TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN GREAT BRITAIN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 337, 12 March 1910, Page 5

TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN GREAT BRITAIN

In these days of Dreadnoughts and ! airships, the attention is apt to be directed to but one aspect of the great struggle for commercial and industrial supremacy that is being waged among the leading nations of the world to-day. England must maintain lici' position in the industrial world" is the common ex- | pression of the man in the street; but the answer to the problem: "How is it I to be done?" is not ro readily forthcoming. The prophetic words of Lord : Roscbery muy serve to remind us that the military side of the problem is not the only, nor, indeed, the more imI portant factor to be considered. In a ! famous speech at Glasgow he declared that "our present system of antiquated i technical education lias almost resulted lin commercial disaster. The time has 1 arrived to reconstruct our educational apparatus." Still more recently the po- ■ sition has been put in a nutshell bv Sir I John Gorst, late Minister of Education in England, who, in a phrase which will" become historic, has uttered this warning: "1 fear Germany, not' because of her Dreadnoughts, but because of her technic-!, schools." The gravity of the situation' cannot indeed be there is to-day a great and ever-increas-ing demand for better technical educa-1 tion among the masses, though it may! be token? as a hopeful sign of British commercial activity that this demand ' becomes every day more pronounced. In tlrs -connection it is interesting to note jtjie. growth and progress of an institution which has recently come to play an important part in " the technical e(lUci'tion of Great Britain—we refer to the International Correspondence Schools, Ltd., of London and Scranton. The development of this institution is ,as remaikable as it is inspiring. Founded soni- nineteen years ago in a humble newspaper office in a mining town in the United States of America, the schools grew by leaps and bounds, until in 1906 they had become the property of a company possessing a fully paid share capital of some t'825,000, and a, surplus, being a balance of assets in excess of liabilities, of £550,138, But the fact which is of greatest interest here it that, as a result of the increasing demand in England for the technical .instruction provided by the schools, the entire control of the British and colonial Business of the institution has now been transferred to London. The new English home of the schools is located in the newly-opened thoroughfare of Kingsway, London, where a commodious block of buildings is entirely given over to the great, work of providing :ound technical education for the English people. The whole of the courses—some 208 in number—offered by the schools are process of being rewritten by prominent English experts, so as to specially adapt them to the exigencies oi' the English student.

Some idea of the thoroughness .with which this work is being done may 'oe gathered from the fact that upwards of £15,000 has been spent in the preparation of one course alone—the electrical engineering course. The schools are Of commercial enterprise, not a philanthropic institution. They are founded on that most stable of all foundations for a permanent and profitable enterprise, a wide-spread demand. The cordiality rfnd spontaneity with which the Englisn people have welcomed the new plan oi teaching would seem to assure for it in the British possessions a development as marvellous as that which has characterised it in America. Already the students of the schools in Great Britain and her colonic* number more than 10C.000; in Xew Zealand alone close on 7000 men and women have been enrolled in the various courses. The headquarters for Australasia are located at (13 Dixon street, Wellington, and branch agencies are established in all the principal towns throughout Xew Zealand, Australia, Tasmania and Fiji. The importance of the work that is being done by this institution has not' failed to attract attention and enlist tlie^ sympathies of many prominent educationists and public men in England. The London Truth (edited by the Right Hon. Henry Labouehere) recently published an article, covering eislit 'pages, on the schools, endorsing their work in the strongest terms. Many of England's most prominent men have by word of mouth committal themselves to tfc ' '.P'riort of the s-liools in t!'e Mother Country and her possessions. A' • celeoration banquet recently beld in London was attended by men prominent in every of British life—stages. men ( edre<itot.s and leading- smplor>r»among olhers. One and all were minimouH in the opinion that the schools w-ere I'deed engaged in a work o'fnational importance, rendered doublv so by the urgent need for better and more extended technical education in Great Britain to-day. It is, indeed, a comforting thought that the striking benefits of ii thorough and careful technical training are now ulnml within easy reach of everv worker in the Empire by such an institution as the International Correspondence Schools.—Evening Post.