334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have to be urged to this work. Although the object is simply 

 technical skill, aud does not concern itself primarily with human 

 motives, still the work is so thoroughly in line with boyish activity 

 that it does quite unconsciously enlist those desires to a very large 

 extent. You can see this if you will watch the little workers. They 

 are for the most part absolutely absorbed, and quite unconscious of 

 your own presence. There is in all of us a strong desire to excel, a 

 delight in overcoming obstacles. We like to do battle, and espe- 

 cially when we are young. A cross-grained piece of wood, a stub- 

 born bit of metal, are so many challenges, and an alert boy is eager to 

 accept the gauntlet. Some of the boys, furthermore, have conceived 

 the idea that they would like to be carpenters, or pattern makers, or 

 wood carvers, or machinists, and work under the spur of an ulterior 

 purpose. At fourteen they have already begun to live in the future, 

 and have accepted the ideals of industrialism. The organic reactions 

 that follow upon this manual activity, though not so good as would 

 follow from a more psychological course, make, nevertheless, for 

 increase of brain power. There is a notable enlargement of judgment, 

 of accuracy, and of self-reliance. There is an actual increase of 

 physical health, there is a usable skill. And all of this is very good. 

 But these results, splendid as they are, can be made still better, and 

 are being made still better by the humanizing of the whole scheme 

 in the hands of educational workers. The spirit of the kindergarten, 

 the spirit of Herbart, the spirit of sloyd — a spirit which finds no 

 scheme of education tolerable which has not for its object the full 

 and complete life, the life of body, of intellect, and of heart — this 

 spirit, I say, has been permeating our thought and making its way 

 into the high school. And this is precisely what the formal, technical 

 manual training most needs. It needs to be humanized. It wants to 

 be touched with morality, with beauty, with sentiment, in order to 

 be the ideal education; for the end of education, as Herbart has well 

 said, is to create in the child a moral and aesthetic revelation of the 

 universe. I have confidence that this humanizing spirit will con- 

 quer, and that manual training will ultimately mean in all our 

 schools what it means to-day in a few of them, and is coming to mean 

 in many more — a complete, human, educational process and not 

 simply an artisan training. 



The methods of this educational manual training concern them- 

 selves very much with the principle of interest. They seek not only 

 to satisfy existing desires, but to create new ones. Theirs, you see, 

 is far from being a doctrine of parsimony. It is rather a doctrine 

 of ungrudgingness. In place, therefore, of abstract exercises, poor 

 in present human interest, finished articles are offered. They are 

 very simple, of course, but they are as carefully arranged and graded 



