726 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
MacDonald as an experiment and illustration in education for the better- 
ment of rural life in Canada. We seek to shift the emphasis from training 
for letters to training for life. In part the college has grown out of the 
school garden movement, in part out of the manual training work which is 
being given through Canada under the leadership of English teachers. In 
part it has grown out of the desire for educational leadership in face of the 
need for training the children so as to fit them for rural life. 
In the college we train and instruct young men and women for the three 
fundamental mothering occupations of a young people—first, farming; 
secondly, home making; thirdly, the teaching of the children. We carry on 
our work in each of these three fields in close co-ordination. It is not 
technical education that we aim at putting in the schools—the word 
technical has a catchy quality and often covers a multitude of shams. 
What we seek to do is to so readjust the work of the schools that it will have 
a bearing on the life interests, the opportunities, and the occupations of 
the rural districts. From the courses of study in many rural schools to-day 
one could not gather that the parents of the children had any concern with 
the soil, with crops, or with animals. 
Our school course begins with nature study. We are a part of nature; 
our lives follow natural processes under natural laws. A study of nature 
lies at the beginning of all true education; through it we can train the 
children to observe, to investigate, to think, and to understand, and at the 
same time they are doing things and forming habits of work.. Moreover, 
nature study deals with facts and principles on which systematic study of 
agriculture must be based. 
To nature study we add manual work both for boys and girls, as much for 
the mental qualities it gives as for the co-ordination and ready co-operation 
of hand and eye. Here is something on which the student can decide for 
himself whether it be well or ill done, something that does not need to be 
assessed by the master’s blue pencil, something in which consequences can be 
clearly traced from causes ; ill-made work will not stand. Through such work 
the pupil learns self-reliance, learns the inevitability of consequences, learns 
to work to satisfy himself. As an educational subject it only falls short of 
nature study in that it does not deal with living material. 
Finally, we teach the domestic sciences, the art of home-making, neces- 
sary and fundamental everywhere, but nowhere more than in the haste and 
struggle of a young community absorbed in the pursuit of material good. 
For the bare maintenance of human life there is need for practical educa- 
tion, much more for the maintenance of our institutions and means of culture. 
Our teachers must be more than teachers of letters, they must be teachers 
of men. They must have sympathy, insight, knowledge, energy, enthusiasm, 
and unselfishness. Under such teachers alone can national safety and progress 
in all worthy ways be secured. 
2. Practical Studies in Elementary Schools. By W. M. Heuser, B.Sc. 
3. Manual Instruction in Elementary Schools. By Wauter Sarcent. 
Manual work is winning recognition as a necessary factor in elementary 
education. First, on the ground that it is essential to general educational 
development and valuable alike to the artisan and the scholar. Secondly, 
because it can be so presented as directly to promote industrial efficiency. 
The most important arguments for manual work as a cultural subject may 
be summed up as follows :— 
It insures a proper balance of motor and intellectual activity, to the 
advantage of both; it develops ability to express ideas in material form; 
