THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 497 



scliools will never take their place as true culture schools. There 

 is in Europe, and notably in Germany, a strong nationalistic element 

 in current educational thought. We have a national spirit here in 

 America, but it is apt to take a bad form, a form well expressed in 

 that street cry familiar to you all — " America for Americans " — a 

 cry, by the way, that is commonly uttered with either a brogue or an 

 accent. But the national spirit that we want to cultivate is some- 

 thing quite different. "We do not want national pride so much as 

 we want national interest. This can be done by concentrating atten- 

 tion upon the national life, the national problems, the national 

 literature. Furthermore, by this means we could hope to truly na- 

 tionalize our very heterogeneous population, and weld it into one 

 nation; not one as against the rest of the world, which is the spirit 

 of the cry " America for Americans," but one nation strong enough 

 and alive enough and good enough to work sturdily with the rest 

 of the world toward that federation of the nations which is the 

 dream of every lover of humanity. 



The three hours a week are given to the study of obvious sole- 

 cisms and crudities, and to the reading of American authors — Bur- 

 roughs, Emerson, Thoreau, and others. The instruction fails in not 

 giving the boys a command of the mother tongue, and in not arousing 

 them to a sincere national life. It makes a brave attempt to do 

 this, and it only fails for lack of time. 



In the matter of foreign languages, much the same thing must 

 be said. At first only modern languages were taught, and many of 

 the schools adhere to that practice. In Baltimore, only German is 

 offered; in Boston, only French; in Philadelphia, it is German or 

 French; in Brooklyn, German or Latin, with a chance for some 

 French later; in St. Louis and in Denver, Latin, German, and 

 French are electives; in Chicago, only Latin is offered, with French 

 the third year; in San Francisco, German, French, and Spanish are 

 elective; and so on. I am quoting at such length from these repre- 

 sentative schools both to show how variable the practice is, and also 

 to point out that in the more progressive Western schools the studies 

 are largely elective. The customary thirty periods a week are 

 required, for either three or four years, but each student makes out 

 his own roster, subject to the approval of the head master. Here, 

 again, I think they are much ahead of us. In the older Eastern 

 manual training schools the boys take their German or French but 

 twice a week during the first and second years, and three times a 

 week during the third year, and I am afraid that they come out of the 

 school unable to read or write or speak the language with any degree 

 of practical fluency. The time is too short and too scattered. 



In the second year history appears in the curriculum — ancient, 

 TOL. Liii. — 35 



