HC Deb 31 March 1890 vol 343 c302
SIR RICHARD PAGET (Somerset, Wells)

I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether his attention has been called to the Report of the Commission on Industrial Education, made to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, 1889, of which 10,000 copies were ordered to be printed; and whether he will consider the propriety of directing the Science and Art Department, South Kensington, to issue, as a handbook for the use of such technical schools as may require it, a series of plates of the nature of those engraved in the Annual Report of the Pennsylvannia State College, which are stated at page 304 of the Report of the Commission above referred to, to be "the best available illustration of a progressive series of exercises for a course of the mechanic arts?"

THE VICE PRESIDENT or THE COUNCIL (Sir W. HART DYKE, Kent, Dartford)

I have seen the Report to which my hon. Friend refers, but valuable and instructive as the plates are, it is not proposed to issue a handbook because it has not been found expedient for a Government Department in this country to publish text-books. No doubt, as manual instruction is henceforth to be included in the curriculum, many books on the subject will be produced by private enterprise and may to a large extent be based on the Report in question.