Technical Education

Abstract

MANY months of discussion about ways of making good the scarcity of technologists in all the engineering industries, and in the aircraft industry more than most, have culminated in the publication of the white paper on Technical Education. In this the Government announces its plans for greatly increasing the numbers of technologists and technicians (terms well defined in the white paper) by expanding facilities for their training. Capital expenditure of the order of £100 million during the next five years is provided for. To be successful these plans must be accompanied by an increase in the number of people available to take advantage of the facilities and, most important, to become teachers in the colleges. To accomplish this we need an acceleration of the minor social revolution which is raising the prestige of the ‘mechanic arts’ in relation to the more traditional professions and white collar jobs. At the same time we must not fall into the error of strengthening another form of snobbery, that of the pure scientist who scorns the work of the practical engineer or technologist in industry. A minor manifestation of this form of prejudice, of which we have heard, is a reluctance among, for example, some aerodynamicists to contribute to a journal which contains in its title the word ‘engineering’.