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D. S. L. Cardwell, although in agreement with Abbott and Adamson, suggests that the protestations of the cognoscenti did have a limited impact. He states that the technical educationists were periodically able to capture public interest in this issue, sometimes generating considerable panic. He claims that during each one of these phases,
Andy Green intimates that, despite a late injection of common sense, this cycle of alarm followed by endeavor and inaction left an enduring legacy in which “publicly funded technical education became nor-matively part time and institutionally marooned between the workplace and mainstream education.”12 Abbott also believed that technical education had become the Cinderella of the system.13 He was in no doubt, as were his colleagues, that apathy on the part of successive governments was to blame. He states that given the strong conviction of the technical educationists, it is difficult to understand “why so little was done.”14
Robin Betts questions the validity of conclusions based largely on the arguments of the technical educationalists. Although he acknowledges that the issue of technical education was mishandled by the British, he contends that this failure was only marginally important.15 He states that it was commercial, rather than technical, education that had a more profound impact on the economic health of the country during this and subsequent times.16 The following chapters trace the periodic reiteration of the ideas promoted by the advocates of technical education (so readily seized upon by Abbott and his colleagues) and test these ideas against the new analysis provided by Betts.