SUMMARY. To what do all these facts about Technical Education in Central Europe tend? Is it not to show that England must not only get abreast, but ahead of the work being done in every town, almost in every village, in many of the districts traversed? The situation is a serious one; but, in the course of the last few months, the writer has seen good reason to believe that England is becoming conscious of its danger, and that throughout the country men of experience and high commercial and industrial standing are alive to the peril of remaining supine under present conditions. In the great centres of industry Technical Education is making rapid progress, but there is need for us to advance still more rapidly, and especially to devote ourselves to the task of building up the highest grade of Technical Education, as has been done in Berlin and other continental and American cities. In the districts described, the Government, the local authorities, the merchants and employers have worked heartily in unison to forward technical education; and in many places the workmen's guilds, unions, and trade societies have joined hands with the authorities. To compel study and intellectual comprehension of daily labour, the employers are enforcing certificates of competency, and encouraging the artisan to aim at a high technique. This widespread education has raised the handicraftsman in the estimation of the nation, and in places of public resort the increased skill of the handworker is extolled. The tremendous strides in advance made during the last twentyfive years by the countries I have been describing is irrefutable proof of the enormous aid given to commercial prosperity by this education, and if in the coming generations Great Britain is to hold her supremacy, which is already so much threatened, the inhabitants of the smallest town in the United Kingdom must have the opportunity of learning in a scientific manner the trades of the district; and every villager should be trained to study nature with an intelligent eye and to appreciate the beneficent value of the natural products which lie around him. Our aim as the greatest colonists of the world must be to build up a race of intellectual handicraftsmen and highly skilled artisans, and thus to secure for ourselves some of the advantages which must otherwise fall to the share of other nations whose system of education has made their workmen more keenly alive to the economic significance of improved methods of output, and to the commercial value of more artistic design and cleaner finish. JAMES BAKER. |