'<> STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



"O'er the forge's heat and ashes^ 



O'er the engine's iron head. 

 Where the rapid shuttle flashes^ 



And the spindle whirls its thread, 

 There is labor lowlj- tending 



Each requirement of the hour, 

 There is genius still extending 



Science and its world of power." 



It was largely a desire to correct the increasing desire for gentility and 

 the false ideas of life that first led to an introduction of the 



MECHANIC ARTS INTO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



Some of the larger schools have carried the experiment to success, and 

 manual training departments are multiplying on every side. Our con- 

 ception of education is changing, and even school men are coming to con- 

 cede that education is anything that makes for culture and efficiency. 

 Manual training rounds out the powers in the fullest way by correlating 

 hand and e^e, and motor education, by developing the motor parts of the 

 brain, likewise develops pluck and courage. But motor education, to be 

 effective, must come in youth while the motor areas of the brain are 

 growing. This is one of the strongest arguments advanced by those who 

 advocate manual training in lower grades, for they asLj boys should begin 

 to learn a trade before reaching their teens, just as a child must begin 

 early to learn to play a musical instrument if he would become an expert 

 player. 



Attention is called to the fact that boys naturally like to be busy. In 

 Menominee, Wisconsin, where the Stout Manual Training School has 

 been in operation for a number of years, there is said to be no street loaf- 

 ing among the boys, who eagerly embrace every opportunity to work 

 over-time on some article to furnish or decorate the home; and the shops 

 are kept open until 9 p. m. 



Much of the manual training in our schools has thus far been con- 

 fessedly experimental, and simple exercises in drawing, modeling, and 

 wood-working have usually characterized the beginnings, though some 

 of our large cities like St. Louis and Chicago, now have quite extended 

 manual training departments. A goodly number of our public schools 

 are taking the stand that there should be at least enough manual training 

 to assist in relating the school work to any manual occupation that may 

 be undertaken in after life. The schools of Washington, D. C, furnish 

 a good illustration of this method of keeping the educational idea para- 

 mount, but recognize the practical side by instruction in joinery, wood- 

 turning, pattern-making, forging, cooking, and sewing, the course being 

 obligatory in grades 7 and 8, and elective in the high school. But by 

 far the larger number of schools have taken up manual training without 

 any reference whatever to trade, but simply for the education of hand 

 and eye, a training that shall lead to greater development of latent 

 genius to more versatility and resourcefulness. 



GERMANY'S EXPERIENCE 



furnishes a lesson on the value of industrial training which America mav 



