THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 501 



three to six periods a week in the older schools are given to chemistry, 

 a practical laboratory course in inorganic; and three periods to 

 physics, to the special study of steam and electricity. The tendency 

 at one time was to make the electrical work almost too practical. It 

 grew to be weak from a lack of fundamental instruction. But this 

 tendency is now being corrected, and the work put on a much 

 sounder basis. There are, however, plenty of chances for practical 

 work. The schools all have their own steam engines and dynamos, 

 switchboards and installations of electric lights and bells. There 

 is plenty to be done in running the engine and dynamo, and in 

 repairing and renewing the several installations, as well as in the 

 more strictly quantitative work of the laboratory proper. To an 

 active boy the attractions of electricity are simply irresistible, and 

 this department, which in the early days was known by the too 

 ambitious name of the electrical engineering department, has not 

 only been a source of lively interest, but in no small measure a de- 

 termining factor in the future career of many of the manual train- 

 ing graduates. 



The work in drawing in nearly all the manual training schools is 

 admirable. It continues throughout the three years; five periods a 

 week during the first and second years, and four periods during the 

 third. A little more than half the time is given to mechanical draw- 

 ing, or, as we prefer to call it, constructive drawing, and the work 

 is in the closest possible relation with the manual departments. The 

 practice is not uniform. In some schools the boys make the draw- 

 ings for all the articles that they afterward construct in the work- 

 shops. This has the manifest advantage of giving reality to the 

 work, and making it continuous and practical. On the other hand, 

 one can draw much faster than one can construct in wood and metal, 

 and many of the projects, being somewhat similar from the draughts- 

 man point of view, do not offer sufficient range of experience to 

 form an ideal course. In many of the schools, therefore, it is growing 

 to be the custom to modify the drawing, giving only a few selected 

 exercises of the manual departments and the special projects, and 

 adding an independent course of drawings chosen because they in- 

 volve useful problems in draughting, and require the original work- 

 ing out of details. The steam engine is naturally a prolific source 

 of such problems. By giving an outline dimensioned drawing, and 

 then assigning to different boys a specific position of the piston, it is 

 possible to teach not a little mechanics along with the drawing. In 

 the same way the development of curved surfaces in the drawings for 

 the tinsmithing work involves a helpful amount of applied geom- 

 etry. As a rule, the manual training schools turn out very good 

 draughtsmen. I think this is because the work is so real. Few of the 



