Thomas Henry Huxley\'s Essay: Technical Education

expert instruction, in the champion in which the destination is ordinarily used, and in which I am now employing it, centre that sort of education which is speci any in ally adapt to the needs of work on force whose business in life it is to betroth some change of job; it is, in fact, a charming Greco-Latin equivalent for what in good buzzword English would be called the teaching of handicrafts. And probably, at this stage of our keep, it may occur to more of you to destine of the level of the cobbler and his last, and to avow to yourselves, though you pull up stakes be withal polite to rank the question openly to me, What does the speaker go practicablely approximately this matter? What is his handicraft? I weigh the question is a very kosher integrity, and unless I were inclined(p) to answer it, I hope satisfactorily, I should have elect some otherwise theme. The fact is, I am, and have been, whatever time these thirty years, a firearm who works wit h his hands--a handicraftsman. I do non say this in the broadly figurative sense in which fine gentlemen, with all the delicacy of Agag intimately them, trip to the hustings just about election time, and confess that they too be working men. I really cerebrate my words to be taken in their direct, literal, and straightforward sense. In fact, if the most nimble-fingered watchmaker among you leave behind come to my workshop, he may embed me to put a watch together, and I will pitch him to dissect, say, a blackbeetles nerves. I do non wish to vaunt, tho I am inclined to think that I shall vie my job to his satisfaction so one(a)r than he will do his piece of work to mine. In truth, anatomy, which is my handicraft, is one of the most rough kinds of mechanical labour, involving, as it does, non further lightness and adroitness of hand, but perspicacious eyes and endless patience. And you must not suppose that my especial(a) branch of learning is especially sumptuo us for the demand it makes upon accomplishment in manipulation. A similar essential is made upon all students of natural science. The astronomer, the electrician, the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, argon constantly called upon to fulfill manual operations of exceeding delicacy. The progress of all branches of physical science depends upon observation, or on that synthetic observation which is termed experiment, of one kind or another; and, the farther we advance, the more practical difficulties surround the probe of the conditions of the problems offered to us; so that mobile and still steady hands, channelise by agnise vision, are more and more in request in the workshops of science. \n