THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 327 



and last of all from a more abstract source, from philosophy. Let 

 us glance at these three elements. 



Manual training permeates the whole Froebelian philosophy. 

 Arnold has said that religion is morality touched with emotion. One 

 might characterize the kindergarten as activity touched with senti- 

 ment. As far as may be, the activity is all self-directed, for that is 

 the only sort that has any educational value. The hand comes in as 

 the instrument of much of this activity. It is particularly to be noted, 

 however, that the training is quite without industrial import. It 

 has no ulterior purpose, but is simply and solely directed to the 

 development of the child as an organism — an organism whose func- 

 tion is thinking and feeling and acting. The activities of the kinder- 

 garten are manifold, but the motif is always the same. It is can- 

 stantly educational. Between the kindergarten and the manual 

 training high school there is a gap of between seven and eight years, 

 the dreary desert of the elementary school, where I sometimes think 

 that children are taught with infinite patience things that they would 

 have found out for themselves next year. But the spirit of the 

 kindergarten has crossed this gap, and has made itself felt in the 

 high school as the educational advocate of manual training. Froebel 

 built true and firm in resting the foundations of the kindergarten 

 upon the self -activity of children, and its motif, development, carried 

 into the work of older children, must take some form of manual 

 training. And so manual training came knocking at the doors of the 

 high school, not alone from above, from the technical schools, but 

 from below, from the kindergarten as well, but from this side it was 

 a triple knock. 



In the far north, in Sweden, there had been growing up a system 

 of manual training for elementary schools based entirely upon the 

 educational idea. It was not called manual training, but was known 

 as " sloyd," which signifies handy or dexterous. It involves the idea 

 both of planning and executing — that is to say, the idea of creative 

 work — and is a direct and beautiful application of that principle of 

 self-activity which Froebel made the corner stone of the kinder- 

 garten. It is permeated with the true Froebelian spirit, and is 

 quite worthy to follow the kindergarten in a rational scheme of 

 education. As the basis of sloyd we have the old peasant hand 

 work, rich both in beauty and in sentiment. This has been 

 systematized into a scheme of regular school work, and has been 

 made purely educational. But it has not lost, I am happy to say, the 

 sincerity and reality that characterized the old peasant handicraft, 

 and I value it so highly, not alone for its true educational spirit, but 

 quite as much for the warm human sentiment that is an essential 

 part of it. Sloyd is very thoroughgoing in its methods. It strives 



