844 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 626. 



the memory and the understanding, the eye 

 to read and the mouth to speak, but the 

 judgment and the executive faculties as 

 well; to extend the humanities so as to 

 include human interests and human activi- 

 ties as they exist now and here. Many 

 wise and excellent educators had grave 

 fears as to the result of the experiment. 

 It was thought that the introduction of 

 tools, machinery, materials, the theories of 

 construction, and draughting, might not 

 only break up the orderly program of the 

 school, but they would lower its intellectual 

 and moral tone. It is now known that all 

 such fears were groundless. Manual train- 

 ing, when properly adapted to the boy's 

 status of brain development, and when 

 incorporated into the daily and weekly 

 program with due regard to the other es- 

 sential features, has proved to be a more 

 valuable element in education than even 

 the most sanguine advocate dared to expect. 

 The moral, intellectual and economic fruit 

 of this combination, as shown in the char- 

 acters and careers of the boys who formed 

 the first classes in the pioneer schools, is the 

 best possible evidence of its value. The 

 gloomy predictions made of its effect upon 

 the pupils, and upon our American system 

 of schools, have been forgotten, and early 

 opponents are fast friends and enthusiastic 

 advocates. 



This is no place nor time for me to give 

 an exposition of manual training; I have 

 preached its gospel elsewhere and often. 

 But I mention it as one of the important 

 matters which must be carefully weighed 

 and adjusted. We must defend it from 

 frivolity on the one hand, and from mis- 

 direction and undue emphasis on the other. 

 At first it was suspected that our motives 

 were sordid; that we were likely to de- 

 grade our schools, to teach narrow trades, 

 and to turn out ' mere mechanics ' instead of 

 educated men. On the other hand, a recent 

 report of a Massachusetts commission (for 



whose membership I cherish high respect) 

 regards the manual training movement as 

 almost exclusively educational and not suffi- 

 ciently industrial. I suppose the earlier 

 and the later estimates are still held by 

 many sincere and able teachers. One does 

 not easily lay aside the convictions of a 

 lifetime. The manual training movement 

 stands inevitably as a criticism upon the 

 system of education which came down the 

 ages through the fathers to us, and nat- 

 urally the latter stands on the defensive. 

 It is also a standing reproof to the old 

 wasteful, unscientific method of teaching to 

 apprentices the theory and uses of tools. 

 It is for educational science to justify the 

 ways of progress which lays aside the idols 

 of the past and erects new temples and 

 opens new kingdoms. Of all the temples, 

 none is finer, none is more glorious and 

 none should be more scientifically planned 

 and reared than that of education. While 

 no section of this association can enforce 

 the dictates of science, it would be helpful 

 if we were able to establish these two things 

 as true, viz : 



1. That usefulness does not impair edu- 

 cational values. 



2. That a so-called culture-study like 

 Latin may properly stand side by side with 

 manual training in the curriculum. 



We are all pleased (though perhaps sur- 

 prised) when we learn that a man who 

 reads blue-prints, and can make and use a 

 diamond-point machine-tool, is also a lin- 

 guist and at home in the calculus; and yet 

 we are more than likely to assume that the 

 boys who are studying the theory and use 

 of tools have little need of literature; and 

 that the student of the classics is wasting 

 his time in a laboratory of the mechanic 

 arts. 



''What are these boys studying Latin 

 for ? ' ' said an English visitor at the manual 

 training school as he looked in upon a class 

 reading Cassar. 



