ABSTRACT
Royal Commissions, House of Commons inquiries, and great demonstrations of public opinion were tardy in effect. The employer stood aloof. 1
This brief extract from the r 92 7 report of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes adequately summarises the main argument contained in this essay. Between the run-up to the Great Exhibition of r 8 5 r and the outbreak of the World War I, a great deal took place within the field of technical education itself but whether it had much effect upon the performance of industry in the United Kingdom is another matter. Numerous contemporary accounts would support a further point made by the Association that 'Technical Education was born of the fear of continental competition'. Again, however, there is little evidence to support the view that the growth in the provision of technical education had any impact on industry:
Manufacturers were suspicious or indifferent. They feared their trade secrets would become known, or they saw no immediate benefits, or they had no faith that schools or colleges could be of service to productive industry. 2
If the point is worth making at all without the quantitative evidence to support it one way or another, it was not so much that the changes in the educational system were so slow as to check the economic system but that industry itself failed to take advantage of the changes. 3 To stay with the 192 7 report for one further point: 'Within a relatively brief period the world ... passed from a non-scientific to a scientific age.' 4 Educational reformers, in fact, became obsessed with the need to expand the provision of 'science classes', if industry and commerce were to meet 'the competition of scientifically trained rivals'. 5 Unfortunately, when an expansion of 'science classes' did take place, especially in the so-called 'organised science schools' dating from r 8 7 2, 'there was too much emphasis on the purely academic teaching of chemistry and physics'. 6 Contrast the condemnation of United Kingdom practices - 'the rigid rules and the theoretical curriculum, together with the system of payment by results, led to stale and unimaginative teaching' 7 - with the report of the r 864 French Commission on German technical education:
In this respect Germany appears to us to have made, as regards the diffusion of the sciences, and particularly their application to the requirements of public works, arts and industry, far more rapid progress than England ... The chemical classes have at their disposal extensive and well organised laboratories, in which students are allowed to perform manipulations and thus join practice to theory. Numerous collections of instruments, models, minerals and technology, and also libraries supplied with all the new publications, complete the means of instruction. 8
The Theoretical nature of the Science and Art Department's examinations in metallurgy, for example, would have been of little relevance to ironmasters struggling with the difficulties of applying the new inventions that were taking place in their industry - the Bessemer, the open hearth and the basic processes. The word inventions is used advisedly because the men associated with the discoveries were, for the most part, inventors - not scientists. Significantly, too, the inventions occurred in the United Kingdom - despite the lack of scientific and technical education! 9 Prior to r 8 5 r - assuming that it would take at least a generation of technical education to percolate through and have effect - the lack of any such education had led to the United Kingdom having the 'least trained' artisans and the 'worst educated' middle class in Europe. 10
The workshop of the world obtained little, if any, help from its schools, or even from its ancient and wealthy universities, and only prospered in spite of this great handicap. 11
Significantly, though, in r8p it appeared that the United Kingdom was under no severe economic pressure to improve the quality of the working force. The demands placed upon the average artisan were physical ones; with few exceptions he was poorly paid and belonged to a labour force that was as much characterized by its high rate of turnover as anything else. Any technical knowledge that was needed was gained by doing the job. However, even in this very unsatisfactory and far from promising situation, a small number of workmen had sought 'to better themselves' through improving their technical education. As a prerequisite to this untypical trend, the individual member of the artisan class would almost certainly have attended one of the following types of schools - a day-school of the National Society, a Lancasterian school, a Charity school, a ragged school, a 'Free grammar school', a 'Dame' school or even a Sunday school. Attendance at any one such school would have provided the individual with only a very rudimentary child education - basic instruction in the three R's, intensive religious learning and perhaps a little vocational training-which was aimed primarily at making the person aware of his 'place' or 'status' in society. Without in some way being able to undergo a self-taught programme, it would be doubtful if the individual could have taken advantage of any technical education. Equally, by r 8 5 r, attendance at any one of the many· Mechanics' Institutes would have been 'difficult' for any member of the artisan class who felt ill at ease with members of the clerical and middle classes.
