TRADITION IN EDUCATION 207 



carpentry, as it is called, provides many objects of the type 

 desired. Packing-cases, stools, troughs, rough sheds, small 

 ladders, etc., are made from rough or ready-planed timber 

 and with such models the strongest possible appeal is made 

 to the constructive instincts, to initiative and resourcefulness, 

 to the feeling for form, to judgment, memory and the powers 

 of observation. They call for the keenest concentration of all 

 the faculties and develop body and mind together. For a 

 detailed account of the methods most recently pursued, the 

 reader is referred to an article in the School World in which its 

 development is somewhat exhaustively treated. It will be re- 

 cognised that the method — broadly speaking — is inventional and 

 as it is evidently capable of almost endless modification and 

 extension there is but little danger of that crystallisation into 

 set form which means inevitable loss of freedom and limitation 

 of scope. The work leads through exercises involving recognised 

 principles, various joints and the use of different tools to all 

 that infinite variety of work for which wood is, par excellence, 

 the indispensable material, of which carpentry, joinery and 

 cabinet making are the technical aspects. But with these 

 technical aspects we are not directly concerned. It must not 

 be thought that specialised industrial education is advocated : 

 such a development may be imperative from economic and social 

 considerations but its aims are widely different from ours and 

 its due treatment would exceed the limits assigned to this paper. 

 Such forms of work are merely tapped, to extend the field of 

 operations, on the grounds that if a scheme be too logical, too 

 technical, too formal, there is a danger that natural instincts 

 will be ignored and the fundamental laws of growth violated. 

 As Prof. Hall says, the school must deal with concrete things 

 and the daily objects of the various departments of life, because 

 such dealings stimulate the mental powers and afford them 

 matter to work on, not in order that their study may be an 

 end in itself. 



When the boys have been doing woodwork for two or three 

 terms a new field of interest is exploited and metal work is 

 commenced. Such development involves work at the vice with 

 file, hammer and chisel on all kinds of metals — brass, copper, 

 cast iron, wrought iron and steel ; forging, the behaviour and 

 working of metals when under the influence of heat, bending, 

 drawing down, upsetting, welding, tempering, with the thousand 



