MANUAL TRAINING. 49 



the weaving, modeling, and building, are succeeded by the sloyd 

 of the primary school, while the technical work of the universities 

 and scientific schools is now being preceded by the systematic 

 wood and metal work of the manual-training high schools. The 

 unoccupied territory lies between, in the elementary schools. It 

 is, however, not entirely unoccupied. Already the simpler forms 

 of wood work and clay modeling are being introduced into many 

 of these schools, and the frontiers are disappearing. 



This dual start is responsible for what would otherwise be a 

 curious conflict of motif in the development of the manual train- 

 ing idea. The kindergarten has always in view the thought of 

 the child. Its activities have but one purpose, and that is devel- 

 opment. The things produced have in themselves no value what- 

 ever. The whole operation is a process. Its importance is sub- 

 jective. One might, I think, sum iip the ideal of the kindergarten 

 in saying that its end is the cultivation of perception, and its 

 method is the self-activity of the child. 



It is far otherwise in the technical schools of the universities. 

 Seldom have processes called educational been so oblivious of the 

 material upon which they work. Men are taught to analyze iron 

 and copper ores, because these analyses are needed in the indus- 

 trial world ; to survey fields and farms, because of the social neces- 

 sity of emphasizing the difference between meum and tuumj to 

 file and fit and turn, because only by such operations can machines 

 be built ; and to do a hundred other things whose end is objective. 

 The work has regard only to itself. It is needed in the great outer 

 world of enterprise and action. The worker is a part of the pro- 

 ductive mechanism, and is now a means. Observe the contrast. 

 In the kindergarten, the work was the means and the worker 

 the end. 



We thus find, at the two extremes of the educational line, par- 

 allel activities but opposite motives. So long as the frontier of 

 the intermediate schools remained between the two, there was 

 little conflict of ideals. Different sets of people were interested in 

 each, and, as the interests were in both cases large, they prevented 

 a too critical examination of the distant activity to which they 

 were opposed. Thus became possible the spectacle of a father 

 sacrificing himself' to some industrial end, working beyond the 

 point of fatigue, exceeding the bounds of sanity, while his chil- 

 dren in the kindergarten were engaged in activities which were 

 purely, though unconsciously, self-regarding ; and no one appears 

 to have found the spectacle so inconsistent as to be distressing. 



But when manual training moved from its extreme positions 

 and progressed along the line toward the center, it carried its 

 motives with it the educational motive upward, the technical 

 motive downward. In the secondary schools the two have met 



VOL. XLVI. 



