A PROJECT IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 635 



leaving, can have scarcely more than a confused idea of what they are 

 supposed to be proficient in. At given times they have been served 

 with a given quantity of mental nourishment, but, as those seated at 

 table are not always able to partake of the same food in the same 

 quantities at stated periods, so pupils, however endowed by nature, 

 can not always digest new ideas nor investigate new subjects with 

 equal readiness. 



The theory of instruction is based upon natural inclination. A 

 child visiting the circus, menagerie, museum, or theatre, is all eyes, all 

 ears. Question it upon its return home, and you will, doubtless, be 

 surprised at the amount and variety of its information. It has seen 

 and heard that which you have failed to see and hear. 



It is this faculty of the child of absorbing itself in what pleases or 

 interests it that has been seized upon by the managers. In the public 

 school, the young, restless with the impatience of childhood, are forced 

 to remain quiet while attempts are made to describe to them a some- 

 thing which they have never seen, and, not being based upon anything 

 in which their interests have previously been excited, leaves, at best, 

 but little impression on their minds. When it has begun to dawn 

 upon them that Columbus was a man and not a fish, and that he came 

 hither in a sailing-vessel and not in a steamship ; when they are a-hunger 

 and a-thirst for information as to his reasons for believing there was a 

 New World in the West, the bell rings and they are ushered into the 

 awful presence of an arithmetician, who knows all about the denomi- 

 nation of numbers, circulating decimals, and the like, and who, having 

 memorized all the rules, thinks everybody else should be compelled to 

 do the same. This system of opposing the natural inclinations of the 

 young is, perhaps, best expressed in the retort of the lad to his mother 

 when she told him to go to bed early in the evening : "You make me 

 go to bed when I'm not sleepy, and get up when I am ! " 



An inclination of the visitor to the Workingman's School, as he 

 looks over the heads of the children at work, is to compare their lot to 

 his own when a boy. Unless he was unusually gifted, he will recall the 

 tedious hours he spent while trying to memorize the rules in his gram- 

 mar — rules which he didn't always understand — the struggle with the 

 coefficients of the ^ith power of binominals, and so on. He will re- 

 member with what reluctance he sometimes entered the school-gates 

 and with what satisfaction he often closed them behind him. Holi- 

 days were marked with a red letter in his diary, and vacations not in- 

 frequently looked upon as the condemned are wont to look upon tem- 

 porary respites. But now, as he looks about him, he sees children 

 absolutely interested in their studies and their work. And such work ! 

 — molding with moist clay, cutting, sawing, and planing with real 

 tools, fashioning artistic designs, and so on. 



The youngsters of his day often absented themselves from school, 

 and stolidly took the punishment which such dereliction entailed, in 



