A technological education is more than the engine of the economy and employment. The justification for teaching technology solely in economic terms, which are themselves questionable, reinforces the prejudices of some traditional liberal educators towards it. A technological education has a liberal and humane dimension which goes far beyond industry's needs.

In some respects we can compare the place of a technological education in the school curriculum to that of English. We teach English for functional reasons but we also teach it for much richer purposes connected with the development of wider human capacities.

Technology means the application of knowledge to the activity of making. The Greek roots of the term are meaning art or skill and meaning knowledge.

Emphasis can be on the applied side or the more theoretical side depending on the kind of engagement with technology which is involved. Two cross-curricular expressions of technological education are information technology and what we might call the philosophy of technology. Both can arise across the curriculum.

The philosophy of technology deals with the moral and other questions raised by applications of technology and may occur in, for example, geography, science, religion, sex education and business subjects.

There can be little disagreement about the value of being able to use information technology in different subjects or about the need to subject our uses of technology to critical scrutiny.

Yet, there is a danger that young people may come to envisage school work as the assembling of vast quantities of information from the Internet which they fail to assimilate. The time some students spend on line would be more fruitfully spent getting to grips with the basic concepts as these are explained in lectures.

Technology can be offered as a new subject in itself, or within traditional craft subjects. There is a genuine tension between technology as a subject in itself and traditional craft subjects/industrial arts. It is important to retain craft skills as part of our human heritage and to introduce people to this heritage in schools.

To this end, the integrity of traditional craft education must be respected. Yet the introduction of technology as a subject does provide for a democratisation of making - it allows many more students access to an aspect of human achievement which they may never otherwise encounter.

Providing technology as a school subject need not entail great expense. For example, recycling newspapers to make briquettes or designing a package to protect eggs in a fall do not require expensive equipment.

It is important to guard against the trivialisation of technology within the curriculum. I am reminded of the story, apocryphal no doubt, of the new teacher of French who is asked to take the technology class. On protesting total ignorance of the area, she is told that it involves no more than getting pupils to play with cardboard boxes and scissors.

We must remember that the formal curriculum is not the only context of human learning. A whole area of learning takes place within families and communities and among peers - the story of the three pigs is the first lesson on materials technology which many children learn.

However, the decline in the profile of craft skills makes it essential for schools to introduce young people to the joy of working with materials. Young people are unlikely to experience the rich encounters with making enjoyed by the older generation. In providing young people with a context in which they can learn to think with and through their hands, the school has a central role to play.

Affirming the joy and pleasure to be found in this work has little to do with the needs of industry and everything to do with the personal enrichment which should characterise a liberal education.

Dr Kevin Williams: Lecturer in Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, and immediate past president of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland.

Editor: Ella Shanahan

Production: Hugh Lambert and Harry Browne

Cover illustrations: Cathy Dineen

Email: education@irish-times.ie