the least, very singular. 
It is admitted by all educationists that the two functions 
ought to be united, and in no branch of study is the union 
of the two more necessary than in the examination of 
