542 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
The character of our technical schools remains as yet as unsettled and 
various as their independent and far-separated points of origin permit. 
I'he State universities usually offer a few fairly well-defined courses in 
engineering and architecture and in the science and art of agriculture, 
and a few of the independent colleges stand beside them. The larger and 
older literary colleges usually do but little in this field, and do that only 
ander pressure and rarely well. The independent schools have as many 
standards of work as they have foundations. Some demand a good high- 
school preparation; others only a few selected preparatory studies, and 
hey, often, very elementary. Of the endowed schools, some, as the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are able to offer numerous courses 
in science and in the constructive work of applied science; others, as the 
Rensselaer Polytechnic and the Stevens Institute of Technology, elect to 
offer a single but strong course. Some approximate the technical uni- 
versity in their magnitude, extent, and variety of work; the others, often 
denominating themselves engineering colleges, give a nondescript trade- 
school course. A few, like the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, the Cooper 
Institute of New York, aid thousands of artisans; others give costly 
instruction to the wealthy few. 
We need in every State a technical university, or a technical-school 
side to a university, in which the highest possible grade of professional 
school shall be maintained, and for all the professions based upon learn- 
ing. Law and engineering, medicine and architecture, theology and agri- 
culture—all have their scientific basis, and their highest provinces and 
grandest fields lie where only the highest scientific training and widest 
knowledge can make them satisfactorily productive of good. Their 
courses should be precisely adapted to the presentation of all modern 
science and the best of contemporary practice, to educated and well-pre- 
pared disciples, by the great leaders of each. That only can be rightly 
called a learned profession which demands of all its practitioners a thor- 
ough familiarity with the science as well as with the art of that voca- 
sion, The planning of the courses taught in professional schools should 
se capable of being very exactly defined and adjusted to the needs of the 
profession. The courses of the now more common mixed schools are 
iess easily prescribed. 
We need a trade school, or a technical college embracing trade schools, 
in every large city in the country. We should have at least one in each of 
-he smaller States, and from two to four in each of the larger and more 
densely populated States. The East needs weaving schools and schools 
of industrial art to serve as a foundation for her manufacturing system 
and her decorative work ; the West is in especial need of similar schools to 
stimulate the introduction of manufactures among her agricultural dis- 
tricts. The South is in want of technical and trade schools to give her 
material to introduce into her cotton mills and metallurgical works. All