SCIENCE -Supplement. 



FRIDAY. APRIL 15, 1887. 



WHAT JNDUSTBY, IF ANY, CAN PROFITA- 

 BLY BE INTRODUCED INTO COUNTRY 

 SCHOOLS f 



If the question proposed for this symposium is 

 to be taken literally, I should answer, none. 



Industry, as such, has, in my judgment, no 

 place in the public schools, though iiidustriousness 

 is always in order there. The prime object of 

 our school system is education ; and it cannot be 

 to any considerable extent diverted from that end 

 without injury to the schools themselves and to the 

 community at large. Indeed, it would scarcely be 

 possible to do a greater wrong to the major part of 

 our public-school children than by taking any ap- 

 preciable share of the little time they have for the 

 development and training of their intellectual 

 powers, for the purpose of applying it to the 

 mere means of bread-winning or money-making. 



But while I thus hold strongly to the strictly 

 educational character of school-work, I believe 

 that the courses of study in the schools of New 

 England have been, and, though in a diminishing 

 degree, still are, incomplete, and inadequate to the 

 demands of a full and symmetrical education. I 

 believe that these deficiencies have induced a one- 

 sided development of mind and character ; have 

 led to the setting-up of false standards of what is 

 admirable and desirable in life ; have caused to be 

 magnified glibness of speech, force of declama- 

 tion, readiness in recitation, and retentiveness of 

 memory, at the expense of far more useful facul- 

 ties, qualities, or habits, namely, soundness of j udg- 

 ment, clearness of perception, the habit of observa- 

 tion, the creative instinct, the executive faculty. 



Briefly speaking, my project of reform, m 

 schools for boys, would be as follows : carry the 

 best approved methods of the kindergarten up- 

 ward through the primary grades, as far as the 

 means and resources of each school, for itself, will 

 allow ; introduce more and more the study of 

 form, color, texture, structure, and organization, 

 by means of natural objects in the hands of 

 pupils and teachers, stimulating and encouraging 

 the pupils, more and more as their faculties are 

 developed, to make observations for themselves 

 at their play or at their work, and to bring the 

 results back to the school-room, for comparison, 

 for criticism, for discussion ; at the age of 

 twelve, or thereabouts, introduce semi - weekly 



exercises with tools, preferably wood - working 

 tools, and in clay-modelling, for the cultivation of 

 the sense of form, for the training of the eye and 

 hand, and for gaining the power to give material 

 shape to conceptions of the mind ; at fourteen 

 years of age, or thereabouts, introduce exercises 

 in metal-working, and require every boy who 

 passes through one of the high schools of the 

 state to become a good mechanic, not at all for 

 the sake of his practising a mechanical avocation, 

 but to make him a better-equipped, more capable, 

 and more useful man. 



All this could not be done at once. The system 

 would have to be introduced gradually and ten- 

 tatively. Probably the more natural order would 

 be that the sjstem shoidd extend from the higher 

 schools downward, and from the city schools out- 

 ward. Much would be learned in the course of 

 the gradual development of such a system ; and 

 the best conceived programme would doubtless 

 require considerable modifications, as the result of 

 experience. 



In the case of girls, somewhat different exer- 

 cises should be prescribed. They should, of 

 course, share in the extension of kindergarten 

 methods and objective science- teaching. Of all 

 other exercises, sewing and cooking should have 

 preference. Clay-modelling and paper and paste- 

 boai'd cutting might advantageously replace much 

 of the wood-working required of boys ; but it is 

 not at all certain that girls may not advantageous- 

 ly be taught simple carpentry and cabinet-work. 

 The last-named exercises have been introduced 

 with great success into the normal schools at 

 Salem and Bridgewater, Mass., where the young 

 women readily acquure the power of making much 

 of the simple apparatus required for teaching ele- 

 mentarj^ physics and mechanics. 



Francis A. Walker. 



It is doubtful if any industrial feature can be 

 profitably introduced into country schools at the 

 present time. 



1. Industrial education is very costly. Under 

 the apprenticeship system, seven of the best years 

 of the life of the youth were given in exchange for 

 the skill that might be imparted, by the master- 

 workman, in a single trade. Still the training of 

 the apprentice was very unscientific Competent 

 and experienced teachers declare that two weeks 

 of systematic instruction in a thoroughly equipped. 



