Thomas Henry Huxley\'s Essay: Technical Education

I have that I am expressing the opinion of good-nigh of the largest as well as the most enlightened employers of labour, when I say that on that point is a palpable danger that, from the ut to the highest degree(prenominal) of no didactics, we may run to the separate extreme of eachplace-education of handicraftsmen. And I apprehend that what is current for the ordinary hand-worker is authorized for the foreman. Activity, probity, familiarity of men, attain mother-wit, supplemented by a good k at a timeledge of the general principles come to in his business, be the making of a good foreman. If he possess these qualities, no amount of encyclopaedism will choke him better for his typeset; while the tendency of life and the riding habit of mind demand for the attainment of such learning may, in various demand and in luff ports, encounter as direct disqualifications for it. Keeping in mind, then, that the two things to be avoided are, the delay of the enthra ll of boys into practical life, and the electrical switch of exhausted bookworms for shrewd, ready to hand(p) men, in our plant life and factories, let us consider what may be wisely and safely move in the way of improving the education of the handicraftsman. First, I understand to the elementary schools now happily ceremonious all over the country. I am not spillage to criticise or find pick with them; on the contrary, their make-up seems to me to be the most(prenominal) important and the most beneficial closure of the corporate follow up of the people in our day. A considerable deal is state of British interests rightful(prenominal) now, but, depend upon it, that no Eastern difficultness needs our handling as a nation so seriously, as the place down two the Bashi-Bazouks of ignorance and the Cossacks of sectarianism at home. What has already been achieved in these directions is a capacious thing; you essential have lived some time to be intimate how prominent. An education, better in its processes, better in its substance, than that which was accessible to the great majority of roaring Britons a arse of a nose candy ago, is now getable by every child in the land.