6 BARKER : 



to make or do according to age and skill, taking advantage of 

 any existing scientific or mechanical interest as a mainspring, 

 would be to enlist the boy's impulse in his own education. 

 Boys, all about us to-day, without help, are trying to build 

 "wireless stations." Others are building canoes, tables; 

 others are collecting insects, and so on. That much of this 

 healthy desire to know, to collect, to do and to make, is 

 wasted, is true, and the reason lies in our failure to utilize 

 this force as we might utilize it by taking it into our schools 

 (or out of our schools), and directing it into what we easily 

 might of mental discipline and precise knowledge. 



The supervisor}- work of the teacher would be to see that 

 the pupil did not attempt too much, and, on the other hand, 

 that he should not be content with work fundamentally wrong 

 or inadequate. It would be right to require that he should 

 make things involving enough science to develop his mind, 

 enough design to train his eyes and requiring enough 

 mechanical skill to give him a clever hand, but that is a 

 matter of our attitude toward his work rather than the sub- 

 ject of his work. It matters little what science he plays 

 at provided he plays well. The scientific method and preci- 

 sion of thought once gained, and familiarity' with scientific 

 and mechanical processes once made, the particular use of 

 these is related to the special vocational training rather than 

 to the fundamental general education. Moreover, in the shop 

 and laboratories where others, including surely the teacher 

 himself, were working at other hobbies, he would learn as 

 much by contact as from his own work. The teacher's own 

 hobby would be to devise experiments, machines and instru- 

 ments out of hand for the little fellows — for those too j^oung 

 to do more than pass him the hammer, or to read a descrip- 

 tion from an elementary text book of the old sort, yet so 

 taking part, and feeling that they were. The mornings might 

 well be spent in book studies, as directly connected with the 

 afternoon's work as convenient, but in study altogether; 



