492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



countiy that have for their express purpose the bringing about of a 

 more complete understanding between the high schools and the col- 

 leges, and the mutual adjustment of the curriculum of the high 

 school and the entrance requirement of the college. It is more and 

 more coming to be felt that the best education should be the one lead- 

 ing to college and should be the one for all. 



Xow, into this somewhat vexed state of affairs the manual train- 

 ing school has come and must be given due place, and brought into 

 relation with the rest. Coming as it did with its technical side upper- 

 most, it was decided at once to be too strong meat for babes and was 

 graded as a high school. This determined its relation to the lower 

 schools, and there was no difficulty on that score. The children 

 from the lower schools pass the same entrance examinations, whether 

 they elect tlie manual training or the English or Latin high school. 

 In some of our cities, and notably in those of the middle West, 

 manual training has been incorporated into the regular high schools^ 

 and consequently has introduced no new problems, at least as far as 

 the educational sequence is concerned. But the older typical manual 

 training school is a distinct instituion, one of recognized high- 

 school grade, but differing from the older high schools in having a 

 three years' course in place of four years. 



If I have at all succeeded in making clear to you the philosophy 

 and methods of manual training, you will easily see that as a scheme 

 of education manual training is equally applicable to all grades, the 

 lowest as well as the highest. It is only that the work would have to 

 be adapted to the age of the children. We should not expect babies 

 to make steam engines any more than we should expect them to learn 

 to read out of Shakespeare. From the artisan point of view it is 

 limited to the upper grades, for little children can scarcely gain 

 enough industrial skill to make it worth while. There are, however, 

 only a few elementary manual training schools in this country. 

 There is a public one in Philadelphia in the slum district, and there 

 are several conducted by charitable organizations there and in ]^ew 

 York and other cities. It is most encouraging to note, however, that 

 manual training is rapidly making its way into the regular elemen- 

 tary schools. In Xew York city alone two hundred thousand children 

 in the lower schools are having manual training, and it is making its 

 way into nearly every progressive grammar school in the larger cities 

 either as a required or elective study. But in the main, when we 

 speak of a manual training school, we mean a high school having 

 a three years' course, and it is to such a school that I want to call 

 attention in this paper. Furthermore, I am sorry to say, a typical 

 manual training school of the older sort means a school for boys 

 onlv. But with the e:rowth of the educational idea, manual train- 



