486 



MANUAL TRAINING. 



hensive plan has been adopted for the entire 

 city, and will be gradually worked out. The 

 generous support of Mrs. Shaw and Mrs. Hem- 

 enway, who have maintained the outside 

 schools, is not to be withdrawn all at once, nor 

 their plan dispensed with. The City Council 

 has appropriated $100,000 for a mechanic arts 

 high school, and the course of study in the 

 elementary schools is to be shaped with reference 

 to it, so that boys who are to follow industrial 

 pursuits shall be trained in the best way to 

 profit by this new opportunity. The course laid 

 out begins in the kindergarten. It has been 

 found that a child who has had a year in the 

 kindergarten has had his perceptive faculties 

 so quickened that he has a year's start of the 

 child who enters first into the primary school. 

 The rudiments of manual training are taken 

 up in the primary schools with stick laying, 

 paper cutting, clay modeling, etc. In the 

 grammar-schools a distinction between the boys 

 and girls is introduced. Girls have sewing 

 and cooking, these being accepted after several 

 years' experience as indisputably of educational 

 and practical value educational in matter of 

 neatness, order, and value of time, and practical 

 in many instances which are interesting and 

 forcibly instructive. The committee recom- 

 mends that every girl be taught plain sewing, 

 and in the upper classes pattern making and 

 cutting, and cooking and so mugh of chemistry 

 as enters into it. There are now 8 cooking 

 schools, 3 more are nearly ready, and 4 more 

 on the way in all 15, so distributed about the 

 city as to be convenient to groups of the other 

 schools. A principal of cooking schools will 

 have oversight and authority upon all, and 

 the teachers must not only be familiar with 

 the art they teach, but must illustrate in 

 person the most perfect habits of neatness, 

 and convey their instruction in well-chosen 

 language. All the boys of every class, and 

 all classes of the same grade throughout the 

 city, are to have exercises in wood work (the 

 starting-point is drawing, not models), and the 

 work beginning in the fourth class. Below 

 this that is, in the fifth and sixth classes they 

 practice construction in card-board. Two plans 

 of a four years' course have been arranged on the 

 same principles, each complete in itself, dif- 

 fering in certain practical features. They are 

 being thoroughly tested, one in one school, the 

 other in another, and it is the intention to re- 

 duce the two to one harmonious system. What 

 classes to instruct first, upon the introduction of 

 the system and how many at a time, are 

 problems that have been submitted to long ex- 

 periment and much discussion. It has been 

 determined that to begin with boys of the second 

 grade is best, and that a single teacher can 

 instruct about 280 pupils a week in ten classes 

 of 28 each. There are about 2,000 boys in the 

 second grade. Eight teachers and 14 shops are 

 required. The next grade to be taken in upon 

 the introduction of the plan is the fourth ; and 

 in this there are about 3,000. In one of the 

 grammar schools the pupils in the lower grades 

 are drawing simple geometric forms, which are 

 then cut out of white wood by the use of a knife 

 only, with commendable results. This work is 

 not in any way a substitute for intellectual 



studies. The change wrought in pome of the 

 boys is most wonderful. To be deprived of their 

 tools is the severest punishment that boys 

 hitherto most unruly can now incur, and it has 

 been found that as much is done in the regular 

 studies as when the whole time was given to them. 

 The wood working has helped to retain boys 

 longer in school. Formerly they were almost 

 universally taken out to be put to work as soon 

 as the law would permit. 



PLAN No. 1. The first year is arranged with 

 special reference to the drawing, light tool work only 

 being introduced. By using only very thin wood, 

 the third dimension in both drawing and tool work 

 is practically eliminated. A board placed upon the 

 regular desks is used, the drawing is made upon the 

 wood, and the piece thus drawn is afterward cut out 

 with a bracket saw, small plane, and file. The 

 drawing and the tool work are thus brought in- 

 timately together in the mind of the pupil, and he is 

 taught at the same time the necessity of using care 

 and accuracy in his drawing. The' instruction is 

 given bv the teacher to the whole class from a model 

 at the blackboard. The pupil thus begins at the 

 same time to make an accurate drawing of a piece, 

 and the piece from a drawing. The first lesson 

 begins with the cube, and teaches parallel, horizontal, 

 and vertical lines, and proceeds step by step till at 

 the end of the year, out of these pieces thus formed, 

 which may be called the alphabet, are made the 

 needle-book, fish-line winder, a pin-cushion, sled, 

 corner bracket, silk winder, pencil sharpener, calen- 

 dar, easel, inkstand, and box for paper and envelopes. 

 The object of the second year's work is threefold : 

 (1) to continue the combined drawing and tool 

 work ; (2) To introduce the third dimension, with its 

 necessary additional views ; and (3) to provide tool 

 work which shall serve as a preliminary training to 

 the joining course. The drawing consists of some 

 new geometrical views, and introduces top, front, and 

 side views. These views are drawn on thin stock as 

 during the first year, are worked out and then used as 

 patterns by which the real piece (in thicker wood) is 

 marked out. 



The third year introduces the more practical 

 methods of working in both the drawing and tool 

 work. The two are here separated for a time, the 

 pupil making on paper correct working drawings of 

 various models illustrating various principles, putting 

 on all dimensions, and showing all facts of form 

 needed by the workman for the construction of the 

 piecej and in the tool work making models in wood, 

 working from correct working drawings, and using 

 for marking out the work the rule, square, gauge, 

 and bevel, instead of the elementary principles of the 

 second year. They are at length brought together 

 again, the pupil making in the school-room the work- 

 ing drawings of the models he is afterward to make 

 in the shop. The work done during the third year 

 consists of: Exercise for rule, square, gauge, and 

 bevel, sawing, planing, boring, jointing and doweling, 

 mortising (two joints), chiseling exercise, towel 

 rack, exercise in dovetailing (plain), book rack, and 

 knife box. 



The work of the_ fourth year is a review and con- 

 tinuation of the third year. 



PLAN No. 2. For the fourth class a series of 

 models preparatory to the regular slojd series has 

 been arranged. The drawing, which should always 

 be preliminary to the work, takes in only one view. 

 A block of paper and the try-square, rule, and lead 

 pencil used in the bench work are sufficient for the 

 drawing in this course. No surface planing is re- 

 quired, and the pupil has thus only to grasp two 

 dimensions. This series consists of fifteen models. 

 . For the three upper classes the regular slojd series 

 has been arranged. This course is based upon the ex- 

 ercises developed at Niifis, Sweden that is to say, 

 the exercises have the same progressive order, though 



