| THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE LIBERAL AND THE TECHNICAL IN EDUCATION |
By Professor PERCY HUGHES
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
THE terms liberal and technical do not distinguish two types of educational practise, but two tendencies in and functions of any part of the educational process. For at the present time any type of liberal education includes of necessity education for efficiency in some art, in the broadest sense of that term; while the existent types of technical education involve training that goes far to realize liberal ideals..
But, in any education, the tendency to emphasize the technical at the cost of the liberal function of that education is confronted with the reciprocal striving of the liberal tendency and ideal to maintain its ancient eminence and prerogative. The technical aim is to fit the individual to take his place in the social scheme of toil through efficiency in some art, whether it be teaching or engineering, medicine or "business" The liberal purpose is the realization in each individual of the highest manhood, of those ideals of character and personality which alone make the toil and sacrifice of society meaningful and worth while. It is possible that these two tendencies should cooperate and indeed proceed' along identical lines of educational effort now, as they have done in times past. But it seems that under modern conditions which the school can neither at once change nor at all afford to disregard, the demand for technical efficiency is necessarily antagonistic to liberal; aspiration—not indeed at all points, but in many respects.
I believe that it is of the greatest importance clearly to formulate and contrast these two tendencies in modern education, so that, in answer to the perfectly clear and exceedingly insistent demands for technical efficiency, there may be set forth ideals of liberal education' which shall be well understood by all interested in education, and shall' appeal to all as imperative and urgent.
Disregarding, therefore, accidental, partial and temporary phases of liberal education, we note, in the first place, that in styling an education liberal we thereby associate it with liberalism in politics, in philosophy and theology, and in men's personal relations to each other. In each case liberalism seems fundamentally to denote freedom, that is, the conditions that make for the development and realization in each individual of that character and personality which is his true nature. A similar argument leads to the conclusion that the technical in educa-
