48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MANUAL TRAINING. 



By Dr. C. HANFORD HENDEESON, 

 pkincipal of the northeast manual training school, philadelphia. 



I. 



THE editor of The Popular Science Monthly has always taken 

 a warm interest in the question of manual training. On two 

 occasions he has been kind enough to allow me to speak to his 

 readers in the columns of the magazine. I have much valued 

 these opportunities. The first article appeared in August, 1889, 

 and was entitled The Spirit of Manual Training. It dealt with 

 the general aspect of the subject, and more especially emphasized 

 the ethical significance of well-performed action. The second 

 article appeared in May, 189-4, under the title of Cause and Effect 

 in Education. It contained no direct reference to manual train- 

 ing. It was intended, however, to serve as an introduction to the 

 two articles which the editor now asks me to write. It did this 

 by illustrating the main proposition upon which manual training 

 rests its educational claim, the very simple and undeniable propo- 

 sition that we can only attain a rational education by setting in 

 operation adequate causes. I am referring to these previous arti- 

 cles in order to avoid repetition. In the present paper it is my 

 purpose to speak of the outward aspect of manual training, and in 

 the succeeding paper, of its inner content. 



It must be borne in mind at the very outset that manual train- 

 ing is not a complete and separate system of education, excluding 

 other branches of human culture, and only administered during a 

 definite period of boyhood. On the contrary, it is but one branch 

 out of the many which make up the sum of education, and as such 

 is applicable in every grade of school life. One must dismiss the 

 idea that a manual training school is a "peculiar" institution 

 which has parted company with the older avenues of culture, and 

 has struck out in a new and somewhat erratic path of its own. It 

 is quite possible that its early advocates held some such concep- 

 tion of its mission, but the view is certainly not shared by those 

 who are trying to give manual training daily expression in the 

 schools. A more modest conception prevails. Manual training is 

 held to be a part of culture, not culture itself. 



Curiously, manual training effected its entrance into the cur- 

 riculum at both ends of the educational sequence in the kinder- 

 garten and in the scientific departments of the universities. From 

 the bottom and from the top it has been steadily pushing its way 

 toward the center, until now the two frontiers are within plain 

 sight of each other. The manual activities of the kindergarten. 



