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It gives me sincere pleasure to think, that while I am penning this report,
arrangements are being made to build four large workshops and also to redecorate the
building known as Aske's Schools, which is to be the future home of the Shoreditch
Municipal School.
It is an unquestionable fact that one of the noblest ventures ever made was the
one undertaken by the Shoreditch Vestry, when they inaugurated these Technical
Schools. It is one of the greatest works accomplished in this Municipality, and one
that should appeal most strongly to the thousands of artisans dwelling within its
confines.
Now, however, that school which hitherto has carried on its work in a badly
lighted and ill-arranged warehouse of four floors and a basement is now about
to attain the zenith of its glory by being installed in a thoroughly commodious and
well arranged building.
An outsider might wonder how all this has come about.
This is the natural outcome of the great successes achieved by the school, successes
which have been quite abnormal.
Each year this school, since its inauguration, has shown a gradual development
that has served the wants of the artisan, by teaching him in a thoroughly sound
and practical manner, that which was best for him to know, in order to raise him from
the mediocrity of an unskilled labourer, to a skilled artisan of sound judgment.
The London County Council Education Board saw this and resolved to help us by
placing at our disposal a building that would be entirely adequate for Technical
Instruction.
More than this, they saw that the system of instruction was one in which the
teaching is brought to bear directly on the artisan, and through their Secretary—
Professor Garnett—they state that those methods of instruction shall be continued in
the new building. If this is so, then I am convinced we shall have one of the finest
schools in the country, and one that will strike at the very foundation of its work, by
extirpating all that is unskilled, and building up that which is so necessary for the
production of skilled work.
I
I will now show by a very short statement how these excellent results have been
brought about.
For the last twenty years I have devoted my time to the system of Technical training
in vogue in this country, and while I have seen how absurd many of the methods
have been I have strained every effort to produce a scheme which aims at the very
foundation, and will revolutionise the methods of instruction.
This system was first adopted in the University of Cambridge workshops, and
with additions and deductions from the original scheme, I claim that I have advanced
in the right direction, and have so built up a method of instruction that is now sought
after and admired by many kindred institutions.