754 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. A 
departments of the opposite sex. The actual percentages of advantage were 
25, 1, 65, 30, and 4, respectively. 
A quite unexpected effect of handwork is improvement in English composition. 
3. Certain of the more Academic Branches of Study are best taught prac- 
tically.—An experiment was carried out with two classes of children of the same 
age, all the brighter children being placed in Class A, and the duller in Class B. 
Class A was taught fractions by means of a piece of apparatus manipulated by 
the teacher, and Class B by individual work in measuring and cutting paper. 
When, at the end of six months, the children were tested, Class B did con- 
siderably better than Class A. 
4. T'he Introduction of Handwork into a School tends to reduce the Neces- 
sity for Corporal Punishment.—The punishment books of the five schools referred 
to above have been examined, and the statistics obtained indicate that when 
handwork is adopted the number of punishments diminishes—e.g., in ‘School D 
(a large school) the record is as follows :— 
Year . . *% 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 (1st half) 
Number of cases 1,406 1,070 746 745 521 280 
During 1909 there was a change of headmaster, and at the beginning of 1912 
handwork was introduced. 
Handwork seems to reconcile the rebellious pupil to his school. It is not 
unlikely that much of what in the past has been ascribed to a direct transfer of 
training from manual work to mental work is really due to an indirect influence. 
The service of the hand reaches the head through the heart. 
Of these four alleged effects of handwork I regard the first as possibly true, 
the second probably true, and the third and fourth certainly true. 
7. Manual Work in Education. By Wm. Fortunr Fowter. 
The ideals which have been so conspicuous a feature of educational reform 
during recent years are responsible for a series of problems which have yet to be 
solved in practice :— 
How far can the individual child be allowed to educate himself? 
To what extent can such heuristic methods be carried in schools where 
children outnumber teachers by at least forty to one? 
In what ways can teachers overcome the difficulty suggested by such 
outnumbering ? 
What effect will such methods have upon the child, and how must the 
curriculum of the school be changed so as to provide suitable exercises? 
The author gave an account of an attempt to solve these problems. The 
children concerned were those of parents belonging to the lower ranks of skilled 
workers, and may with fairness be regarded as ‘average’ for the south-east of 
London. 
In the first place a beginning was made with a class of children having an 
average age of ten and a half to eleven years, and, guided by the needs and diffi- 
culties to which these pupils of middle school age confessed, a new experiment 
with children of eight to nine, nine to ten, and ten to eleven years was con- 
ducted. 
Both experiments began with handwork as a subject, but the later one quickly 
developed into a combination of handwork per se and handwork as a means of 
discovery and expression in as many of the school lessons as possible. 
The use of plastic materials in the early stages allowed the work to be entirely 
individual in its character. It was found advisable to introduce gradually a 
few simple rules, in order to ensure that the modelling was due to control of 
material. While allowing scope for the imagination by avoiding the rigid limits 
of always modelling from the object, it was found possible to direct the choice 
of subject in such a way that certain forms, presenting difficulties capable of 
classification, were attempted by the whole class. 
Ultimately the work was narrowed in scope until the difficulty of the past 
expression exercises became the basis of a lesson in which the teacher gave con- 
