The Balance Between Cultural and Technical Education

Abstract

During the nineteenth century and down to the middle of the twentieth century, the balance between education designed to achieve cultural objectives and technical education seemed to have been irrevocably lost. A choice apparently had to be made between the ideal of developing personality founded on cultural values and the ideal of technical skill capable of taming the forces of nature. Many were the humanists who defended the traditional ideal of culture by treating modern technology as the apocalypse of our age. On the other hand, those who called themselves technocrats rejected cultural values and placed their whole faith in technical prowess. Faced with this alternative, man had either to be ‘spiritualized’ by culture and remain ignorant of all technical matters, or else ‘ technicalized’ and remain ignorant of culture. Consequently, schools had to train either spiritualized humanists or barbarian technicians.