448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tivated and maintained, without which there can not be beauty, there 

 can not be health. We urge that this is the only sure way of keep- 

 ing up a strong and vigorous and independent population, that shall 

 understand how to utilize the home resources of land and industry, 

 and keep the land and industry in the possession of our and their 

 descendants. 



The system of education that is now being carried out seems to 

 us to promote in no way whatever this necessary intention. In the 

 " standards " we find no efficient instruction of a technical kind that 

 even in the barest hypothetical style teaches the principles of useful 

 arts and appliances. Practical details of industries and of modes of 

 learning industrial occupations are thought to be of less importance 

 to the scholar than a knowledge of geography, construction of lan- 

 guage, physiology, and history. It is no wish of ours to ignore studies 

 of the kind above named, but we consider that elementary instruction 

 in details of inventive and industrial pursuits holds a first place, and 

 that in a country like ours in which so much, in which, in truth, 

 almost everything, depends on individual perfection in some useful art, 

 such elementary instruction ought to have the place it deserves at 

 once and for good. We think, moreover, that the instruction should 

 not be purely theoretical. We contend that it should include element- 

 ary training in useful work of a practical kind. We do not see why 

 work-rooms should not be set up in schools, in which boys should be 

 taught the use of the lathe ; the beautiful art of wood-carving ; the 

 skill of the draughtsman ; the method of distinguishing metals, and 

 other simple experiments in chemistry ; the arts of swimming and rid- 

 ing ; the art of distinguishing colors and signs at a distance ; the prac- 

 tice of mensuration, and a number of other good and useful branches 

 of physical learning, which, whether the boy remain at home or whether 

 he emigrate to another country, will always be to him a direct assist- 

 ance, a means of earning his bread, and an insight and test of his par- 

 ticular ability or aptitude for the vocation by which his subsistence will 

 be most easily obtained. 



Extending this principle of practical teaching to the female sex, we 

 would have the girls well trained, both theoretically and practically, 

 in those occupations which in the course of life fall more distinctly 

 under their exercise, management, or supervision. We know that in 

 the schools at present girls are taught sewing and a few other useful 

 industrial accomplishments. We would extend these instructions. 

 We would have the girls instructed in modeling ; in the art of color- 

 ing and painting on glass and porcelain ; in the various processes of 

 selecting, sorting, preserving, and preparing foods for the table ; in 

 the cleaning and ornamentation of drawing-room ornaments, and in 

 all the works pertaining to domestic life. The girls in our schools 

 would, as we believe, make more rapid progress in mere book-learning 

 if one half of the time now devoted to books were devoted to that 



