THE HIGHER TECHNOLOGY

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 189, 9 May 1934, Page 8

THE HIGHER TECHNOLOGY

The comment made by the Director of Education at the Conference of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers’ Association yesterday, with reference to the proper teaching relationships of the technical schools to modern industry, is worthy of serious attention. Mr. Lambourne, from his own observations, is inclined to think that principals are more concerned with the “high” than with the "technical” part of the designation, “technical high school.” That of course is one of the inevitable results of the present examination system and of the “matriculation” fetish, and it accounts for the fact that so few students of the technical colleges bend themselves seriously to the study of higher technology, and so prepare for careers in the higher branches of industry. Technical education means something more than the teaching of handcraft subjects for the skilled trades. In that connection it reaches beyond arid above, the status of a trades school, important and necessary as this part of its function is. But there is a, call from industry for recruits from the higher branches of technological science. New conditions have evolved which demand for their treatment a technical training on scientific lines. It is true that the University makes provision for the study of subjects required, for example, for degrees in engineering. But between the University and the immediate post-primary period of education there is in respect to technical subjects far too great a gap. That gap it should be the business of the technical colleges to fill. Students of real ability should be encouraged to take longer courses of truly “technical” training (as distinct from ordinary high school work), and equipment and teaching power should be provided'accordingly to make it worth their while to continue in the higher branches of study. The technical colleges, in short, should be the cradles of future leaders in industry, “enriching the whole community by their researches and inventive power.”