698 PRACTICAL EDUCATION, 



of the Steam-fitter. Nothing could be more erroneous. The aim 

 of this kind of instruction is totally different to that of the trade 

 workshop ; its object is to get the hand and the eye working 

 together, to correlate the mind and the body; it is another method 

 of getting the child to think by letting him work at something 

 he imagines to be definitely useful in solid materials. Instead 

 of dealing with an abstract problem he deals with something 

 concrete and real, something that he can turn oxer in his hand 

 and in his mind instead of only in his mind. 1lnis manual train- 

 ing is mc^re than a mere counter-irritant to class-room or desk 

 studies, and is essential if the intelligence and adaptability of 

 the pupil is to be as fully developed as is desirable by the primary 

 school course. No one will deny that a wide range of contact 

 with tools and with the materials to which these tools can be 

 applied, either at the bench or on the lathe, gives a boy a certain 

 amount of knowledge which would be useful t(^ him if he were 

 to enter a workshop as a learner ; but the aim of the training must 

 be realised by the parents — it is training in forethought and, as 

 I have already said, in correlation between the hand and the eye, 

 and it is not a training directed towards a future entry to some 

 trade. It is more nearly comparable with that development 

 which results from the spontaneous " experience-getting " when 

 engaged in such highlv-sjiecialised games as football and cricket. 

 Its method may be summarised in the j^hrase " nothing made 

 which has not been drawn, a'^id nothing drawn which cannot be 

 made " ; that is, of course, made by the pupil. Thus the course 

 of instruction must deal with forms based upon the ])upirs ex- 

 perience — his world — advancing in difficulty along a parallel road, 

 ^vith the classroom or desk subjects, and in such a way as will 

 hel]) his progress along either road. In other words, the manual 

 training instruction is correlated with arithmetic, drawing and 

 science, and even with history and geography. Thus the motive 

 of manual training is not that of vocational instruction ; its aim is 

 not that form of vocational or trade efficiency which results from 

 manual dexterity in some trade process— such, for exam]:)le, as the 

 abilitv to use a joiner's plane to make a piece of wood dead true on 

 all four sides. There are other ways in which manual training is 

 limited in its possibilities for vocational efficiency ; beside the 

 spirit of approach being educational in nature, and therefore 

 partaking more of the amateur than of the tradesman style, and 

 especially in those cases where the teacher has come under the 

 arts and crafts movement, only a couple of hours each week 

 can be allotted to it as a school subject ; it is thus only an incident 

 in a general education ; again, the equipment and tuition in such 

 a course lag very far behind the keen progress in either the wood 

 or metal-working trades, because the use of modern labour- 

 saving bench tools would lessen, seriously, the education to be 

 derived from the instruction, even if the purchase of these tools 

 were financially possible ; and again, the teacher need not neces- 

 sarilv have been a tradesman. 



