8io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And here let me say very explicitly that the matter is not one 

 to be disposed of, for or against, by mere opinion. In view of its 

 seriousness such disposal would be simply cavalier. It is a mat- 

 ter for scientific inquiry and decision. I am not an advocate of 

 manual training any more than I am an advocate of the vortex 

 theory of atoms. Such a position is not defensible, I stand 

 toward the problem, as I do toward other problems of science, 

 simply as a student weighing the evidence. I would ask for a 

 similar attitude on the part of other teachers, and for nothing 

 more. The final judgment will come, bear in mind, not from 

 schoolmasters and school committees, but from the men who are 

 patiently and experimentally studying the brain as the organ of 

 human intelligence, and mind as a function of brain, 



I have here tried to tell the main ground for the faith that 

 is in us the raison d'etre of the manual-training cult. One 

 other question remains : What does this training lead to ? It 

 is the question of a practical world, of a world which pays the 

 bills, and very properly looks into the quality of its purchase. 

 The question may be answered in two ways : one is the very cold 

 and matter-of-fact way of telling just what the graduates of a 

 manual-training school are doing at the present moment ; the 

 other is the more rosy method of setting forth what we think 

 these same graduates, in view of their education, ought to be 

 doing, and what, when manual training shall have done its per- 

 fect work, they undoubtedly will be doing. I shall combine these 

 methods by giving the statistics of our own school and then criti- 

 cising them. 



It has become a custom for some of the principal manual- 

 training schools to publish in their catalogues a list of graduates 

 with their occupations. These lists form very instructive read- 

 ing, for they tell in the most practical way just what the training 

 does lead to. The Northeast School has graduated but two classes, 

 or one hundred and twelve boys in all. An examination of their 

 record shows the following results : 



Ptudents : Electrical engineering 7 



Civil en'i,inecring 



Economics 5 



Mechanical engineering 4 



Medicine 4 



Biology 3 



Art 2 



Science 2 



Arts and sciences 1 



Dentistry 1 



Theology 1 



Mechanical drawing 1 



Trade scliool (plumbing) 1 38 



