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To SIR G. W. KEKEWICH, K.C.B.
Secretary of the Board of Education.

SIR,

The following report by Mr. James Baker has been prepared for the Board of Education, in order to record the impressions which he formed in the course of a journey undertaken, at the request of the Board, through East Prussia. part of Poland, Galicia, Silesia and Bohemia, with the special object of observing, from the point of view of one generally interested in the development of British Industry and Commerce, the progress of technical and commercial education in those countries.

Mr. Baker's impressions, while not claiming to be those of an expert in any one branch of industry or in technological education, are those of a skilled observer of social developments, and are likely at the present time to be of considerable public.

interest.

The thanks of the Board are due to the Foreign Governments concerned for their courtesy in granting permission through the Foreign Office, to Mr. Baker to visit educational institutions in the course of his inquiry, and to Her Majesty's Ambassadors Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, and Her Majesty's Consular officers at Breslau, Prague and Warsaw for assistance rendered by them to the writer of the report.

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The courteous aid given to Mr. Baker by the Directors and Professors of various educational institutions is acknowledged in the course of the following pages.

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TECHNICAL AND

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION

EAST PRUSSIA, POLAND, GALICIA, SILESIA, AND

BOHEMIA,

IN

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

All nations are

the

on

prosperity their dependent on Leaders are education.

industrial prosperity in learning that their commercial and Commercial methods of educating the future depends of educating the whole nation. indispensable to national greatness, more indispensable than ever before; but a few great men acting alone cannot save a nation; they must have behind them an alert, well-educated, resourceful people. The future will lie with the people, and one necessary part of national education is that which brings the most advanced technical skill and knowledge to bear upon all forms of industry and commerce. What nation is thus to-day training its whole population to a higher point of industrial efficiency? Great improvements have been made in technical education in this country during the last ten years, and every student of the subject would desire to make hearty acknowledgment of the energy, munificence and public spirit which have been shown in many districts in the furtherance of this and other branches of instruction. But can it be said that we in England have as yet devoted ourselves with sufficient energy to the task of making our system of national education the best in the world? It is to be feared the ordinary Englishmen does not realise how much will have to be done in order to develop our technical and commercial education so as to keep up with the rapid advance which is being made by some other countries, and how much the efficiency of technical education in its varous grades is conditioned by the kind of primary or secondary education in which the foundations of the pupils' knowledge and training are mainly

laid.

In going over the technical and continuation schools of a great English city with a population of nearly 400,000 souls, I was reluctantly compelled to conclude that in this city at least, we in England were "hatching mainly clerks," and clerks, also, with too little command of foreign tongues. The proportion of the scholars and students who were learning to become intellectual handworkers was regrettably small compared to the number of those who were qualifying themselves to sit at a desk and be a clerk. I had a vision of the work

I had seen being done in the small towns of North Austria, where excellent technical teaching is carried into the smallest centres of industry, and the thought came to me that

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Austria was creating able producers, whilst we
were still
inclined to devote what is (when every allowance is made for
the special needs of our commercial position) a disproportionate
share of our attention to the training of the handlers of
products.

But in pleading for improvement in technical and commercial education, I am far from wishing to advocate the establishment of courses of training, which would merely enhance the specialised efficiency of work people regarded as "hands," rather than as citizens. On the contrary, education in any true use of the word should aim at making the worker love and put his brain into his daily work, and thus prepare for such changes in the conditions of employment as would permit of more individual and artistic interest in the processes of production.

The industrial districts of Austria have taken a leading part in the movement for establishing in every trade centre, however small the town, a school to teach the latest, most scientific, and most artistic methods of producing the wares of the district; the value of their system has been recognised and adopted elsewhere. It was this fact that led me to select that part of Europe circling round the most industrial portion of Austria, wherein to study the technical teaching of to-day, under the German and Austrian Governments.

Many notes have lately appeared stating that Russia is about to make a great step forward in educating her people, and as her great industrial centre, Poland, with the marvellously advancing manufacturing centres of Bialystok, Warsaw, and Lodz, abutted on the territory I had selected for examination, I included Poland in my journey; for our manufacturers cannot ignore the fact of a town such as Lodz springing into existence, and developing at a more rapid rate than some of the American cities in earlier days.

A city that in "Murray's Guide" for 1893 is accredited with but 125,000 inhabitants, including its suburbs; whereas now it numbers 350,000 souls, and has factories of 10,000, 6,000, 5,600, and 4,500 hands. In order to ascertain whether educational effort had aught to do with this almost magic growth, I felt it to be worth special inquiry, and, although my investigations in this district were less fruitful than I had hoped, the account of some of the schools visited, and of the search for others, may not be without interest.

In this question of technical education, as in so many others, one root difference between English methods and those of the Continent lies in the fact that in England matters are left to casual supply or to local effort, whilst abroad the highly organised central Government prescribes and compels united effort towards a clearly formulated aim. Much has happily been done by our local authorities to provide better facilities for technical education for working men and women, but too many of our artisans still learn their trade solely in the workshop, picking up what information they can of the work done in that workshop, thus failing to secure scientific grounding, or artistic advancement, or diversity

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