THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING, 347 



English meadows. To the same primitive taste, exerted in a slightly 

 different direction, are due the gilded wings of Brazilian moths, and 

 the exquisite tints of our own ruby or sapphire colored summer insects. 

 The beauty and the glory of the world are not for the eyes of man 

 alone ; they appeal equally to the bee and the butterfly, to the bird 

 and the child. To some people it strangely seems a nobler belief that 

 one animal only out of all the earth enjoys and appreciates this per- 

 petual pageant of natural loveliness; to me it appears, on the con- 

 trary, a prettier and more modest creed, as well as a truer one, that 

 in those higher and purer delights we are but participants with the vast 

 mass of our humbler dumb fellow-creatures. — Gentleman^ s Magazine, 



THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAmmG. 



By Professor C. M. WOODWAED, Pn. D., 



WASHINGTOIf UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS. 



THE object of this paper is to consider directly the fruits of 

 manual training. By manual training I do not mean merely the 

 training of the hand and arm. If a school should attempt the very 

 narrow task of teaching only the manual details of a particular trade 

 or trades, it would, as Felix Adler says, violate the rights of the chil- 

 dren. It would be doing the very thing I have always protested 

 against. That, or very nearly that, is what is done in the great ma- 

 jority of European trade-schools. They have no place in our American 

 system of education. 



The word " manual " must, for the present, be the best word to dis- 

 tinguish that peculiar system of liberal education which recognizes 

 the manual as well as the intellectual. I advocate manual training for 

 all children as an element in general education. I care little what 

 tools are used, or how they are used, so long as proper habits 

 (morals) are formed, and provided the windows of the mind are kept 

 open toward the world of things and/brces, physical as well as spiritual. 



We do not wish or propose to neglect or underrate literary and 

 scientific culture ; we strive to include all the elements in just propor- 

 tion. When the manual elements which are essential to a liberal 

 education are universally accepted and incorporated into American 

 schools, the word " manual " may very properly be dropped. 



I use the word " liberal " in its strict sense of " free." No educa- 

 tion can be " free " which leaves the child no choice, or which gives 

 a bias against any honorable occupation ; which walls up the avenues 

 of approach to any vocation requiring intelligence and skill, A truly 

 liberal education educates equally for all spheres of usefulness ; it 

 furnishes the broad foundation on which to build the superstructure 



