336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



projects accurate and fully dimensioned, and yet largely free-hand. 

 To fulfill all these requirements — to have the work proceed strictly as 

 a result of the self-activity of the child, to invest it with an emo- 

 tional interest, to make it sound physiologically and aesthetically — is 

 not easy, and much ingenuity is required and will be required to 

 work out a satisfactory set of models. It is just as important to have 

 them carefully graded. It will never do to discourage the child by 

 too great initial difficulties, nor to waste time by adding difficulties 

 too slowly. There must be constant progress. When a bean stalk gets 

 to be ten inches high, the next thing for it to do is to get to be eleven 

 inches. And not only do the projects vary, but the materials as well. 

 Wood and metal and clay, even leather and fabrics, all lend them- 

 selves to the purpose and are all utilized. If this work is to create 

 that many-sided interest in life of which we have been speaking, it 

 must have many sides to it. The projects, then, ought to have diver- 

 sified social functions. The first interests of the child are all 

 domestic, and it is entirely fitting that the first articles he makes 

 should be borrowed from that aspect of life. But these interests 

 want to broaden. With increased constructive skill, they may well 

 take in more ambitious projects in both arts and science — steam 

 engines, dynamos, cameras, scientific apparatus of all kinds, architec- 

 tural units, and all the diversified objects of a rich and varied social 

 life. This is in part the practice in the present manual training 

 schools, as far as the third year's work is concerned. The graduating 

 class makes one or more finished projects of a practical kind, some- 

 times in miniature, often of full size, so that the article may take its 

 place in the equipment of the school. And I am glad to say that 

 more and more the tendency is to substitute these projects for the 

 less fruitful abstractions, and so to realize the educational ideal. Mr. 

 Sayre, the principal of the Central School in Philadelphia, told me 

 the other day that such was the tendency there. It was also the tend- 

 ency at the N^ortheast School. Mr. Richards, of the Pratt Institute 

 in Brooklyn, writes me that not only are they substituting simple 

 finished pieces for the abstract exercises, but also that they are giving 

 the preference to small individual projects over larger ones requiring 

 group work, and that they are making these changes because they 

 believe that in this way they develop greater individuality and 

 arouse a keener interest. Dr. Belfield, the director of the Chicago 

 Manual Training School, writes practically the same thing, and adds 

 that they will probably make no more large pieces, except where 

 they are needed in the equipment of the school, work quite justified 

 by the altruism which it fosters. It would be easy to multiply 

 testimony, but I think we should gain nothing by it. The point I 

 want to make is that manual training in America, in spite of our 



