THE CHANGING IDEA OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

This article focuses on the changing idea of technical education. Technical education receives at least as much attention today as it did in earlier days. The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers in 1563 regularized the system under which such technical education as there had been in this country was mainly continued until about the end of the seventeenth century. The apprentice lived with or near his employer, and was both trained and taught by him. Apprentices were often poor boys, and the Statute allowed pauper children under the age of nine to be apprenticed compulsorily. The first half of the nineteenth century also saw the development, again through voluntary action, of more widespread forms of education amongst adults. The industrial workers were both thirsty for knowledge and anxious to better themselves, and many saw in scientific education a means of satisfying both these needs. By 1850, however, western Europe had recovered from the wastage of the Napoleonic wars. The great International Exhibition of manufactures at the Crystal Palace in 1851 drew public attention to the lack of technical education in Britain. Action by the state began to grow, and in 1852 the Department of Practical Art, later to become the Science and Art Department, was established under the Board of Trade.