that the keeping at school of boys, who are to be handicraftsmen,
beyond the age of thirteen or fourteen is neither practicable nor
desirable; and, as it is quite certain, that, with justice to other and
no less important branches of education, nothing more than the
rudiments of science and art teaching can be introduced into elementary
schools, we must seek elsewhere for a supplementary training in these
subjects, and, if need be, in foreign languages, which may go on after
the workman's life has begun.
The means of acquiring the scientific and artistic part of this
training already exists in full working order, in the first place, in
the classes of the Science and Art Department, which are, for the most
part, held in the evening, so as to be accessible to all who choose to
avail themselves of them after working hours. The great advantage of
these classes is that they bring the means of instruction to the doors
of the factories and workshops; that they are no artificial creations,
but by their very existence prove the desire of the people for them;
and finally, that they admit of indefinite development in proportion as
they are wanted. I have often expressed the opinion, and I repeat it
here, that, during the eighteen years they have been in existence these
classes have done incalculable good; and I can say, of my own
knowledge, that the Department spares no pains and trouble in trying to
increase their usefulness and ensure the soundness of their work.
No one knows better than my friend Colonel Donnelly, to whose clear
views and great administrative abilities so much of the successful
working of the science classes is due, that there is much to be done
before the system can be said to be thoroughly satisfactory. The
instruction given needs to be made more systematic and especially more
practical; the teachers are of very unequal excellence, and not a few
stand much in need of instruction themselves, not only in the subject
which they teach, but in the objects for which they teach. I dare say
you have heard of that proceeding, reprobated by all true sportsmen,
which is called "shooting for the pot." Well, there is such a thing as
"teaching for the pot"--teaching, that is, not that your scholar may
know, but that he may count for payment among those who pass the
examination; and there are some teachers, happily not many, who have
yet to learn that the examiners of the Department regard them as
poachers of the worst description.
Without presuming in any way to speak in the name of the Department, I
think I may say, as a matter which has come under my own observation,
that it is doing its best to meet all these difficulties. It
systematically promotes practical instruction in the classes; it
affords facilities to teachers who desire to learn their business
thoroughly; and it is always ready to aid in the suppression of
pot-teaching.
All this is, as you may imagine, highly satisfactory to me. I see that
spread of scientific education, about which I have so often permitted
myself to worry the public, become, for all practical purposes, an
accomplished fact. Grateful as I am for all that is now being done, in
the same direction, in our higher schools and universities, I have
ceased to have any anxiety about the wealthier classes. Scientific
knowledge is spreading by what the alchemists called a "distillatio per
ascensum;" and nothing now can prevent it from continuing to distil
upwards and permeate English society, until, in the remote future,
there shall be no member of the legislature who does not know as much
of science as an elementary school-boy; and even the heads of houses in
our venerable seats of learning shall acknowledge that natural science
is not merely a sort of University back-door through which inferior men
may get at their degrees. Perhaps this apocalyptic vision is a little
wild; and I feel I ought to ask pardon for an outbreak of enthusiasm,
which, I assure you, is not my commonest failing.
I have said that the Government is already doing a great deal in aid of
that kind of technical education for handicraftsmen which, to my mind,
is alone worth seeking. Perhaps it is doing as much as it ought to do,
even in this direction. Certainly there is another kind of help of the
most important character, for which we may look elsewhere than to the
Government. The great mass of mankind have neither the liking, nor the
aptitude, for either literary, or scientific, or artistic pursuits;
nor, indeed, for excellence of any sort. Their ambition is to go
through life with moderate exertion and a fair share of ease, doing
common things in a common way. And a great blessing and comfort it is
that the majority of men are of this mind; for the majority of things
to be done are common things, and are quite well enough done when
commonly done. The great end of life is not knowledge but action. What
men need is, as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organise into
a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One
knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as
others are from over-fulness of meat and drink. But a small percentage
of the population is born with that most excellent quality, a desire
for excellence, or with special aptitudes of some sort or another; Mr.
Galton tells us that not more than one in four thousand may be expected
to attain distinction, and not more than one in a million some share of
that intensity of instinctive aptitude, that burning thirst for
excellence, which is called genius.
Now, the most important object of all educational schemes is to catch
these exceptional people, and turn them to account for the good of
society. No man can say where they will crop up; like their opposites,
the fools and knaves, they appear sometimes in the palace, and
sometimes in the hovel; but the great thing to be aimed at, I was
almost going to say the most important end of all social arrangements,
is to keep these glorious sports of Nature from being either corrupted
by luxury or starved by poverty, and to put them into the position in
which they can do the work for which they are especially fitted.
Thus, if a lad in an elementary school showed signs of special
capacity, I would try to provide him with the means of continuing his
education after his daily working life had begun; if in the evening
classes he developed special capabilities in the direction of science
or of drawing, I would try to secure him an apprenticeship to some
trade in which those powers would have applicability. Or, if he chose
to become a teacher, he should have the chance of so doing. Finally, to
the lad of genius, the one in a million, I would make accessible the
highest and most complete training the country could afford. Whatever
that might cost, depend upon it the investment would be a good one. I
weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential
Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds
down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money. It is a mere commonplace and
everyday piece of knowledge, that what these three men did has produced
untold millions of wealth, in the narrowest economical sense of the
word.
Therefore, as the sum and crown of what is to be done for technical
education, I look to the provision of a machinery for winnowing out the
capacities and giving them scope. When I was a member of the London
School Board, I said, in the course of a speech, that our business was
to provide a ladder, reaching from the gutter to the university, along
which every child in the three kingdoms should have the chance of
climbing as far as he was fit to go. This phrase was so much bandied
about at the time, that, to say truth, I am rather tired of it; but I
know of no other which so fully expresses my belief, not only about
education in general, but about technical education in particular.
The essential foundation of all the organisation needed for the
promotion of education among handicraftsmen will, I believe, exist in
this country, when every working lad can feel that society has done as
much as lies in its power to remove all needless and artificial
obstacles from his path; that there is no barrier, except such as
exists in the nature of things, between himself and whatever place in
the social organisation he is fitted to fill; and, more than this,
that, if he has capacity and industry, a hand is held out to help him
along any path which is wisely and honestly chosen.
I have endeavoured to point out to you that a great deal of such an
organisation already exists; and I am glad to be able to add that there
is a good prospect that what is wanting will, before long, be
supplemented.
Those powerful and wealthy societies, the livery companies of the City
of London, remembering that they are the heirs and representatives of
the trade guilds of the Middle Ages, are interesting themselves in the
question. So far back as 1872 the Society of Arts organised a system of
instruction in the technology of arts and manufactures, for persons
actually employed in factories and workshops, who desired to extend and
improve their knowledge of the theory and practice of their particular
avocations; [1] and a considerable subsidy, in aid of the efforts of
the Society, was liberally granted by the Clothworkers' Company. We
have here the hopeful commencement of a rational organisation for the
promotion of excellence among handicraftsmen. Quite recently, other of
the livery companies have determined upon giving their powerful, and,
indeed, almost boundless, aid to the improvement of the teaching of
handicrafts. They have already gone so far as to appoint a committee to
act for them; and I betray no confidence in adding that, some time
since, the committee sought the advice and assistance of several
persons, myself among the number.
Of course I cannot tell you what may be the result of the deliberations
of the committee; but we may all fairly hope that, before long, steps
which will have a weighty and a lasting influence on the growth and
spread of sound and thorough teaching among the handicraftsmen [2] of
this country will be taken by the livery companies of London.
[This hope has been fully justified by the establishment of the Cowper
Street Schools, and that of the Central Institution of the City and
Guilds of London Institute, September, 1881.]
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[1] See the _Programme_ for 1878, issued by the Society of Arts,
p. 14.
[2] It is perhaps advisable to remark that the important question of
the professional education of managers of industrial works is not
touched in the foregoing remarks.
XVII
ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF
TECHNICAL EDUCATION
[1887.]
Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen,--It must be a matter of sincere satisfaction
to those who, like myself, have for many years past been convinced of
the vital importance of technical education to this country to see that
that subject is now being taken up by some of the most important of our
manufacturing towns. The evidence which is afforded of the public
interest in the matter by such meetings as those at Liverpool and
Newcastle, and, last but not least, by that at which I have the honour
to be present to-day, may convince us all, I think, that the question
has passed out of the region of speculation into that of action. I need
hardly say to any one here that the task which our Association
contemplates is not only one of primary importance--I may say of vital
importance--to the welfare of the country; but that it is one of great
extent and of vast difficulty. There is a well-worn adage that those
who set out upon a great enterprise would do well to count the cost. I
am not sure that this is always true. I think that some of the very
greatest enterprises in this world have been carried out successfully
simply because the people who undertook them did not count the cost;
and I am much of opinion that, in this very case, the most instructive
consideration for us is the cost of doing nothing. But there is one
thing that is perfectly certain, and it is that, in undertaking all
enterprises, one of the most important conditions of success is to have
a perfectly clear comprehension of what you want to do--to have that
before your minds before you set out, and from that point of view to
consider carefully the measures which are best adapted to the end.
Mr. Acland has just given you an excellent account of what is properly
and strictly understood by technical education; but I venture to think
that the purpose of this Association may be stated in somewhat broader
terms, and that the object we have in view is the development of the
industrial productivity of the country to the uttermost limits
consistent with social welfare. And you will observe that, in thus
widening the definition of our object, I have gone no further than the
Mayor in his speech, when he not obscurely hinted--and most justly
hinted--that in dealing with this question there are other matters than
technical education, in the strict sense, to be considered.
It would be extreme presumption on my part if I were to attempt to tell
an audience of gentlemen intimately acquainted with all branches of
industry and commerce, such as I see before me, in what manner the
practical details of the operations that we propose are to be carried
out. I am absolutely ignorant both of trade and of commerce, and upon
such matters I cannot venture to say a solitary word. But there is one
direction in which I think it possible I may be of service--not much
perhaps, but still of some,--because this matter, in the first place,
involves the consideration of methods of education with which it has
been my business to occupy myself during the greater part of my life;
and, in the second place, it involves attention to some of those broad
facts and laws of nature with which it has been my business to acquaint
myself to the best of my ability. And what I think may be possible is
this, that if I succeed in putting before you--as briefly as I can, but
in clear and connected shape--what strikes me as the programme that we
have eventually to carry out, and what are the indispensable conditions
of success, that that proceeding, whether the conclusions at which I
arrive be such as you approve or as you disapprove, will nevertheless
help to clear the course. In this and in all complicated matters we
must remember a saying of Bacon, which may be freely translated thus:
"Consistent error is very often vastly more useful than muddle-headed
truth." At any rate, if there be any error in the conclusions I shall
put before you, I will do my best to make the error perfectly clear and
plain.
Now, looking at the question of what we want to do in this broad and
general way, it appears to me that it is necessary for us, in the first
place, to amend and improve our system of primary education in such a
fashion as will make it a proper preparation for the business of life.
In the second place, I think we have to consider what measures may best
be adopted for the development to its uttermost of that which may be
called technical skill; and, in the third place, I think we have to
consider what other matters there are for us to attend to, what other
arrangements have to be kept carefully in sight in order that, while
pursuing these ends, we do not forget that which is the end of civil
existence, I mean a stable social state without which all other
measures are merely futile, and, in effect, modes of going faster to
ruin.
You are aware--no people should know the fact better than Manchester
people--that, within the last seventeen years, a vast system of primary
education has been created and extended over the whole country. I had
some part in the original organisation of this system in London, and I
am glad to think that, after all these years, I can look back upon that
period of my life as perhaps the part of it least wasted.
No one can doubt that this system of primary education has done wonders
for our population; but, from our point of view, I do not think anybody
can doubt that it still has very considerable defects. It has the
defect which is common to all the educational systems which we have
inherited--it is too bookish, too little practical. The child is
brought too little into contact with actual facts and things, and as
the system stands at present it constitutes next to no education of
those particular faculties which are of the utmost importance to
industrial life--I mean the faculty of observation, the faculty of
working accurately, of dealing with things instead of with words. I do
not propose to enlarge upon this topic, but I would venture to suggest
that there are one or two remedial measures which are imperatively
needed; indeed, they have already been alluded to by Mr. Acland. Those
which strike me as of the greatest importance are two, and the first of
them is the teaching of drawing. In my judgment, there is no mode of
exercising the faculty of observation and the faculty of accurate
reproduction of that which is observed, no discipline which so readily
tests error in these matters, as drawing properly taught. And by that I
do not mean artistic drawing; I mean figuring natural objects: making
plans and sections, approaching geometrical rather than artistic
drawing. I do not wish to exaggerate, but I declare to you that, in my
judgment, the child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation,
plan and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in
accuracy of eye and hand. I am not talking about artistic education.
That is not the question. Accuracy is the foundation of everything
else, and instruction in artistic drawing is something which may be put
off till a later stage. Nothing has struck me more in the course of my
life than the loss which persons, who are pursuing scientific knowledge
of any kind, sustain from the difficulties which arise because they
never have been taught elementary drawing; and I am glad to say that in
Eton, a school of whose governing body I have the honour of being a
member, we some years ago made drawing imperative on the whole school.
The other matter in which we want some systematic and good teaching is
what I have hardly a name for, but which may best be explained as a
sort of developed object lessons such as Mr. Acland adverted to.
Anybody who knows his business in science can make anything subservient
to that purpose. You know it was said of Dean Swift that he could write
an admirable poem upon a broomstick, and the man who has a real
knowledge of science can make the commonest object in the world
subservient to an introduction to the principles and greater truths of
natural knowledge. It is in that way that your science must be taught
if it is to be of real service. Do not suppose any amount of book work,
any repetition by rote of catechisms and other abominations of that
kind are of value for our object. That is mere wasting of time. But
take the commonest object and lead the child from that foundation to
such truths of a higher order as may be within his grasp. With regard
to drawing, I do not think there is any practical difficulty; but in
respect to the scientific object lessons you want teachers trained in a
manner different from that which now prevails.
If it is found practicable to add further training of the hand and eye
by instruction in modelling or in simple carpentry, well and good. But
I should stop at this point. The elementary schools are already charged
with quite as much as they can do properly; and I do not believe that
any good can come of burdening them with special technical instruction.
Out of that, I think, harm would come.
Now let me pass to my second point, which is the development of
technical skill. Everybody here is aware that at this present moment
there is hardly a branch of trade or of commerce which does not depend,
more or less directly, upon some department or other of physical
science, which does not involve, for its successful pursuit, reasoning
from scientific data. Our machinery, our chemical processes or
dyeworks, and a thousand operations which it is not necessary to
mention, are all directly and immediately connected with science. You
have to look among your workmen and foremen for persons who shall
intelligently grasp the modifications, based upon science, which are
constantly being introduced into these industrial processes. I do not
mean that you want professional chemists, or physicists, or
mathematicians, or the like, but you want people sufficiently familiar
with the broad principles which underlie industrial operations to be
able to adapt themselves to new conditions. Such qualifications can
only be secured by a sort of scientific instruction which occupies a
midway place between those primary notions given in the elementary
schools and those more advanced studies which would be carried out in
the technical schools.
You are aware that, at present, a very large machinery is in operation
for the purpose of giving this instruction. I don't refer merely to
such work as is being done at Owens College here, for example, or at
other local colleges. I allude to the larger operations of the Science
and Art Department, with which I have been connected for a great many
years. I constantly hear a great many objections raised to the work of
the Science and Art Department. If you will allow me to say so, my
connection with that department--which, I am happy to say, remains, and
which I am very proud of--is purely honorary; and, if it appeared to me
to be right to criticise that department with merciless severity, the
Lord President, if he were inclined to resent my proceedings, could do
nothing more than dismiss me. Therefore you may believe that I speak
with absolute impartiality. My impression is this, not that it is
faultless, nor that it has not various defects, nor that there are not
sundry _lacunae_ which want filling up; but that, if we consider
the conditions under which the department works, we shall see that
certain defects are inseparable from those conditions. People talk of
the want of flexibility of the Department, of its being bound by strict
rules. Now, will any man of common sense who has had anything to do
with the administration of public funds or knows the humour of the
House of Commons on these matters--will any man who is in the smallest
degree acquainted with the practical working of State departments of
any kind, imagine that such a department could be other than bound by
minutely defined regulations? Can he imagine that the work of the
department should go on fairly and in such a manner as to be free from
just criticism, unless it were bound by certain definite and fixed
rules? I cannot imagine it.
The next objection of importance that I have heard commonly repeated is
that the teaching is too theoretical, that there is insufficient
practical teaching. I venture to say that there is no one who has taken
more pains to insist upon the comparative uselessness of scientific
teaching without practical work than I have; I venture to say that
there are no persons who are more cognisant of these defects in the
work of the Science and Art Department than those who administer it.
But those who talk in this way should acquaint themselves with the fact
that proper practical instruction is a matter of no small difficulty in
the present scarcity of properly taught teachers, that it is very
costly, and that, in some branches of science, there are other
difficulties which I won't allude to. But it is a matter of fact that,
wherever it has been possible, practical teaching has been introduced,
and has been made an essential element in examination; and no doubt if
the House of Commons would grant unlimited means, and if proper
teachers were to hand, as thick as blackberries, there would not be
much difficulty in organising a complete system of practical
instruction and examination ancillary to the present science classes.
Those who quarrel with the present state of affairs would be better
advised if, instead of groaning over the shortcomings of the present
system, they would put before themselves these two questions--Is it
possible under the conditions to invent any better system? Is it
possible under the conditions to enlarge the work of practical teaching
and practical examination which is the one desire of those who
administer the department? That is all I have to say upon that subject.