20 
Technical High Schools. 
of a careful and thorough treatment of detailed constructions. To 
promote the latter, must particularly be the aim and limit of the 
tasks of the High School in connection with the final examination 
for the diploma, either by prescribing a longer piece of work for 
exact arithmetical and constructive treatment, or a number of shorter 
nes based on accurate detailed specifications. 
In the second place, with the increasing importance of technical 
science to modern life, with the great material value attached to it, 
and with the ever more powerful social organisation of modern in- 
dustry, the problems of political economy, the social and 
'udicial ones obtain a continually greater prominence, so that the 
>xhaustive study of this subject necessarily becomes more and more 
sssential. 
One difficulty, it is true, will make itself more and more felt in 
‘he development and perfection of the teaching. With the abundance 
and importance of the subject-matter of instruction, it is possible to 
overtake it, in the present four years’ High School course, only by 
constant compression in each single department, by summary treat 
nent of many branches, and by omission of whatever does not directly 
serve the special purpose. Hence, an extension of the time of study 
seems required, unless still further restrictions be introduced in partic- 
alar subjects, which could not be faced without serious drawbacks. 
To some extent, it is true, simplification and facilitation might be at- 
ained by a part of the necessary preparatory teaching being in- 
cluded in the curricula of all secondary schools. In that case, option- 
ally perhaps, technical drawing and descriptive geometry should be 
mntroduced also into the Gymnasia, und likewise, generally, the first 
elements of higher mathematics. This, together with the shortening 
of the existing nine years’ course of the secondary school, seem to 
oe the only possible solution, unless a young man’s entrance into 
oractical life be still further delayed than it is even at present. 
The very fact that the existing four years’ course can be devoted 
only to the preparatory theoretic training for the subject, and that the 
technical High School alone is unable to produce finished engineers, 
ieads to another question that should not be passed over in this 
connection, viz, the practical training for the technical 
profession. 
As long as the technical schools simultaneously undertook the 
training of lower-class technicists, and schools for this purpose were 
connected with them, the pupils used to enter the school, as a rule,