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THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF MANUAL TRAINING J. STANLEY BROWN, SUPERINTENDENT OF TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL, JOLIET, ILL. History records the fact that John Locke, whose life was comprehended between 1632 and 1704, did not believe in public education, nor in a public school; but he was the first to advocate manual training, and that for children of the laboring classes of England. The subject had small meaning then and it has waited more than a century and a half before it could begin to show something of its meaning and its function. Because the subject is somewhat undeveloped and in a condition of progression, no mere definition made today would contain all the truth tomorrow. The meaning, however, is growing in extension, and has, we think, passed the stage of development when it is often referred to as a fad.

The performance of laboratory experiments requiring careful and accurate manipulation of apparatus is manual training. The making of maps, the making of models, drawings, the manipulation of the typewriter, etc., are in the broad sense manual training. In the narrower sense you must not speak of manual training unless you have in mind the shop, the forge, the lathe, the chisel, the hammer, the plane, the saw, etc. It is perhaps unfortunate that to such work is applied handtraining because the hand does not perform its function, nor does it act at all except in response to the power behind the hand; and so manual training becomes mind training, and unless this is so and continues to be true, manual training has lost its chief function.

What does manual training mean? It means that we have one more avenue thru which to make an appeal to the boy and girl whom we have failed to reach by other means. It means that the budding power of a superintendent of construction, or some kind of engineer, may begin to unfold in the child while in the elementary school. It means that for hundreds the life's plan and purpose are determined by touching the mainspring of the child's or youth's chief interest. It means that the boy of mechanical turn does not leave the school, play truant in order to go into a shop or factory to see how things are made. It means that the boy or girl gets a broader, more practical notion of the value of personal service. It means the awakening of the boy to possibilities of a technical education, and of the girl to the possibilities of and the completest meaning of domestic science and household arts. It means a physical exercise accompanied by hard thinking and reasoning with concrete things. It means that the recipient becomes a former of things. Horace Mann says that "for all that grows, one former is worth one hundred reformers." If manual training were systematically taught in all public schools thruout the course, we would soon see the number of reform institutions for boys and girls reduced, truancy would very largely disappear, and we would observe both a moral and intellectual uplift.

Manual training is not all of education, nor can anyone be completely educated by pursuing this subject only. This is only one phase of education

and will, of course, receive great emphasis at the hands of its ardent devotees. If education is the life which fits for complete living, education itself must be complete, not segmental, not fragmentary.

It is estimated that more than three-fourths of the American people earn their living by some kind of hand labor. If we maintain, then, that all people should be self-supporting, it is plainly one function of manual training to make the citizen self-supporting. We say that about the only democratic institution left in America is the public school. Manual training will increase the democratic principle by lending dignity, to manual toil. When this work is properly presented, we find the son whose parents dwell beside the asphalt and the other son whose parents live just outside the factory gate, interested in the same piece of work, wearing the same kind of working equipment. The air of American democracy pervades the room and it is certain that the aristocrat would soon be stifled if he attempted to change the condition.

We have boasted in the presence of foreign representatives that we have no caste system, no classes, no titled aristocracy in America; but we cannot continue to so speak for an indefinite period unless we train to the highest point of efficiency the 80 per cent. who earn their living by toil with hand and brain. We must extend the number of phases of education, the number of lines of work likely to appeal to different young men and women, thereby increasing to the highest point their life's efficiency.

All boys and girls, if properly studied by parents and teachers, will exhibit a preference for some particular line of work, and it ought to be the exalted privilege of teachers in our secondary schools to assist the boys and girls in determining what they can best do as their life's work. The boys' bent cannot be known by reading or talking about something; it cannot be determined by the study of the lives of great men and women, no matter how valuable such a study may be. It must be determined very largely by the boy himself when he is brought into close personal contact with the different lines of interest represented in our different phases of education.

The mill, the shop, the factory, the counting house, the office, etc., all make their appeal to the youth, but only one will touch the mainspring of the boy's life and that not until some phase of education has opened up the mind of the boy so that he realizes the significance of the associations of mill, shop, factory, lawyer's office, or physician's office. Life now means a single, definite purpose, and if manual training never does anything more for the youth than to act as one of the agencies in helping him to know his bent in life, the name of Locke and all his successors who have in any way contributed to this cause ought to be forever held in sacred memory.

All the subjects of the curriculum may be roughly divided into two classes; the one is the progressively living studies, the other is the retrogressively dying studies; the one is invited to the front, leads the van, and finds its defense in the ever-increasing demands for its enlargement; the other is relegated to the rear, brings up the procession, but with little enthusiasm. Manual training

belongs to the first class, is daily increasing its defenders, and is rapidly taking a position of domination.

Manual training came to America by way of protest against the one course of study for all, regardless of past, present, or future condition or expectation, and was preceded and followed by other phases of education, each seeking to meet the needs of the individual. This has been done, but in the doing it has been found impossible to have students take all the work offered, as in the earlier time, and so, in response to a demand to meet this condition, the elective system was introduced, at first sparingly but latterly in large measure in both the school and the college. The claims of the individual have been recognized, and because of this and other things which have come with the elective system, specialization has necessarily been moved down to the point where free election begins.

The course in agriculture, the industrial course, and the commercial course, have all made their contributions to the fund of knowledge enabling the youth to choose wisely his work and according to his greatest interest, but no study has made such great contribution in the solution of this problem as has manual training.

For many the solution of the ever-troublesome question of interest is found in manual training, and not only so, for many have magnified many times their interest in all their other work because of that particular interest created in manual training.

My observation and experience show that many students do better work carrying sixteen hours' work, with four additional hours in manual training, than they do if they omit the four hours' work in manual training.

The youth can never have complete education unless the mainsprings of his life are touched and thereby made to respond in the process of growth. Growth begins not in stagnation but in activity. Manual training furnishes an indispensable part in any complete education, because body, mind, and soul are affected directly or indirectly by manual training when properly presented. Hand and brain, muscle and intellect, body and mind cannot be trained as distinct and independent entities, altho it is conceded that one of these pairs may be affected in a maximum degree, and the other at the same time in a minimum degree. Manual training will contribute its legitimate and indispensable share to a symmetrical development of the individual and to a harmonious growth of the body and all the mental faculties.

This harmony and symmetry need not be, and in very rare cases will be, a life continuity, but we are having in mind, in this discussion of the place and value of manual training, the youth about twelve or thirteen years old who has done six years of well-planned work as a child in the elementary school, and is now beginning his next six years of work in his youth stage of the secondary school. We are gradually and sometimes, I think, unconsciously reducing the number of years of preparation, preceding specialization.

If this is true it is because the increase in the number of fields or phases

of education has enabled pupils, parents, and teachers by co-operative effort to determine earlier the bent of the student.

We often fail to reckon with heredity in assigning or advising a student to do manual-training work. If the youth's antecedents for generations have been intimately connected with machine or shop or mill, the slumbering talent may never be aroused and cultivated unless some phase of education is forthcoming which will best and soonest bring out this talent.

Many a first-class machinist has been utterly ruined by the advice of some one to enter the profession of law or medicine. Far better have in society a good carpenter, a good molder, a good mason, a good machinist, with a good general education extending to the middle of the secondary school period, than to turn loose on society one more quack, one more shyster, and one more Ichabod Crane. Manual training is exceedingly valuable in helping to determine what is the line of greatest usefulness for the young man and young

woman.

The variety of manual training may be selected to fit the particular needs of the community, i. e., if the town and the people at large are devoted mainly to industries requiring a knowledge of wood-working, the course in manual training may be planned with especial reference to this dominant industry. This local flavor is of practical benefit but it must not dominate the coursemaker of the school.

The making of useful things at all stages of the work is more important than shaping the work to meet the particular demands of the locality. The making of useful things has much to do with the making of men, and all education in sympathy with, and out of sympathy with, manual training must sooner or later admit this fact and arrange their courses of study accordingly.

The word "service" contains the quintessence of the newest and best education. Manual training very largely performs its function and manifests its broadest meaning in training most directly for real everyday service.

We have attempted to show that manual training originated in the mind of John Locke, who was opposed to any kind of public school, but thought the children of the laboring classes might be benefited by manual training. The subject today has passed the fad stage and is among those subjects whose content changes rapidly because they are continuously progressive.

The meaning and function of manual training are growing broader as better understanding of the child mind is shown. It is estimated that more than three-fourths of the American people earn their living by doing work with their hands. If we maintain that the ideal citizen should be self-supporting, it is clear that manual training ought to be found and given a prominent place in public education.

Horace Mann said that for all that grows one former of things is worth one hundred reformers. Manual training means that one great field of education appealing especially to the mechanically inclined must be cultivated. It means that one more broad avenue of approach to the youth is open to the

teacher. It means one more line of work toward perpetuating a true democratic spirit in public education.

No life ever reaches its upward limit of usefulness unless early in its growth some well-defined work, suited to that life, is marked out to be done. Concentration counts for more than dissipation of energy.

Manual training performs one of its greatest functions in assisting the youth to determine what is his work and thereby makes a great contribution to human happiness.

MANUAL TRAINING IN RURAL SCHOOLS OF INDIANA ELLSWORTH ROBEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF COUNTY SCHOOLS, KOKOMO, IND.

Indiana is consolidating its schools and transporting the children. I believe that the commercial side must be touched in the schools. Of two farmers living next to each other one who has been using every opportunity for informing himself regarding the principles of agriculture raised last year ninety bushels of corn per acre; the other forty-eight bushels per acre. They had similar soil and similar conditions generally. This simply indicates what study will do. Corn clubs have been formed by the boys in rural schools. In a certain county each boy in a club of one hundred twenty-five raised one acre of corn, one boy obtained 117 bushels from his acre, the lowest obtained 50 bushels, the average for the entire club was 72 bushels per acre, the average for the farmers of the same county was 37 bushels per acre. Of course each boy put a large amount of energy into that one acre of ground; but that points a most valuable principle, farmers must soon learn to get the same crop from half the land.

In these clubs boys are taught what constitutes a good ear of corn. They learn to test seed. Most of the work is done out of school. It is being carried into high school in some places. By means of this work we are holding more boys on the farm. Of course, some ought to go to the city; but many would remain on the farm if their eyes were opened to the possibilities of the farm. In the case of one boy who has carried on an experimental plot of ground on his father's farm, the boy has been sought for as a speaker at farmers' institutes and his letters to the press are valuable and are read with interest. He will certainly become a proficient agriculturist.

Domestic science for the girls is found in some high schools and even in rural schools. County farmers' institutes take up domestic science work at their sessions.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON AN EQUAL DIVISION OF THE TWELVE YEARS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS BETWEEN THE

DISTRICT AND HIGH SCHOOLS

BY GILBERT B. MORRISON, PRINCIPAL OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL,
ST. LOUIS, MO., CHAIRMAN.

The question of dividing the twelve years of the public-school course equally between the primary and secondary schools, giving six years to each, presents a twofold aspect: the first is educational or pedagogic; the second is economic. In the consideration of the

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