332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



able to make their own boots, they no doubt learned enough to be able 

 to mend them. 



The introduction of manual work into our schools is important, not 

 merely from the advantage which would result to health not merely 

 from the training of the hand as an instrument, but also from its 

 effect on the mind itself. 



I do not, indeed, suppose that, except in some special districts, we 

 can introduce what is known as the "half-time" system, in the sense 

 that the children will do ordinary work for wages, though Mr. Arnold 

 tells us in his " Report on Certain Points connected with Elementary 

 Education in Germany, Switzerland, and France," that in Prussia " the 

 rural population greatly prefer the half-day school, as it is called, for 

 all the children, because they have the elder children at their disposal 

 for half the day." 



I do not, I confess, see why a system so popular in Germany should 

 be impossible in England ; but what seems more immediately feasible 

 is that our boys should be trained to use their hands as well as their 

 heads. The absence of any such instruction is one of the great defects 

 in our present system. 



Such teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction in 

 other subjects. Mr. Chadwick has given strong reasons for his opin- 

 ion, " that the general result of the combined mental and bodily train- 

 ing on the half school-time principle is to give to two of such children 

 the efficiency of the three on the long school-time principle for pro- 

 ductive occupations." 



Again, the Commissioners on Technical Instruction, speaking of 

 schools in the Keighley district, say : " The most remarkable fact con- 

 nected with these schools is the success of the half-timers. The Keigh- 

 ley district is essentially a factory district, there being a thousand 

 factory half-timers attending the schools. Although these children 

 receive less than fourteen hours of instruction per week, and are 

 required to attend the factory for twenty-eight hours in addition, their 

 percentage of passes at the examination is higher than the average of 

 passes of children receiving double the amount of schooling through- 

 out the country." 



In our infant-schools we have generally object - lessons or some 

 more or less imperfect substitutes of that kind for the very young chil- 

 dren. But after this, with some rare exceptions, our teaching is all 

 book-learning ; the boy has no " hand-work " whatever. He sits some 

 hours at a desk, his muscles have insufficient exercise, he loses the love 

 and habit of work. Hence to some extent our school system really 

 tends to unfit boys for the occupations of after-life, instead of training 

 the hand and the eye to work together ; far from invigorating the 

 child in what M. Sluys well terms " le bain refraichissant du travail 

 manuel," it tends to tear his associations from all industrial occupa- 

 tions, which, on the other hand, subsequently revenge themselves, 



