Welsh Journals

THE TECHNICAL AND LABOUR COLLEGE AT CHARLEROI CHARLEROI is the Rhondda of Belgium, the centre of an industrial region so densely inhabited, that a passer-by walks from one place to another without being aware of it; indeed, there is not any interruption for miles and miles in the endless row of houses and workshops. This is one of the mining districts where day and night shifts unceas- ingly produce glass, iron, steel, copper, and all the appliances which can be made therefrom. The vast predominance of workmen has long caused this region, as well as the whole province of Hainault of which it forms part, to become the most demo- cratic community in Belgium, where every attempt to raise, technically and morally, the labouring classes has always been welcomed. The social experience which has crystallized in the Labour College is characteristic of the spirit of the county council, which brought it into being, as well as of that of the associations of employers and of employed, which contribute towards its popularity. The Labour College at Charleroi, with its buildings covering over three acres of ground and its 2,000 pupils, is a vast organisation which comprises in reality three schools. The pupils are accepted at the minimum age of thirteen or fourteen, and attend either in the evening and Sunday or in the day technical school, where they receive an elementary training. The trades which are taught in these schools generally are the same as in other similar establishments, but there is an important difference between the training in the Labour College and that which used exclusively to be the rule in all the Belgian professional schools so late as twenty-five years ago and which still persists in some backward places. Formerly the sole aim of technical education was to communicate to the pupils the scientific notions, common to the trades, in a purely theoretical form. The ties uniting theory and practice seemed so slender to the workmen that until lately their sympathy for technical education was astonishingly small. In the Labour College the courses are, on the contrary, entirely experimental the pupils acquire knowledge scientific and technical through constant testing and manipulating. But this practical system requires an abundant equipment, the cost of which only a truly democratic board is willing to bear. In Belgium, what we call an industrial school, giving chiefly theoretical technical instruction, spends yearly on an average 45 francs per head; whilst in a professional school, where the tuition is purely experimental, the expense amounts to 200 francs per head. The courses in the elementary division last mostly for three or four years, so that the pupils do not leave it before the age of seventeen or eighteen. The best of them, together with pupils coming from other professional schools in the province, continue their studies for three years in the superior technical school, which is in reality the second division of the College, with the object of becoming foremen and leaders in their trades. The principles of education remain the same as in the elementary division. After this period they may go on for two more years in the cours de perfectionnement, with the object of becoming specialists in some part of their pro- fession. They thus obtain their last certificate at the age of twenty-two to twenty-four after a school attendance of eight or nine years. But beside this organisation, the novel and pro- gressive side of which cannot very well be brought into full light in this short article-which would, moreover, only be of interest to a few specialists- the Labour College at Charleroi offers some other curious features which may be of general interest. The college's chief endeavour is to remain in constant and intimate touch with the various indus- tries. Therefore it has sought and obtained the active collaboration of seventeen professional associa- tions of employers as well as of employed, whose members represent different trades and industries upon which its technical education intends to exercise its stimulating action. These associations form the moral backbone of the institution. They have their headquarters at the College itself, where it is no uncommon thing to see their members come and go as if quite at home they have their delegates on the board of governors, and among the examiners they frequent the lectures, follow the experiments in the laboratories, encourage the pupils and often grant a special allowance from the funds of the association to deserving pupils who are members of their trade union, or on their staff in the case of employers, or pay their railway fares, or devise other means of helping them in the pursuit of their studies. The governing body of the College is most anxious to discover all the manifold needs of industrial life, to that, whenever a new and important project is under consideration, not only the seventeen collaborating