The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1881-02-05
Education.

Apropos of the recent opening of an Evening
School for Technical Education here are the
following remarks which we take from Il New
Zealand paper.
Alter speaking of the apprenticeship, which
until recently prevailed in all trades and
had done 80 for centuries, our contemporary thus
proceeds The introduction of machinery
and trade unions have crushed out the apprentice
system to a large extent, and nothing has as yet
taken it's place. Boys are kept at school at an
age when in the old days they were considerably
advanced in their trades. All this has been
recognized by that eminently practical people the
French, and schools have been started with the
object of obviating some of the disadvantages
inherent in the existing state of affairs. In these
schools boys are taught the technical part of
their trades, while at the same time a certain
number of hours are given to general education.
= = The care bestowed by masters on their ap-
prentices " i'll have to be exchanged for supervi-
sion on a more extended scale, but the training of
the youth of the country in the particular lines
they are afterwards to follow must be given in
some way or other. = n Mechanical and in
tellectual instruction should go hand in hand. 1t
is, on the whole easier for children to gain the
former than the latter. Sleight of hand is earlier
arrived at than maturity Of brain. Were the
d~rudgery of a trade soon acquired; a longer time
could afterwards, when the intellect had gained
strength, be given to intellectual pursuits. The
reproach thrown against the present system is,
not that boys are too well read, but that they
revolt against mechanical drudgery. Let them
early overcome that feeling, and the battle is half
won. The reproach that our existing mode of
education turns out only clerks and %shopmen,
would then VANISH In the United States and the
British Colonies, where ample provision for the
education of all classes of the people was made
long before England bestirred herself on the
subject, the result in turning out a greatly increas-
ed number of boys who disdained to follow the
handicrafts by which their parents earned their
living and who crowded all the avenues to occu-
equations thought more respectable, was long
ago felt and deplored. Little has yet been done
in any English-speaking country to remedy this
evil. 1t is felt here as elsewhere, and the educa-
ton which contact with " Western civilization"
has brought to Hawaiian youth has in conse-
ouence been by no means an unmixed blessing.
In this matter, as in many others, both England
and America have much to learn from France and
Germany, although the systems of the latter
countries cannot be merely initiated by nations
whose habits diner mucu from those TO which
these systems have been adapted. Instead of
imitation of details, there must be a statesman
like application of the principles which
ruled the French and German experiments.
In connection with the same subject We may
also quote the following " 1t is said that in
intellectual Massachusetts, the cultured off
spring of the Pilgrims are yielding the soil
of the famous old Commonwealth, to the
hard-handed new corners from Britain, Germany
and Canada, who are working the lands, and
running the mills, whilst the proud children of
the Fathers are keeping shop, laundering
from the pulpit, d~eclaiming from the arena or
forum, or running the political machine How
different would this country become if the best
educated of the Hawaiian race were now engaged
in the honorable task of cultivating the soil or in
the industries which turn to profitable account
the products of nature, rather than hanging as
place-hunters on the skirts of the Ministers and
Judges, or promoting strife among their fellow
Hawaiians as native lawyers.