Technical Education, of such a kind as best to fit the youth of the country for their work in after life, is especially necessary in the case of those on whose work depends the material welfare of the nation—artisans, foremen or employers, farmers or merchants or commercial travellers. The public interest in the subject was aroused by the fact that in 1881, when a Royal Commission was appointed to consider the question, education in Britain was in this respect very much behind that provided in such countries as France, Germany, and the United States of America.
The methods of technical education are necessarily different in different countries. On the Continent the growth of the industrial system has accompanied or rather followed that of the technical schools. These have thus been able to render very great direct assistance to the industries; while even the injurious effect of compulsory military service has been much diminished by the inducement to higher technical study involved in the offer of a shortened period of service to students who have passed successfully through a technical school. In Britain long-continued industrial organisation in which the old opportunities for the trade education of apprentices in the workshops have largely disappeared, and their place is only now being filled by outside teaching. In Britain, moreover, the difficulty of reorganisation is increased by the power of trade societies, which insist upon the letter of the apprenticeship period although its spirit is gone.
In the earlier stages of education the aims and the conditions are practically the same in all countries. The subjects of instruction and the methods of teaching must be such as will best train the intelligence, the observing and reasoning powers, and pave the way for manual dexterity. In the teaching of arithmetic every opportunity must be taken to connect figures with facts, and pupils must be accustomed to solve the simple problems of price and measurement that are of constant occurrence in daily life. English language and composition is not only valuable as a medium for literary culture, but it is technical in so far as it leads to the accurate description of an object, a process, or an event, or to the full understanding of such a description. Drawing offers a ready means of training the hand and eye; while modelling and the use of tools are valuable aids in this important relation. The accurate study of common things ought to form an essential part of the training of the pupils who have to acquire habits of inquiry; it is also the foundation of that familiarity with properties of materials which is the basis of good work in the industries. It is this study of common things which is known as 'Elementary Science' in school programmes. Throughout the elementary stage of education it is the method as much as the matter that constitutes the claim of the work to be described as technical.
In Britain the higher stages run along two parallel lines—the one for pupils who devote their time to systematic study, and for these the teaching is carried on in day classes; the other for pupils who spend the day in work in a trade workshop, in an office, or in the field, and for whom only the evenings are available for instruction in sciences—in the principles underlying their daily work and in languages. Considering day classes first, we find in every town of considerable size secondary schools adapted to the needs of boys from thirteen to sixteen years of age. In most of these adequate instruction is given in technical and commercial arithmetic, in mathematics, and in modern languages. In many towns there are also technical schools in which the training includes moreover free-hand and mechanical drawing, handicraft, and the branches of science that are likely to be of most advantage to the pupils—applied mechanics, steam, electricity for engineering students; chemistry and agriculture for agricultural students, and so on. The great majority of the pupils attending these schools pass from them directly to work, and continue their education by attendance at advanced evening classes, or by attending advanced day classes for a year or two after completing an apprenticeship. Some, however, give up a year or more, when they are from sixteen to eighteen years of age, entirely to study before taking up practical work. This course is followed mainly in industries such as engineering, mechanical or electrical, chemical or textile manufactures, or agriculture, where the processes involve applications of principles which can be fully understood only by those who have studied a fairly wide range of science. The advanced classes for the instruction of such students are to a large extent of a practical kind; much of the work is done in laboratories. All colleges for such work require fully equipped chemical, physical, mechanical, and engineering laboratories, workshops for wood and iron, as well as a full complement of appliances for teaching art, the principles of agriculture, or such other departments of applied science as are required by the students in attendance. It is also desirable that the students should have facilities for continuing their language studies and for becoming familiar with book-keeping and commercial practice. After a course of study such as is provided in a technical college of this kind the students are in a position to benefit very readily by the experience they will have in the manufactory or office or on the farm. They will have thoroughly mastered the principles, and have learned something of the modes of their application, so that they enter upon their work with their eyes open alike to the possible causes of failure and to likely avenues of advance.
For the benefit of students who are unable to devote their entire energy to study up to the age of eighteen, or even up to sixteen, evening classes have been established throughout the country in which the work ranges through the standards described here as secondary and advanced. It is thus possible for a lad who leaves school for a trade at the age of thirteen or fourteen to continue his studies by attending evening classes, and he will find that by diligent work for four or five years he may complete the secondary stage of his education, while three or four more will enable him to become familiar with that theoretical knowledge whose applications he has been practising all these years. This prolonged course is required only for those who would fit themselves for any promotion that may be open to them; for the less ambitious a shorter course suffices. For all, however, it is now realised that what is first wanted is a thorough grasp of elementary principles such as will enable a man to make the most of the experience and deftness he acquires in the course of his practical work.
The scope of the technical education required for each of the thousand-and-one occupations of the day is, according to the British view, limited by the accepted conclusion that the best place for a young man to learn the practice of his trade or business is in the workshop or office, as the case may be. But while this is so it is also recognised that there are many matters of general knowledge essential to the due understanding of this practice, many questions of materials, design, principles, and methods which it is nowadays quite impossible for a beginner to be instructed in during business hours, and which can be both more economically and more efficiently taken in hand by an organisation specially charged with such work. A technical school may thus be complete without any teaching of a trade. In fact, in Britain, trade teaching in schools or colleges has been suggested only in the case of a few special industries, and to a certain extent in others for youths in exceptional circumstances.
On the continent of Europe and in America the provision for the technical education of workmen and foremen is not in most respects in advance of that now made in Britain. For masters and managers, however, there have been in active operation for many years numerous technical schools, supported almost entirely by the several states, housed in palatial buildings, equipped with costly and extensive laboratories and museums, and conducted by staffs of professors and teachers so numerous as to admit of the utmost subdivision of the subjects taught. Reporting in 1884, the Royal Commissioners on Technical Instruction declare 'that they had been much impressed with the general intelligence and technical knowledge of the masters and managers of industrial establishments on the Continent. They found that these persons, as a rule, possessed a sound knowledge of the sciences upon which their industry depended, and that they were familiar with every new scientific discovery of importance, and appreciated its applicability to their special industry. They adopted not only the inventions and improvements made in their own country, but also those of the world at large, thanks to their knowledge of foreign languages and of the conditions of manufacture prevalent elsewhere.'
The great proportion of important inventions and improvements in industrial processes that are due to British manufacturers shows that there have ever been men who secured their own technical education when there were little or no apparent facilities for it. A complete system of technical education will widen the area from which such industrial leaders may arise. It will increase the number of those who, having the intelligence and tact essential in a foreman, have also the technical knowledge required to enable them to understand new work. And it will give workmen, in addition to the expertness which retains for them a large share of the markets of the world, the ability to enter into their work with intelligence, with pleasure, and with ambition.
See the Reports of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Education (1884; explaining the systems in use in various countries); vol. ii. of the Proceedings of the International Conference (Lond. 1884); the publications of the National Association for the Promotion of Secondary and Technical Education; the reports and prospectuses of the several technical schools; MacArthur, Education in its relation to Manual Industry (New York, 1885); C. H. Ham, Manual Training (New York, 1886); Sir Philip Magnus, Industrial Education (1888); also the articles POLYTECHNIQUE, EDUCATION, ART (INSTRUCTION), SLOYD; and for the part taken by the county councils in promoting technical education, see Ashby, Manual of the Guild and School of Handicraft (1892).