Abstract
THE Carnegie Corporation of New York has lately issued a critical study by Dr. F. H. Spencer of the technical colleges of South Africa. Dr. Spencer has had experience of technical education in Great Britain, and this has enabled him to make some interesting comparisons. The technical colleges provide (a) full-time pre-apprenticeship courses for pupils aged 14–17 or 18, (b) part-time courses for apprentices and others already at work. The place accorded in the full-time courses to general cultural work is, by British standards, inadequate, geography being dropped after the first year, while history, even from the economic point of view, does not enter the picture. The part-time courses, which are everywhere the largest part of the technical college work, are dominated by the Apprenticeship Law. This enactment has conferred on South Africa some of the benefits which in Great Britain should have resulted from the clauses of the Fisher Act providing for daytime continuation education from 14 to 18. In South Africa, despite a certain amount of recalcitrance, the Apprentice Law is an undoubted success. Apprentices attend ordinarily about eight hours a week of which half is taken from day-time working hours. The great merit of the system is that the compulsory attendance is almost universally followed up to an advanced stage by a not unsatisfactory proportion of the apprentices. This advanced stage, at least for the constructional trades, is comparable with university work, and those who pass through it to the national certificate stage “will furnish the 'non-commissioned' staff of industry who are as essential to success as the management”.
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Technical Colleges of South Africa. Nature 142, 248 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142248b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142248b0