750 REPORT— 1886. 



the intricate analysis of complei and compound sentences ; or on cramming long 

 lists of capes, lakes, rivers, and mountains. Sucb information may be good in itself, 

 but is it of more importance to the artisan's child than the power to draw, which 

 is the very foundation of all manual skill ? And yet no child may be taught 

 drawing unless he first learns parsing and grammatical analysis. We are often told 

 that the school curriculum is an overcrowded one, but when the overgrown subjects 

 of the Code have undergone a useful pruning process, it will be possible to make 

 room for drawing as a compulsory class subject for experimental instruction in 

 science, and for manual instruction in school workshops. Drawing is admitted on 

 all hands to be of supreme importance as a subject of school instruction, and yet 

 the regulations with regard to it as they at present exist are extremely unsatisfac- 

 tory, their tendency being to seriously diminish, rather than increase, the number 

 of children under instruction. If the class subject now called 'English' were 

 made of practical use by being limited to the correction of provincialisms and 

 common errors of speech, and drawing made a compulsory subject, some valuable 

 work would be done. 



Experimental science is almost unknown in our schools, and, as a consequence, 

 the children go out into the workshops and factories crammed with information 

 about moods and tenses, but absolutely ignorant of the elementary principles which 

 would enable them to reason intelligently upon the physical facts and phenomena 

 by which they will be continually surrounded. Systematic science instruction is 

 being given in the Board schools of Birmingham and Liverpool, and with excellent 

 results ; the children are interested in their school work, they acquire information 

 which no amount of mere book-reading woidd give them, and the advantage of 

 such instruction will be reaped not by the children alone, but by the whole com- 

 munity. 



Manual instruction in school workshops for boys should occupy a similar place in 

 the Code to needlework for girls, though it would not be convenient to take it, except 

 with the highest classes, in ordinary schools. A good school workshop system should 

 include arrangements for working in wood and in metals, fitted with benches and 

 supplied with the more ordinary tools. The course of instrufiion should be purely edu- 

 cational, and the exercises therefore properl)^ graded as in any other subject. There 

 should be no idea of teaching any trade, nor of making articles for sale or profit. The 

 higher the grade of the school the more complete should be its fittings. The idea 

 in the minds of many people has been that education was going to save their 

 children from hard work, and the present system of instruction is still in danger of 

 encouraging this notion and of creating habits and tastes which may unfit the 

 mind for the work before it, instead of fitting and aiding it. There is a disposition 

 among the sharp, clever lads of the schools to leave the ranks of labour in which 

 their fathers have served before them to seek situations in any capacity where a 

 black coat can he worn rather than a canvas jacket. They are conscious of skill with 

 the pen, but they feel no aptitude nor desire for working with their hands, and they 

 will escape manual work if they can. There can be no greater fallacy than to 

 imagine that any boy is too good for the workshop. The workshops need, and 

 "urgently need, these very boys, and if the public elementary school is not helping 

 to enHst its best talent on the side of skilled labour we fa-e not on the right course. 

 Manual training will provide the connecting link between the theory of the school 

 and the practice of the workshop, between books and tools, and between abstract 

 rules and phrases and the reality of things. It will teach the dignity of labour 

 by example rather than by precept. It will help to form industrious, useful habits 

 early in life, and give a taste for doing useful work with the hands which thousands 

 never acquire. It will be a valuable relief from the sedentary, inactive life of the 

 school, and so counteract the present tendency to develop a race of dyspeptic, 

 pale-faced, small-limbed individuals whose goal is passing examinations, and whose 

 ambition is to be somebody's book-keeper. It will cultivate a respect for the worker 

 and an appreciation of the worth of his work, and it will provide a positive power 

 to work in wood and metals with more or less precision, which will be a valuable 

 aid to many a lad who is destined afterwards to be thrown on his own resources in 

 our large towns and cities, or in some of our far-oif colonies. 



