The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1905 TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7718, 21 January 1905, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1905 TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

lln resolving to make a frost start towards the establishment of n technical school in New Plymouth, the I Education Board cannot be charged Iwi't.h excessive haste or rashness—nearly every town in the colony except our own being already supplied with more or less perfect provision for technical instruction, iiul in many cases—especially when much of the work to be done is yet on tentative, lines—it is well to hasten slowly, and there is no reason why, if wo have been slow in start.ng, ithat wc should not make up for lost time by the greater excellence of the provision to be made. The idea at the root of the modern tendency ! towards technical training is not us many suppose to impart trades ov handicrafts, or even the elements of these except in so far as those elements are mere incidentals of the training given. Technical schools in their elementary stage are designed merely to supplement the mental training of a book of education Willi s uch practice of hand and eye a* will directly help to cultivate thote essential organs of our everyday work and through them also arouse latent or partly neglected powers of the human mind. Much of the work done in elementary technical teaching involves the use of wood and of joiners' tools, but this does not mean that the end in view is to produce a piece of inferior furniture or to make a joiner. It means only that wood is cheap and clean and easily worked, and that the cultivation of eye and hand and mind can better he followed out with wood than with steel or copper. Until comparatively recent years all education of the mind was sought to bo given by and through books and lectures. In elementary teaching the book—and the rod—were considered the chief and practically the only essentials of education. In university curricula degrees were granted only for such literary studies as arts, divinity, and philosophy. Hut within the last twenty or thirty years the bulk of tha't opinion which makes for progress has cast itself on the side of education by means of things instead of symbols—>by doing instead of reading. Even in the universities, usually the last strongholds of conservatism, we read of a degree in brewing being given by one of the more lately founded English institutions. In America, combined with a curiously shallow bookish tendency in primary and secondary schools, there 1 have been enormous strides made in the establishment of technical schools throughout the Union, and a man or woman may now 'fake a degree in almost any subject commercial, industrial, agricultural, journalistic, medical, theological, and so on. iW'hnt has happened is re n ]ly a recognition of what was at one time regarded as pedagogical heresy, viz., that the proper way to educate the mind is always to co-ordinate its functions with those of the body. There still survives in literature a traditional figure with bald head, bloodless face, and introspective eye, who is so extremely full of learning as to he a laughing-stock to those withwhom learning without practical capacity is a thing to scoff at. Wc have never met one of these men outside a book, but nevertheless wc believe they existed—they were an inheritance from the days of cloistered students. Bcpially we. believe that except in monasteries or other abodes of recluses they do not exist to-day. They would be an anachronism for which the "battling 1 ' world of the twentieth century has no use. What tl>o world wants, and will apparently want more and more, is a generation cultivated generally in the best use of its bodily and mental powers in early life, and then Jater on devoted to specialisation along appropriate lines. Let us have a technical school by all moans—the best we can get, and let parents recognise that without technical training their sons and daughters are not adeguately oducated. Hut do not lot it be supposed that an hour a week at wood-work or pastrycooking is likely to serve any more useful purpose than to be a small break in the monotony of bookwork. If New Plymouth, is to have a technical school it should aim at much more than this. It should bo well equipped and staffed, and its Ume-ta'bles should comprehend at least one-third of its pupils' life. Anything less than this is mere playing at technical education, and, though not exactly useless, is not so serious an improvement on (mipresent system as to be worth the trouble and expense of establishing it. On the Fourth Page. Commercial. Divine Services. Tragedy of Nant. Bookmaker's Exalted Ideas'.