Note 37 — Chapter XVI · THE INVENTORS, CIVIL ENGINEERS, AND MECHANICS OF ENGLAND, AND ENGLISH PROGRESS.
Reading edition
Discussion of the subject of technical education at a meeting of the Society of Arts, London, England, 1885.
Dr. Gladstone, F.R.S.: “It should be their aim in [elementary schools] to give such a notion of the value of materials and the use of tools as could afterwards be turned to use in any required direction. There were two great difficulties in the way of doing this. The first and greatest was the inveterate notion that education consisted of book-learning.... Another difficulty was the ignorance of teachers in this respect. If an endeavor were made to introduce some knowledge of science into schools, they generally found that the teachers had some kind of theoretical knowledge, but it had been obtained mainly from books; and what was chiefly wanted was that things should be taught as well as words and before words.”
Prof. Guthrie, F.R.S.: “This method of bringing the hand and the mind to work together really lay at the basis of all true technical instruction; where the mind alone was employed the knowledge acquired passed away, but when the mind and the hand had been educated together the knowledge was never forgotten.”