TRADITION IN EDUCATION 201 



A Scheme of Manual Work 



The need for Manual Instruction being admitted and its place 

 in the curriculum being assured, it is desirable that a brief account 

 of methods be given in support of the claims which have been 

 made. It must be remembered that these claims are based on 

 the assumption that manual work is admitted to the curriculum 

 on the same equal footing as other school subjects, not taught 

 under conditions which minimise or destroy its importance nor 

 regarded as suitable only for those of weak intelligence. These 

 conditions are important but it is impossible to treat them 

 adequately in this paper, as the discussion would involve some 

 consideration of the teachers who are available — their knowledge 

 of boy character, their ability to teach, their acquaintance with 

 the subject and its possibilities as an educational medium ; in fact, 

 the whole question of the teacher's training crops up. Although 

 difficulties in connection with discipline do not often occur in 

 the workshop, it is evident that a teacher of manual work should 

 be one whose personality is likely to influence his pupils for 

 good ; a knowledge of " method " is of advantage and it is 

 desirable, nay, necessary, that he be a skilled workman. Nothing 

 is more fatal than the idea that any one with belief in the 

 work can acquire enough of the technique in a single holiday 

 to become an efficient teacher, even in a preparatory school— 

 the opinion expressed in the report of the curriculum committee 

 issued by the Headmasters' Conference in 1910. The narrow- 

 ness of the view of the aims and possibilities of hand work such 

 an expression of opinion reveals is only too obvious. How can 

 it be justified when coupled with such cogent reasons for 

 regarding the work as important as the following? — 



" It gives ... in a concrete shape that clear distinction 

 between a task rightly done and one which only approximates 

 to being right, which is lacking in all language work, except, 

 perhaps, in the earlier stages of Latin verses." " Also it is 

 certified by physiologists that the training of the hands in 

 delicate work is a direct, efficacious and quite wholesome way 

 of stimulating the brain. Lastly it is the work which en- 

 courages a pupil to solve his own problems without relying 

 on external help." 



A work with such possibilities as are acknowledged here is 

 to be jeopardised by being placed in charge of a man who cannot 

 possibly have a more than superficial knowledge of its require- 



