MANUAL TRAINING. 53 



The course in these high schools is a very full one. A copy of 

 the official curriculum of the Philadelphia schools will serve as 

 a type. It presents the outward aspect of manual training more 

 fully and more concisely than several pages of text could possibly 

 do. Read vertically, the curriculum shows the sequence of stud- 

 ies in any one department. Read horizontally, it shows the cur- 

 rent work of any one term. (See pages 54 and 55.) 



Perhaps the most notable thing about the curriculum is the 

 amount of work which is not manual training. There are five 

 departments in the school the humanities, mathematics, science, 

 drawing, and manual training. We have been proclaiming for 

 some years past, and proclaiming from the house-tops, too, I am 

 afraid, that these are essentially high schools, and not in even a 

 remote sense, industrial or trade schools. Yet the discovery that 

 such is in truth the case seems to be made independently by every 

 visitor. The curriculum is a constant source of surprise. What 

 are we doing with German and analytics and chemistry and 

 political economy in a manual training school ? it is asked. We 

 are doing with them precisely what other high schools are doing 

 with them we are trying to make them the instruments of cul- 

 ture. This misapprehension is doubtless our own fault. One 

 would expect that in new schools the nomenclature at least would 

 be accurate. But ours is singularly inaccurate. The name of 

 one department out of five has been chosen to designate the 

 whole, and a branch capable of representation in all grades of 

 school work has been made to arbitrarily stand for a given grade. 

 In this the movement is guilty of a double inaccuracy, and it is 

 scarcely to be wondered at that the outside world has misunder- 

 stood both the content and grade of the schools. 



To be very explicit, the school day begins at nine and ends at 

 half after two. The interval, exclusive of an intermission of half 

 an hour, is divided into six periods, or "hours," of about fifty min- 

 utes each. As there is no school on Saturday or Sunday, this 

 gives a total of thirty hours a week. The curriculum must be 

 realized within these limits. During the junior and intermediate 

 years half the time, or fifteen hours, is devoted to manual work 

 and drawing, and the other half to the academic studies. In the 

 senior year practically the same division holds. It hardly ap- 

 pears so from the curriculum, since the regular manual work, the 

 mechanical construction, covers only six hours; but then it must 

 be remembered that much of the science work, in chemistry and 

 electrical engineering, is done in the laboratory, and should there- 

 fore be classed as manual work, while the surveying, being prac- 

 tical field work, properly comes under the same head. 



Before considering the manual work in detail, it will be worth 

 while to see what is being done in the other departments. A 



