THE SPIRIT OF MANUAL TRAINING. 443 



They seem never so thoroughly happy as when they are making 

 something. This wonderful self-activity in children was what 

 Froebel seized upon as the basis for the Kindergarten. In boys it 

 is made the basis for manual training. Whenever possible, the 

 appeal is made to their own resources and faculties in preference 

 to the external world. Here, as in the lecture and recitation 

 room, education is made to proceed subjectively. 



In judging of the success of the enterprise, due allowance 

 must be made for the quality of the material that is to be worked 

 up. It is to be remembered that not a few of the boys who come 

 to a manual training school come there for the express purpose 

 of cultivating the mechanical side to the exclusion of everything 

 else. In many cases these lads are finally converted to the 

 broader view of life, but, if that enlightenment does not come, 

 they can hardly be taken to represent in fairness either the aim 

 or the result of manual training. Comparisons are always diffi- 

 cult to make successfully, and here particularly so, because allow- 

 ances have to be made on both sides. While many of the most 

 clever little workmen would possibly count as dullards in a 

 school of different character, not a few of the boys represent an 

 intelligence above the average. For it is the more advanced peo- 

 ple who have been the first to recognize the significance of man- 

 ual training, and have shown their faith in it by selecting it for 

 their own sons. The visitor to a manual training school, if he 

 come to it with the shop idea in his head, expresses constant sur- 

 prise at the class of boys he sees there. Sometimes he very 

 graciously compliments the institution on its excellent English, 

 under the apparent impression that a little noise has a tendency 

 to make the adverb and the adjective, the past tense and the per- 

 fect participle, play at stage-coach and change places with each 

 other. His surprise is perhaps not unnatural, for he comes 

 expecting to find a shop, and he finds a school. 



The theory upon which a manual training school is conducted 

 may not be lightly disregarded. It has here been dwelt upon as the 

 all-important thing about the school, for it determines the aims 

 and methods of the institution, and the very atmosphere of its 

 lecture-rooms and laboratories. Moreover, it determines for what 

 class of students the school is intended. If things be regarded as 

 the proper product, only prospective artisans should enroll them- 

 selves among its students ; but if men be the product sought, 

 then its rolls will be as catholic as human want itself. There, in 

 jackets and knickerbockers, will be found the embryo scientist 

 and teacher, journalist and minister, lawyer and doctor, artist 

 and artisan, merchant and manufacturer ; and these men, though 

 they may never have occasion to directly exercise their acquired 

 dexterity, will be brought into fuller relation with all life through 



