COMMENT

The Joint Committees for national and higher national certificates in engineering are insisting upon the inclusion of liberal studies in courses and this is bitterly resented by most teachers and students. One HMI who was trying to justify this in a recent meeting of engineering teachers was challenged to take a show of hands on the question; it went overwhelmingly against him. But official policy is unlikely to waver and another nail will thus be driven into the HNC coffin. The teachers may protest in vain but the students can vote with their feet; and how many men trying to study in addition to doing a full-time job will willingly spend an extra evening in college to be liberalized? The teachers of engineering are not necessarily illiberal in opposing the introduction of liberal studies. Is it not important for a liberal educationist to have regard to the wishes of his students? And is not the overloading of the curriculum a most illiberal thing? The rationale of liberal studies in a HNC course implies a confession of the essential illiberalism of the technological course itself. And this illiberalism is mainly the responsibility of the Joint Committees themselves. Before adding further subjects they should surely take a careful look at the existing curriculum and at the constraints which they themselves place upon its development.