Abstract
IN the Speech from the Throne at the close of the session, Her Majesty is made to express satisfaction, inter alia, with “the steps you have taken towards the establishment of technical education in England and Wales,” and perhaps the words here placed in the Queen's mouth will do as well as any others to express the feeling with which the Government Bill was regarded by the friends of technical instruction all over the country, and by those who for years past have laboured in the cause. Steps have been taken “towards” the establishment of technical education in England and Wales, not very complete or large steps, but still steps which show that the Government, when time and opportunity arise, are prepared to go further, and which pledge the present Ministry, at any rate, to secondary technical instruction. That the new Act goes no further is not necessarily due to any lukewarmness on the part of the Vice-President of the Council or of his colleagues. The circumstances of the past few years were such that a very large amount of legislation had to be proposed, and if possible carried, during the session just ended; and any Government would naturally desire to avoid all contentious subjects except those which imperatively called for treatment. Unfortunately, nothing is easier than to revive in certain quarters in the House of Commons the heated educational controversies of twenty years ago; there are still some men whose blood is fired by these antique battle-cries, and who think it their duty to ride forth to a war in which there is nowadays no real enemy. We think that the friends of technical instruction have every reason to be grateful to a Government which, with many inducements to do nothing, have yet brought in and passed a Bill which, with Sir Henry Roscoe's amendments, was supported by all the members of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction who had seats in the House of Commons. But, we hear it said, the Bill is a very poor and small measure, while the subject is one to be dealt with by a large, comprehensive, and elaborate enactment; the principle of the administration is all wrong, for it divides technical education from the ordinary education of the country,—it should be administered by the School Boards and by the School Boards only; it is mere paltry, tinkering legislation where it might be heroic, and so on. No doubt in the best of all possible worlds the matter would be different, but here below we have to take things as we find them; and amongst the things which we find, is a legislative machine which labours heavily and slowly, and which has to be manipulated with a hundred and one different considerations in view. The House of Commons is far, indeed, from being an ideally perfect assembly for dealing with technical education or any subject of the kind; but in this, as in most other matters in this country, where compromise governs in all things, from the position of the Queen on the throne downwards, the question is not what we ought to have, but what we can get. Things do not spring full-grown from the brain of the British Jove; we do not get complete, exhaustive, elaborate legislative enactments from the British Parliament; finality is never written on any of its proceedings; it never seeks theoretical perfection. First we get one small inadequate measure; by and by this is enlarged, amended, improved, supplemented, by a succession of Acts, spread, it may be, over years, and perplexing lawyers and administrators by their inconsistent and contradictory provisions; then last of all comes a reforming official who elaborates all these scattered Acts into one homogeneous statute, which he succeeds in getting through Parliament just as the whole becomes useless in consequence of some new policy or wave of public opinion; and then the process is all gone through again. As to the objection respecting the authority administering the Act, we must confess we cannot attach any weight to it, in comparison with the substantial concession to the demand for technical instruction which it makes. It seems to us that it can matter very little which particular one of our numerous local authorities is to be the medium for passing on to the public the benefits conferred by the Act. No doubt the work is more within the scope of the School Boards; but to refuse those benefits because, for reasons which are perfectly well understood by those who have followed the discussion, they come from County and Borough Councils and rural sanitary authorities, would be absurd pedantry—almost a crime. One member of the House of Commons was filled with dismay at the prospect of the rural and urban sanitary authorities raising technical institutes out of the public funds, although he quite approved of technical instruction. It does not appear that a technical institute will be any the worse because the money with which it is maintained will be raised by a number of men with one long name rather than a number with another long name: the public gets the institute all the same. Moreover, this point is rendered of little or no importance, even in itself, by the present position of local government in this country. It is now in a transition stage; most of the existing machinery which has not already been taken to pieces will certainly have to undergo that process in the course of the next few years, and we feel no assurance at all that School Boards themselves will not shortly disappear, to be replaced by Education Committees of County and Borough Councils, as existing sanitary authorities will be supplanted by Sanitary Committees and sub-committees. From this point of view, even if a great question of principle were otherwise involved, it would not matter much which set of authorities under took the task, seeing that all are likely to be equally short-lived, and to be merged soon in the County or Borough Councils, as the case may be. What satisfies those true friends of our national progress who have made this subject their own in Parliament, and who are in specially favourable positions for judging what is attainable, will probably satisfy most other sensible advocates of technical instruction. In common phrase, the Act is “something to go on with”; it is even more, because it is a pledge that the Government will go further in due time. In an excellent and well-considered article on the subject, the Times (September 4) says it “remains for us to make the best use of the system about to be established, to take note of the dangers and drawbacks incidental to it, but not to forget the limitless possibilities for good which it offers,” and further, “almost without a struggle is established the possibility of a complete national system of technical instruction.” It is for this that we have reason to be thankful to the Government: it has placed the instrument in our hands, and it is for us now to use it efficiently.
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The Technical Instruction Act. Nature 40, 457–458 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/040457a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/040457a0