Dr Charles Fenner

The Director of Education who established the secondary technical schools

A survey of the educational methods of today leads one to realise the many pathways that are being followed to reach the same end, namely, the preparation of youth to meet the problems of manhood. Subjects which the schools of one country would not consider worthy of inclusion are elsewhere taught cheerfully, and with apparent success. In other countries subjects are taught to adolescents that South Australia has never even considered for her curriculum.

In the secondary and pre-vocational schools in United States and Canada, many of the subjects have a close and practical relation to the lives of the students, and their educational value becomes clear from the enthusiasm they arouse. We cease to smile (and perhaps reluctantly) come to admire, or even to envy, the freedom of such schools and pupils from the bondage of the classical tradition. There is, perhaps, a lack of vision and adaptiveness among us that causes many to disbelieve in the cultural value of technical or vocational education.

One does not expect to arouse any feeling, other than perhaps disdainful amusement, by quoting what may be regarded as an extreme case. Still, here it is. In secondary schools in Chicago and Detroit one may see classes of young men and women being trained in orchestral work, dramatic work, and in jazz band and cabaret technique. You may take it, if you wish, that these musical, elocutionary and terpsichorean subjects are alternatives such as we might consider for any one of our over-worshipped sextet: English, Latin, maths I, maths II, physics and chemistry. With this difference, that there was a keenness, a reality, and an interest in these classes that is rarely if ever seen on our more standardised efforts. This is not an advocacy of the introduction of jazz into secondary education but a plea for a broader outlook and one less fogged by tradition.

After all, the much more favoured classic or grammar school type of education is itself purely vocational in origin, having been devised through earlier centuries as the necessary vocational training of the priest and the pedagogue. But the world has changed. And the world will continue to change. Education must continue, willy nilly, to adapt itself to these changes. One of the most obvious ways of doing this, in educational circles, is to accept the proven fact of the cultural value of technical subjects, of crafts and sciences.

It may be supposed that the secret of ‘cultural value’ lies in the intensity of interest with which a student must pursue certain studies, as well as upon the intellectual capacity which he brings to bear upon the work. There is much evidence available to show that this intensity of interest, though far from absent among those studying the orthodox subjects of the secondary curriculum, is yet found to be most real and most sustained in subjects that are more closely related to the realities of life.

A dictionary definition of culture is ‘the training and refinement of mind, tasks, and manners; the intellectual side of civilisation.’ With this one may not quarrel, except for its incompleteness. The curious fact is that in a score of cases the ‘cultures’ of peoples – of Egypt, Sumeria, Crete, Greece – are known to us almost wholly from preserved examples of technical skill – art, architecture, pottery, worked metal and carven stone, usually of things of everyday use.

Another and not uncommon definition of culture is ‘the kind of thing that has no commercial or utilitarian value; that which broadens man’s vision, ennobles his life, and influences his conduct for no sake of gain.’ It seems probable that this definition bears within itself the stamp of a bygone age, an age when a small leisured class thus cultivated their non-utilitarian arts, and thereby acquired distinction and prestige. But in the modern world of work and achievement for all, culture has become once more, as it was among earlier people, closely associated with reality, and with technical skill and achievement.

With some people, so deeply ingrained is the ideal that culture cannot be associated with anything practical or utilitarian, that by them, manual work or skilled craftsmanship has come to be set down as of less cultural value, per se, than academic studies. It is even held by many that technical skill resides in different persons from those proficient in academic study. The boy or girl who is ‘rather stupid’ is directed towards a ‘technical course,’ and this in spite of the fact that the high prizes of the industrial and commercial world are awarded to those who are technically efficient. The fact is that, except in rare cases, the boy who is brilliant in his purely theoretical studies is equally good in craftsmanship, and vice versa. The brightest lads in the workshops are also the outstanding boys in the classrooms. And it seems likely that the independence and initiative of these students is more readily developed in the workshop than in the classroom.

When considering this struggle for recognition of modern practical subjects, it is cheering to go back three or four hundred years, and from that point to trace the gradual acceptance of certain ideas. For instance: probably the most important single subject in any modern school or university in the Empire is that of English. Yet the authorities of early times put up a strong resistance to accepting English. This subject was considered too barbarous and vulgar for the schools.

Even the powerful advocacy of Richard Mulcaster in the sixteenth century was a voice crying in the wilderness. Educational authorities would have none of this common, utilitarian language. But steady and long-continued pressure of opinion has burst the ancient barriers and the study of English as a cultural subject is now broad and general. So also, but somewhat more rapidly, may we hope for the general recognition of the cultural value of technical education.

Of all subjects taught in the schools and the University, none has higher educational potentialities than those that deal with the ultimate vocation of the students concerned. What Latin and Greek were to the vocation of the priest, science and craft work are to the vocations of most persons today.

While, however, we may consider and appraise systems of education, of other countries or of our own, there can be no two opinions about the manner of development of such systems. They are organisations of gradual growth. They are not things that may be transplanted. Even less so are they systems that may be copied. Let us see and understand the schools of all countries, weighing their practices against each other and against our own. But, at the same time, we know that our own system must grow from within, must grow naturally, and must grow in response to the needs of the community. It is with these things in mind that we advocate a response to the popular need for a greater degree of technical education for cultural purposes.

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