It has become veritably a people's
university, so far as physical science is concerned. At the foundation
of our old universities they were freely open to the poorest, but the
poorest must come to them. In the last quarter of a century, the
Science and Art Department, by means of its classes spread all over
the country and open to all, has conveyed instruction to the poorest.
The University Extension movement shows that our older learned
corporations have discovered the propriety of following suit.
Technical education, in the strict sense, has become a necessity for
two reasons. The old apprenticeship system has broken down, partly by
[224] reason of the changed conditions of industrial life, and partly
because trades have ceased to be "crafts," the traditional secrets
whereof the master handed down to his apprentices. Invention is
constantly changing the face of our industries, so that "use and
wont," "rule of thumb," and the like, are gradually losing their
importance, while that knowledge of principles which alone can deal
successfully with changed conditions is becoming more and more
valuable. Socially, the "master" of four or five apprentices is
disappearing in favour of the "employer" of forty, or four hundred, or
four thousand, "hands," and the odds and ends of technical knowledge,
formerly picked up in a shop, are not, and cannot be, supplied in the
factory.
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