Technical high school

“ For young men destined for the technical trades and professions, there are open, after they have passed the maturity examination at the secondary school, two special institutions, where they complete their technical training—the Technical High School of Stockholm, and the Chalmers Technical Institute at Gothenburg, besides elementary technical schools at other places. ”

“ The technical high schools give two-year courses for the pupils who can not afford to stay in school for four years. They are designed to give a boy training for a definite vocation, and are at the same time broad enough to count for the first two years of high school work if the boy should be able to go on later. At the Lane School two-year courses are given in patternmaking, machine shop work, carpentry, electricity, printing and mechanical drawing; all of these courses include work in English, shop arithmetic, drawing, and physiology. ”

“ It undoubtedly is better for the High School boy to go to a technical school for his course in civil engineering; yet with a foundation of mathematics and a sufficient amount of determination, the High School boy may go direct to the engineer's office and pick up his profession. ”

“ In the decade from 1860 to 1870 some twenty-two technical institutions were founded, most of them by the aid of the land grants. The most important of them is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where instruction was first given in 1865 and which has exerted by far the greatest influence upon the development of scientific and technical education. The best technical schools require a high school diploma for admission and have a four-year course of study, but the only technical school on a graduate basis is the School of Mines at Columbia University. ”

“ Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training School, permit the pupil, with the advice of the principal, to make his own combination of subjects. Whether prepared by the school or by the pupil, however, the courses lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, progressive high schools are in absolute agreement,—the course of study must furnish both culture and technical training in a form which meets the needs of high school children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the nineteenth century new institutions for the cultivation of science in application to practical and technological purposes have developed from technical schools of a more elementary character. While known Technische Hochschulen. as ‘technical high schools’ (Technische Hochschulen) , they are institutions of higher learning, and exist side by side with the universities. They include schools of 381 engineering, mining, forestry, agriculture, veterinary medicine, and commerce. ”

“ The younger grades use the laboratories and shops which would be an unwarranted extravagance if the high-school pupils were not in the same buildings and using them also for technical training. They use them not only for beginning lessons in science or manual training, but they go into them when the older classes are working there to act as helpers or as an audience for the higher grades. Fourth and fifth grade pupils thus assist seventh, eighth, and ninth grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories. ”

“ We do not class technical training with so-called manual training or handwork of the elementary schools. In our present study however, we shall find that while in the main we are dealing with the technical training of boys from fourteen to eighteen years of age,—comparable in a measure to our high or secondary school courses, we shall also include the industrial, vocational, or trade training of men and boys alike, as well as work in the more simplified forms of handicraft, as carried on in the lower or elementary school. ”

“ There is no control of the work of these schools by the higher technical institutions such as the college exercises over the high school, so that few of them do work that fits for advanced training or is thought best by technical faculties. In most of its current narrow forms, manual training will prove to be historically, as it is educationally, extemporized and tentative, and will soon be superseded by broader methods and be forgotten and obsolete, or cited only as a low point of departure from which future progress will loom up. ”

“ The profession itself, almost, will take care of him afterward.
However, not all of our engineers have gone upward by the overalls route. Nor is13 it at all necessary to do this in order to attain to success. The high-school graduate, entering a college of engineering, has an equal chance. Some maintain that he has a better chance. Certain it is that he is better qualified to cope with the heavier theoretical problems which come up every day in the average engineer's work. There is a place for him, side by side with the practical man, and his knowledge will be everywhere respected and sought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering. ”

“ Two schoolmates, leaving the preparatory school together, go for advanced study to the same institution; one enters the college on the scientific side, to take a course in cultural studies; the other enters the technical school to become an engineer. The boys meet on the same campus almost every day; for a time, they may meet occasionally in the same class-room; they speak in both cases of being at college. At the close of four years, each receives the degree of B.S., one in pure science, the other in engineering. ”

“ The only collegiate training one of the most distinguished American engineers of the last generation had was a general literary course followed by a law course. Further, [Pg 510] a considerable number have successfully practiced engineering, after only a general college education, and this in recent years when engineering curricula have become widely differentiated. Examples in other lines of business could be cited to show that a knowledge of technical details is not the most important element in a preparation for a profession or for business. ”

“ It is true, however, that such a course as that outlined above demands a large amount of time, compared with the results attained; and while successful courses in Representation are offered in certain colleges, the great mass of college students, who cannot hope to acquire a high degree of skill, would hesitate to devote a large part of their training to technical work, even if college faculties were willing to grant considerable proportions of credit for it toward the bachelor of arts degree. ”

“ If we attempt to anticipate what these inventions are to produce in the future we are engaged on a problem which is worthy of the very highest speculative ability. It should never be said then that technological instruction, when properly pursued on a scientific basis, is in any way opposed to the high cultivation of the mind or to the objects of a University. It takes its part beside, and in no way under, it. At the same time the objects of a technical institution, its aims and its method, must differ to a considerable extent from those of a University. ”

“ It is that the University School should itself be a centre of inspiration for the engineering profession; that it should be a place where original experimental work is always being carried on, where inventions are tried out, and where engineering firms may come for help in carrying out tests and experiments to advance technical knowledge, and particularly to assist in the solution of engineering problems of special importance to the State.
All the large modern engineering and manufacturing corporations have realized the value of scientific research. ”

“ Scientific departments have been advantageously established in connection with our well-endowed universities. It is both desirable and practicable to give instruction in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering in our high grade colleges. This should not be done, however, at the expense of liberal culture.
How far the colleges can meet the demand for technical and practical education depends upon their condition and resources. They cannot make bricks without straw. ”

“ Many of those who have discussed specialization seem to assume that the only, or at least the chief, purpose of an engineering education is to give technical information, and that specialization is synonymous with superficiality. From this point of view the aim of a college education is to give a student information useful in his future work, and the inevitable result is that the student has neither the intellectual power nor the technical knowledge to enable him to render efficient service in any position in which he will work whole-heartedly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is done, not at all with the idea that a school of mechanical engineering is to be regarded as a "trade school," but that every engineer should have some acquaintance with the tools and the methods of work upon which the success of his own work is so largely dependent. If the mechanical engineer can acquire such knowledge in the more complete course of instruction of the trade school, either before or after his attendance at the technical school, it will be greatly to his advantage. The technical school has, however, a distinct field ”

“ This is one reason why consolidation of the technical school with the university, if the tendency toward specialization in the latter continues, can not bring about economy in instruction. Justification for such consolidation must be sought elsewhere, as shown above. Not only engineering students, but all students pursuing special studies in a university need general courses, and though it may not be possible for us to become a nation of engineers, it is eminently desirable that all educated persons should have at least some general knowledge of engineering. ”

“ On leaving the secondary school, the American Higher technical training in United States. student may go at once into business: or he may proceed with a four years' course of general instruction; or he may enter a professional or technical school. Some students prolong their education by taking the general course before proceeding to the technical institution. As in the lower, so in the higher grades of instruction, the distinction between general and technical education is not very clearly defined. ”

“ The student’s time in the fourth year, is divided between strictly technical work in college and an attempt to co-ordinate with this the cooperative industrial work in industry. In this manner, the practical side of his profession is emphasized. The technical work in school consists of applying the principles developed in the previous year to definite engineering problems. This is done by a study of power plants, turbines, internal combustion engines, heating and ventilation and structural design. ”

“ The technical college will, moreover, be compelled to employ instructors who can so teach the technical subject that it shall not only give the knowledge and training desired, but shall also yield sound culture, become truly liberalizing and vision-giving. ”

“ While its peculiar feature is manual training, it also furnishes instruction in the essential studies of a high-school course. The shop work and drawing are eminently practical. The making of a machine, such as a lathe or steam engine, is begun by the pupils in the drawing room, and is followed by them through the pattern-making shop, the foundry, and the forge room, and is perfected in the machine shop. The forge tools and engine-lathe tools are made by pupils. The courses of the school include a business course, a technological course, and a college preparatory course. ”

“ The truth is that methods of construction, details of practice, mechanical appliances, prices of materials and labor, change so rapidly that it is useless to teach many such matters. However important such items are to the practicing engineer, they are of little or no use to the student; for later, when he does have need of them, methods, machines, and prices have changed so much that the information he acquired in college will probably be worse than useless. Technical details are learned of necessity in practice, and more easily then than in college ”