The highest degree of culture is represented by the universities (q.v.).
Special or Technical Education.—Up to a certain point, the education of all young persons is, or ought to be, substantially the same; for the end in all cases is to train them up to be intelligent, virtuous, and active men and women, capable of turning their talents to account in whatever situation they may be placed. But in all civilized socie ties, the duties and employments are so diverse, that the members must begin betimes to receive special training, according to their future destination. This special training is either of an intellectual or a mechanical kind, or it may partake of both. This branching off of education into special tracks is conspicuous in the higher education given in universities, where from the very first there have been—besides the faculty, as it is called, of philosophy, including a number of branches of a general nature—special departments or faculties of law, medicine, and theology. But besides these "profes sions," as they are styled, a number of branches of industry have in recent times, by the application of scientific processes, and from other causes, risen into a condition which requires, at least for those who are to direct them, a special range of instruction and information; such are engineering, mining, chemistry applied to the arts (technology), for which special schools are now established in most centers of industry. There arc two "specialties" which, from the immense numbers engaged in them, assume unwonted importance—namely, agriculture (see AGRICULTURAL ScHooLs) and commerce. So prominent a place does commerce hold in this country, that any school which is above an elementary school, and at the same time not a classical school, usually gets the name of commercial. The chief points in a special education for the mercantile life are usually held to be, facility in writing and calculating, and a knowledge of book-keeping. What would seem to be the most essential part of a mercantile education, is usually neglected —the principles, namely, of political economy—the science of wealth.
Industrial Education.—The acquiring of mechanical skill for a particular handicraft or occupation—in other words, apprenticeship—is, properly speaking, a part of educa tion; but as it is not usually begun until the school education is considered finished, it hardly falls within our province. Yet the abrupt separation of these two stages is attended with evils that are beginning to make themselves felt. For, first, the poorer
classes, either from necessity or cupidity, are induced to withdraw their children from school as soon as the provisions of the acts dealing with education will permit them, so that they may as early as possible turn the capabilities of their children to practical account. When to this is added the irregular attendance even during the few years that they are nominally at school—and this is a difficulty which even the recent element ary education acts have not been able wholly' to subdue—the result is, that this class remain to a great extent uneducated; cOmparatively few have gOt OVer the initial mechan ical difficulties of reading mid writing, so as to keep up the habit in after-life, and thus. they soon lose the little acquirements they had made.
On the other hand, to continue the intellectual and moral E. of youth up to the age. of 14 or 16, as is the common practice among the middle classes, and among the well-to-do of the artisan class, and then abruptly to break this off, and begin at once an industrial occupation on the full time of an adult who has been used to the work, is, on the face of it, an irrational way of proceeding. The power of applying steadily, day after day, to one occupation, is the hardest lesson for man to learn; it is that which, more perhaps than anything else, distinguishes civilized man from savage and semi barbarous man; and as the boy is "the barbarian of the civilized community," this aversion to steady industry is yet strong in him. It is surely wise, then, to break him into it gradually; to begin, while yet his school E. is going on, by short exercises of his industrial faculties at first, and gradually increase the daily hours of work as his physical strength and powers of will become hardened. We believe that many a youth who, on the usual system, breaks- down at the very commencement of his industrial career, runs away from his apprenticeship, and becomes unsteady, idle, perhaps a scamp, for life, might, by a gradual initiation, have become an industrious man and good member of society. So far, again, would this plan be from infringing upon the usual E. given at school, that it is only in some such way that, in a country like ours, the school E. of those who have to earn their own bread can be prolonged to the age neces sary for learning much that every member of the community should know.