SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETING. 203 



MORE HAND WORK. 



There is place, however, in the lower schools for a vast in- 

 crease of the attention paid to those forms of education that 

 involve hand training. It has been demonstrated again and 

 again that the process of education is often more effectively 

 conducted by means of an appeal to the motor activities than in 

 other ways. We learn by doing as well as by thinking. The 

 schools ought to be given very much greater opportunity than 

 they now have to apply in action the education that is so largely 

 limited to a study of theory. Hand work in the form of manual 

 training for boys and domestic subjects for girls ought to extend 

 very rapidly into all elementary schools and very much more 

 time should be given to them. 



THEORY SHOtJLD BE APPLIED. 



I have no doubt that pupils would be more efficiently educated 

 if half the day were to be devoted to an application in practice 

 to the theories studied. Some communities will soon have the 

 courage to place the work of their elementary schools on some 

 such basis. Indeed at Gary, Indiana, the school course is al- 

 ready organized somewhat on that plan with great economy in 

 money cost and with an apparently considerable educational 

 gain. Maine has a most liberal law for the encouragement of 

 manual work in elementary schools. There remains only the 

 necessity of an aroused public opinion in the s.everal towns in 

 favor of adequate attention to courses of this kind. 



WHAT SECONDARY SCHOOLS CAN DO. 



A peculiar. opportunity is open to Maine high schools and 

 academies in the direction of a more vital connection between 

 school and life. The youth who attend these schools are, many 

 of them, just about to pass into some active contact with indus- 

 try. Such schools will and should pay very large attention to 

 these courses that make for culture — for the ability to enjoy 

 the finer things their lives will present to them. They will 

 render a very sorry service, however, if they leave their gradu- 

 ates with only the taste to enjoy and without a liking and desire 

 for work. It is a dangerous thing to educate a person in such 



