5 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



yet be formed. Much depends on the system adopted. If the in- 

 struction were given during school-hours, it would take the place of 

 some other lesson, and, by a proper arrangement of time-tables, might 

 be given at very little additional expense. In some of the schools in 

 which the experiment has been already tried, special teachers have 

 been appointed, who have received a certain fee for each lesson. But 

 if several schools in the same district combined, one teacher might be 

 engaged, and either the children might be brought to a common cen- 

 ter, as in the case of the cookery-classes, or the teacher might go from 

 school to school, as in the case of the science-teaching in Birmingham 

 and Liverpool. The latter plan might be more convenient for the 

 schools ; but the former plan would be more economical, as enabling 

 one shop and certain tools to be used by several sets of children. 



It would be necessary under any circumstances that the instruction 

 should be encouraged by a system of grants, or by some equivalent 

 external aid. A system might be organized of paying grants on the 

 results of the individual work of each pupil ; but all the disadvan- 

 tages of the method of "payment by results" would be emphasized 

 in the case of workshop instruction, and the teaching would lose much 

 of its disciplinary value. The amount of the grant should depend 

 mainly on the average number of children in attendance. A grant of 

 four shillings, as in the case of cookery-lessons, and the recognition of 

 the subject by the Education Department, would afford sufficient en- 

 couragement to induce certain school boards and school managers to 

 make manual training a part of the curriculum of the schools under 

 their control. The total amount of these grants would be but a slight 

 addition to our education expenses. According to the last report, the 

 whole number of children presented for examination in the sixth and 

 seventh standards was 112,455. Of these, we may assume that about 

 60,000 are boys. Supposing half this number to elect to receive work- 

 shop instruction, the grant would amount to G,000 a year. But even 

 this estimate is excessive as an addition to our present expenditure. 

 For many of the children might take handicrafts in lieu of one of the 

 specific subjects on which grants are now paid.* It may, therefore, I 

 think, be asserted that, the workshops being once equipped, the addi- 

 tional cost in grants of introducing handicraft teaching into the cur- 

 riculum of our elementary schools would not exceed 5,000 a year ; 

 and for this comparatively small expenditure about 30,000 boys might 

 be annually sent out into the world from our elementary schools en- 

 dowed with practical skill at their fingers' ends, imbued with a taste 



* It may be well here incidentally to call attention to the relatively small amount of 

 grants earned for specific subjects. Out of 352,860 children, who last year were examined 

 in elementary subjects in the fifth, sixth, and seventh standards, only 64,376 presented 

 themselves in specific subjects, the total amount of grant paid being 14,662 lis. 8c?. Of 

 the children on account of whom these grants were earned, Sir John Lubbock tells us 

 that less than 25,000 were examined in any branch of science. 



