378 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 
ABSTRACT OF MR. J. ©. INGLIS’S LECTURE. 
(Read November 4th, 1880.) 
By technical education we mean the method of teaching those facts 
and principles which are directly useful in enabling individuals to 
perform with skill and precision the arts and operations of every- 
day life. 
Apprenticeship is the well-known term in this country for the 
recognized method of training workmen in their respective crafts. 
But within the last few years our insular confidence in the success 
of the so-called apprenticeships of to-day has received a rude shock. 
Compare the position of the true apprentice, the learner of a 
craft when the skilled artizan was the master of his trade, working 
in his own house, assisted by his own journeymen and apprentices, 
who were received into his household for the period of their seven 
years’ engagement. In those times the master taught them, ruled 
them, advised them, clothed them, fed them ; in short, had powers - 
over them only second to a parent’s; in return for which he was 
entitled to their services during their engagement. In those days 
a good master turned out good journeymen. 
At the present time a youth, after acquiring infinitely more than 
his earlier parallel in the way of book facts and book principles, is 
thrust headlong into workshops, large and small, without the least 
care being taken in many cases to secure his continuous services for 
even a twelvemonth, where his immediate exertions must produce 
so much remuneration to his employer as will justify his presence 
and his wage. The boy immediately becomes the drudge of indo- 
lent men, or a mere machine, performing the meanest of work with 
neither intelligence nor energy, and commonly has to learn his 
trade when out of his time. 
Technical education is by no means a speciality of the British 
