TECHNICAL EDUCATION (from technic, from Gk. TEXYLK6S, tCC7nik0S, relating to art or handicraft, from r/xim, techne, art, handicraft, from T1KTELY, tiktcin, to bring forth, produce). The term technical education, strictly speaking, embraces all instruction that has for its object the direct preparation for a career or vocation. In common use, the designation is applied to such instruction as bears directly upon the industrial arts. The field of such education ranges from instruction in the arts and sciences that underlie industrial practice in its broadest and most complex relations to the simple train ing in manipulation needed for the prosecution of some productive trade. This wide province naturally calls for numerous and widely diver gent types of schools.
Technical schools may conveniently be di vided into three classes: (1) Institutions of a collegiate or university grade, to which the titles engineering schools, institutes of tech nology, polytechnic institutes, and schools of ap seienee are variously given, and which are devoted to instruction in advanced mathematics and science, and the theory and practice of indus trial operations. (2) Schools in which the pur pose is to prepare for practical work in some par ticular field of industry and which afford in struction in those branches of science and art that underlie its special problems. This class is
represented by schools of weaving, dyeing, build ing, and machine construction and draughting. The term 'technical school' has been used in a specialized sense in this article to denote institu tions of this character. In this class may be grouped schools of industrial art in which the study of design is supplemented by training in manipulation. Evening continuation schools which afford instruction in science, art, and teeh nical methods may also be considered in this group. (3) Trade schools which supply a train ing in the practice of some productive trade. The function of the first type of school is to edu cate its students for managers and superintend ents of industrial establishments, consulting and designing engineers and architects, etc.—in other words, to supply leaders and organizers for the industrial world: that of the second, to provide foremen, designers, and experts in special lines of industrial practice; and that of the third, to train craftsmen for practical work at a trade.