OPENING ADDRESS OF THE CHAIRMAN. 529 
Cd. 
ad 
m 
e 
al 
(| - 
Ww 
‘h 
Yl —- 
1e 
“2 
2 
10 
£ 
it 
5 
rassments due perhaps to a false start, or with the inherent difficulties of 
sheir respective problems. Surely, in such a situation, it is eminently 
vise that the representatives of technological education should assemble in 
general convention, to deliberate upon the means of advancing their com- 
mon object ; to inquire what restrictions, if any, should be placed around 
the field of their activity ; to learn, each from others, what measures may 
be taken to promote the efficiency with which these schools shall prepare 
“heir pupils for the severe trials of professional practice ; and, last of all, 
and most of all, to search deeply into the question how technical instruc- 
sion and training may be made truly educational, in the largest and best 
sense of that word, so that the schools shall render the greatest possible 
service, not merely to industry and the arts, but also to character and 
citizenship, to mind and manhood. 
So strorgly has the importance of this subject, in view of the recent 
rery remarkable extension of the class of schools referred to, pressed upon 
-hose who have framed the plans for this general conference of education, 
that it has been decided to allot three morning sessions to the subject of 
technological education. Of these, the first, the present session, has been 
assigned to the discussion of the question, how far the technological instruc- 
tion of to-day answers its primary requirement, the preparation of young 
men to enter upon the practice of the scientific professions ; what failures 
or deficiencies have been discovered as the result of an experience wide if 
not long ; what are the causes of any failures or deficiencies which may be 
found to exist ; and what measures should be taken to complete and perfect 
these schools upon their purely professional side. The two remaining 
sessions are to be devoted te the consideration of the actual and the pos- 
sible work of technical schools as instruments of general education. For 
the purposes of the proposed discussion regarding technical education, the 
present occasion is most felicitous, not merely in the presence of so large 
a number of distinguished educators, attracted hither by the wonders and 
she glories of the Co'wmbian Exposition; not merely in the inspiration 
afforded by this great object-lesson of industrial art, the greatest which 
nas ever been devised by the ingenuity of man, ordered and arranged by 
ais taste and skill, and executed by his enterprise and energy ; but also, 
and pérhaps even most of all, by the presence here, in the courts of the 
department of liberal arts, of the large and comprehensive exhibits made by 
she technical schools of our own and foreign lands. All that may be said 
aere must be taken in connection with the work of students, the schemes 
of courses, the apparatus of instruction, shown in the galleries of the main 
building of the Exposition. Whether in their professional or their edu- 
cational aspects, these exhibits should be deeply and carefully studied by 
every educator who would form an intelligent and candid opinion as to 
what the schools of this class are really doing. 
In the preparation of the programme for these sessions, it has not been