Polytechnic

“ Approximately one-third of students continuing in secondary education attend the polytechnic school. The stated purpose of this kind of school is "to provide pupils with wider scientific education and more intensive polytechnical training, through practical production experience closely linked with general education and technical subjects, and to prepare them for active working and intellectual life or for their continued studies at higher levels. ”

“ At the Polytechnic, for a maximum of 350 pupils, a body of fifteen professors and twenty-four répétiteurs, are employed, all solely in actual instruction, and in no way burdened with any part of the charge of the discipline or the finance, or even with the great yearly examinations for the passage from the first to the second division, and for the entrance to the public services. ”

“ But where is the sub-structure of which a Polytechnic College is the upper story? The answer is that it does not exist. Our elementary and middle school course has no regard to technical instruction, nor is it linked with a system of special technical and art schools for handicraftsmen or for foremen and manager of works. Drawing is restricted to our high schools. ”

“ The Polytechnic College of Philadelphia, now in its ninth year, is a truly excellent institution, the practical results of which are shown in the fact that its students, immediately on graduating, have generally received appointments as civil and mechanical engineers, or otherwise stepped at once into active and remunerative employment. Its object, as we are told, is to afford to the young civil, mining, or mechanical engineer, chemist, architect, metallurgist, or student of applied science, every facility whereby he may perfect himself in his destined calling. ”

“ But there were during the session 1906-1907 no less than eighty-six recognized “teachers of the university” on the staffs of the London polytechnics and more than 750 students who were working for London University degrees in the polytechnic classes. There is no reason to fear that the recreative, social, manual and industrial training, to which at first the special attention of the founder of the Regent Street Polytechnic was directed, will suffer from a fuller expansion of the academic and literary side of “polytechnic” life. ”

“ Since that epoch, the Polytechnic School, often attacked, even in the discussions of the Legislative Body, has maintained its ground by the impression of the reputation of the men who act there as professors, of the depth of the knowledge which makes the object of their lessons, and of the youths of superior talent who issue from it every year. ”

“ The Polytechnic is a great building standing back from Battersea Park Road, and at about nine o’clock in the morning we shall find a stream of teachers and pupils hurrying into it, masters and mistresses of the Science School, the Domestic Economy School, and the Training School for Teachers of Domestic Economy; boys and girls of the Science School; girls and women students of the two Domestic Economy Schools ”

“ The great want of the age is the Polytechnic School, or more correctly speaking, of the Technological Institute, in which the labors of the Society of Arts, aided by the Museum and Library, may serve the two-fold object of informing the public on all matters of science and industry and of aiding the School of Industrial Science. Developed on its largest scale, such an institute should be devoted to the acquisition and dissemination of all knowledge, but under strictly scientific guidance and influences. ”

“ While he was revolving this scheme in his mind he happened to meet in the street a highly accomplished physician who had just returned from a tour in Europe, and who began at once to describe in glowing words the Polytechnic School of Paris, wherein mechanics and engineers receive the instruction which their professions require. The doctor said that young men came from all parts of France and lived on dry bread, just to attend the Polytechnic. ”

“ The college woman may at least suggest that a long-felt want has been that of a polytechnic, an institution where the college graduate can learn household science as a serious profession, as an advocate or physician studies the principles of law and medicine. ”

“ The Faculty of the Polytechnic The body of professors and instructors of each college shall constitute its faculty, and as presiding officer of each faculty there shall be a dean appointed by the Board of Trustees upon the recommendation by the President of the Polytechnic. In appointment of Professors, instructors, and other personnel of the polytechnic, no religious test shall be required, nor shall their religious opinions or affiliations be made a matter of examinations of inquiry ”

“ The technical schools, it may be noted, with the exceptions perhaps of the Borough Polytechnic, are not looked on with favour by the trade, who are ever adverse to any alteration in the traditional habits of a craft; but it is difficult to see, without some experiments of the kind, how the learner is to get the advantages of intelligent training, which he did under the old system of apprenticeship. ”

“ Hogg retained the name Polytechnic, but gave it the new significance of an institution under public management which should provide young men and women of the lower middle classes with instruction, recreation, and social intercourse. Its comprehensive aims were thus described by Hogg: 'What we wanted to develop our institute into was a place which should recognise that God had given man more than one side to his character, and where we could gratify any reasonable taste, whether athletic, intellectual, spiritual, or social.' The new Polytechnic was opened on 25 Sept. ”

“ The new technical schools also illustrate the advent of instruction in applied science as an important element in advanced education. Such institutions as the Seafield Park Engineering College, the City Guilds of London Institute, the City of London College, and the Battersea Polytechnic are instances of the same development. Some endowed institutions for girls illustrate the same tendencies, as, for example, the Bedford College for Women and the Royal Holloway College. ”

“ With this is connected the anomaly that graduates of higher industrial, agricultural and commercial schools cannot become regular students at the university. Recently some of the obstacles have been partly done away with. Thus if a gymnasium graduate desires to enter the polytechnic, he must submit to an examination in descriptive geometry by a professor of the polytechnic. A graduate of real-gymnasium may enter either the university or polytechnic ”

“ To the English public the word polytechnic has only recently become familiar, in connexion with some London institutions of The First Polytechnics in England. an exceptional character. In the reign of William IV. there was an institution in London called after the name of his consort—“The Adelaide Gallery”—and devoted rather to the display of new scientific inventions and curiosities than to research or to the teaching of science. ”

“ The School of Naval Architects, which existed in Paris, has been removed to Brest, under the name of École des Ingénieurs des Vaisseaux. No pupils are admitted but such as have been students, at least two years, in the Polytechnic School. The examination of the candidates takes place every year, and the preference is given to those who excel in descriptive geometry, mechanics, and the other branches of knowledge appropriated to the first year's study at that school. ”

“ In order to be admitted into any of the above schools, the candidates must prove themselves qualified by the preliminary instruction required the examinations at the competition prescribed for each of them. The pupils of these schools receive a salary from the nation. At the head of them is the Polytechnic School, of which I have already spoken. This is the grand nursery, whence the pupils, when they have attained a sufficient degree of perfection, are transplanted into the other Schools for Public Services. ”

“ As new and well-devised opportunities for mental culture are placed within reach, they will be more and more appreciated, new and healthier appetites will be stimulated, the art of employing leisure wisely and happily will be more systematically studied, and the polytechnics will become still more important centres of civilizing and educating influence than they have hitherto been.
In particular, the reconstituted university of London has been placed in new and most helpful relation to the best of the polytechnics. ”

“ Look at the working-man of the present day. He has received an education sound and thorough, up to a certain point, at the Board School; he has had the chance of continuing his education after leaving school at evening classes. He has also had the chance of joining a Polytechnic, which is a kind of technical University, teaching everything; and a kind of public school, in which athletics of all kinds are practised and encouraged. There are a great many thousand lads in the Polytechnics, and they are as fine young fellows as one can desire to see. They are skilled in technical work ”

“ There can be no doubt that, in such cases, more time should be spent in the shop, and less in the lecture and recitation room. Some who develop both natural skill and strong intellectual powers will push on through the polytechnic school into the professional life, as engineers and scientists. Others will find their greatest usefulness, as well as highest happiness, in some branch of mechanical work, into which they will readily step when they leave school. All will gain intellectually by their experience in contact with things. ”

“ Among buildings of an educational class, the move in technical education has led to the erection of a good many large polytechnic and similar institutions, which in many cases have been well treated architecturally ”

“ A separate professor is engaged to lecture on that particular subject with which he is specially conversant, and the number of such professors attached to a polytechnic school is very large. In the engineering department there are six or seven distinct courses of lectures under the direction of thirteen professors. ^ The largest and most recently constructed of aU these institutions is the polytechnic school of Berlin, which was completed in 1884 at a cost of about £450,000. In France the institutions in which the highest technical instruction is given are concentrated in the capital. ”

“ The padre asked what that was.
"A polytechnician is a man who believes that all beings, alive or dead, can be precisely defined and submitted to an algebraic calculation. A polytechnician puts, on the same plane, victory, a tempest, and love. ”

“ Students were admitted to all higher schools on the basis of competitive examination and assigned to particular faculties according to government-directed areas of study. Most degree courses at universities required three to six years to complete, and those at polytechnical institutes, from two to three years. ”

“ There will be ample time to practice manual skill and to develop the mechanical arts. Large, splendidly equipped polytechnical schools will make it easy for both young and old to learn an occupation. Chemical and physical laboratories, in keeping with the standards of these sciences, will be erected, and capable teachers will be on hand. ”

“ As the concept of polytechnical education became widespread at the secondary level, practical work consumed up to one-third of the total hours of education. Although experimental vocational training was introduced into the curricula of some gymnasiums in this period, other gymnasiums, particularly in the rural areas, required students to spend several hours weekly in formal vocational studies. ”

“ The courses are so arranged as to give the student an approximately equal amount of class work and of laboratory, shop, or field practice. The degrees conferred are bachelor and master of science and civil, mechanical, and electrical engineer. Military drill is required of the students. ”

“ It will be seen, therefore, that in nearly all European countries, instruction in engineering in all its branches and in chemical technology has become a recognized part of a university course, and that the faculty of applied science has been so enlarged as to provide technical education of the highest grade.
Some of the best schools for the higher technical instruction—for the training of masters and of those who are to occupy the position of managers in engineering; and industrial works — are found in the United States. ”

“ If we look to the University, we find, besides the science course which comprehends most of the branches of natural science, the more special programme of studies and degree in Civil Engineering, and the affiliated College of Science where technical education is given of the kind suited to the higher and middle class of professional men. I do not say that either the College of Science or the allied institution for teaching decorative art and design is as complete or potent as it should be, and we are preparing to strengthen both of them. ”

“ The large university to-day represents all stages in the adjustment of intellectual activity to social demands, from the intensely practical schools of engineering, correlating with the technical progress of industry, back to the departments of literary scholarship—perhaps as pure an anachronism as we have in the intellectual world to-day. The demands for technical knowledge have pulled the university along, as it were, by the nose, and strung it through the ages, so that a “professor” to-day may be an electrical expert fresh from Westinghouse, or an archaic delver into forgotten poetry. ”