Monday 16 February 2009

Former City of London School for Boys, Victoria Embankment EC4

Right on the outside, bottom of the list of priorities in Victorian education, are science and engineering. To the left, G.W. Seale has placed Geometry, with her drawing board and dividers, and Mathematics with her...er...drawing board and dividers. She also balances a globe on her other hand, presumably in tribute to her vital contribution to navigation.
To the right, Chemistry holds a test tube and Mechanics has one hand casually draped over a gear wheel and the other holding a device that I cannot identify - possibly a limited slip diff for an early model Ford. An Archimedian screw completes the composition.
Of course, everything is different now. Technology is still bottom of the educational heap, of course, but today's high-flying students shun the classics and poetry in favour of law and, god help us, media studies.

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