THE GLOBE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 27. 1880. PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2134, 27 December 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 27. 1880. PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

One of the points against' which the opponents of the present educational system are wont to direct their attacks is that it is more or less unpractical. They declare that the system is capable of turning loose on the world an unlimited supply of young persons fairly posted in current literature, in history, grammar, and in a number of “ isms,” but that they are not specially trained to follow out any particular pursuit. These young people, they declare, are naturally inclined to mere posts of bookkeepers and what are vulgarly termed “ genteel occupations,” but are not willing to face the rougher or more technical trades whore their services are in reality much more required. There can bo no doubt that the more or less total abolition of the old system of apprenticeships has had an injurious effect in many respects. In the old days boys were taken young by masters, and had surmounted the drudgery of a trade before they had grown old enough to recognise that it was drudgery. Tho master took a prido in his apprentices, and the latter were eager to gain his approbation. The effect was a system assimilating in some remote degree to that obtaining in some nations where a trade may be said to belong to certain families, who hand down its traditions from generation to generation. Tho introduction of machinery and trade anions have crushed out tho apprentice system to a largo extent, and nothing has

as yet taken its place. Boys are kept at school at an age when in the old days they were considerably advanced in their trades. All this has been recognised by that eminently practical people the French, and schools have been started with the object of obviating some of the disadvantages inherent in the existing state of affairs. In these schools boys are taught the technical part of their trades, while at the same time a certain number of hours are given to general education. One of these schools, for instance, is connected with a large printing establishment, and the pupils are brought up as compositors, while their general instruction is adapted to their future life, a smattering of dead and living languages being given, which is sure to come in usefully. That something of this sort will have to be started in England if she is to keep her position as the first among manufacturing nations, there can bo no doubt. The care bestowed by masters on their apprentices will have to be exchanged for supervision on a more extended scale, but the training of the youth of the country in the particular linos which they are afterwards to follow must be given in some way or other.

The same remarks apply to the education of the future in New Zealand. Mechanical and intellectual instruction should go band in band. It is, on the whole, easier for children to gain the former than the latter. Sleight of hand is earlier arrived at than maturity of brain. Were the drudgery of a trade soon acquired, a longer time could afterwards, when the intellect bad gained strength, be given to moro intellectual pursuits. The reproach thrown against the present system is, not that boys are too well read, but that they revolt against mechanical drudgery. Let them early overcome that feeling, and the battle is half won. The reproach that our existing mode of education turns cut only clerks and shopmen would then vanish.