THE CONTEMPORAR Y SCIENCE SERIES. EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. MANUAL TRAINING. MANUAL TRAINING IN EDUCATION. BY C. M. WOODWARD, A.B. (HARVARD), PH.D. (W.U.), r THAYER PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND APPLIED MECHANICS, DEAN OF THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL, AND DIRECTOR OF THE MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, SI LOUIS, MO. WITH ILL USTRA TIONS. THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.G. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORI~ 1911. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE TRADITIONAL CURRICULUM BEYOND THE PRIMARY GRADES ... i CHAPTER II. THE REMEDIES PROPOSED ... ... 38 CHAPTER III. \l THE SCOPE AND CONTENT OF MANUAL TRAINING WOOD-WORK 52 CHAPTER IV. /EXERCISES IN JOINERY ... 73 CHAPTER V. EXERCISES IN WOOD-CARVING 88 CHAPTER VI. WOOD-TURNING ... 92 CHAPTER VII. PATTERN WORK AND MOULDING 98 239762 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE WORK AT THE ANVIL AND FORGE , 102 CHAPTER IX. BENCH AND MACHINE-TOOL WORK ON METALS ... 117 CHAPTER X. THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING IN EDUCATION... 125 CHAPTER XL THE RECORD AND TESTIMONY OF GRADUATES ... 149 CHAPTER XII. THE INTELLECTUAL VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING ... 166 CHAPTER XIII. RELATION OF MANUAL TRAINING TO BODY AND MIND 193 CHAPTER XIV. FALLACIES CONNECTED WITH MANUAL TRAINING ... 212 CHAPTER XV. A REPLY TO CRITICISMS 217 APPENDIX ... 279 INDEX 309 PREFACE. IN the preparation of these pages I nave been troubled by abundance of material. Three years ago I wrote a book entitled, The Manual Training School: Its Aims, Methods, and Results, in which I set forth with minuteness of detail and fulness of illustration the manual features of a manual training school. I also discussed quite fully the necessity for their introduc- tion, and their economic and educational value. I had expected to draw largely from that book in preparing a volume for English readers. In this I have been disappointed. During three years the subject has grown astonishingly. It has not only spread into every important city in America, but it has been the subject of earnest discussion in all lands. Friends and foes have appeared in vast numbers, and every phase and bearing of manual training has been closely examined. I have found it impossible to ignore the developments of these three years. The interest has centred on new points, and I have been forced to write a book almost entirely new. In it I have brought the discussion down to date. I have reduced the amount of practical details to a minimum, and I have discussed more fully the strictly educa- tional bearings of manual work. The recent reports Vlii PREFACE. of the United States Bureau of Education contain such full and satisfactory statements of the progress of manual education, that I have omitted entirely the historical element. In England, no less than in America, I am happy to believe, the progress of the last few years has been distinctly marked. The distinguished services of such men as Sir George Whitworth, Mr. William Mather, M.P., Sir Philip Magnus, Sir Henry Roscoe, and Sir Lyon Playfair, in public life ; seconded by such educators as Professors Thompson and Huxley, of London ; Professor Ripper, of Sheffield ; Professor Dixon, of Glasgow, and Professor Reynolds, of Man- chester, endorsed by certain Journals of Education of great influence, have been crowned with a large measure of success. If this book in any way helps on the cause of rational, wholesome education, a cause which has come to be very dear to me, I shall be abundantly satisfied. Ever since I attended the Education Conference in Manchester, in April 1885, the people of England and English educators have had a very warm place in my heart. I trust it may appear from this volume that my interest in the most vital of living questions that of the education of the coming men is no less warm and no less fraternal now than then. C. M. WOODWARD. ST. Louis, Mo., U.S.A., $ist May, 1890. MANUAL TRAINING. CHAPTER I. THE DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE TRADITIONAL CURRICULUM BEYOND THE PRIMARY GRADES. IT appears necessary, before setting forth the nature and positive value of manual training in a scheme of general education, to point out the defective character of the prevailing system. I shall therefore at the outset of this book specify some of the failures and deficiencies of existing schools. \ This preliminary task is not an agreeable one. It is never pleasant to find fault, and it is doubly unpleasant when the faults exist in an institution dear to one's heart by a thousand tender associations, and enshrined in a deep feeling of loyalty and gratitude. Moreover, one's motive in offering criti- cisms is liable to be misunderstood. It matters little if one commends many features, provided he sees one that is faulty and dares to say so, or discovers one defect and dares to point it out ; he is in danger of having his praise ignored and his blame held up to scorn as though it were the result of hostility or prejudice. Every c.;itic of i'he existing educational 2 MANUAL TRAINING. system is liable to be classed with its enemies. " The subject of the Educational Value of Manual Training has come to be of prime importance by reason of (among other reasons) the fact that as a cause it serves to unite not only the critics of the educational system already existing, but also its uncompromising enemies." 1 Nevertheless, this ill-fortune shall not deter me. The logical bearing of the advocacy of the new educational feature is fully recognised by those who strongly oppose it. Dr. William T. Harris, in the report just mentioned in the footnote, said that the assumption that manual training is educational in the same sense as the branches of science and litera- ture heretofore taught, unsettles the entire question of course of study, in so far as it rests on the doctrine of a specific educational value for each of the branches in the course of study, and in so far as it is supposed that the present list of branches provides for an all-sided intellectual training. If there is such a " doctrine," and that " doctrine " fixes, not only the exact elements that enter into an adequate, all-sided, intellectual training, but just the specific branches of study which, and which alone, can furnish particular elements of that training, then I suppose the assumption, or rather, as I prefer to say, the fact does unsettle the question of the course of study, and I am very glad that it does so. It may be well to reflect a moment upon this assumption of a " doctrine " which settles the question 1 Nashvilk Report of Committee on Pedagogics, 1889. DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 3 of the course of study for all time. Aristotle settled the question of the constitution of matter for over a thousand years, and no rational progress either in medicine or chemistry was possible till the falsity of his "doctrine" was shown. Countless questions in religion, science, and government, which some people fondly supposed had been settled over and over again, have been unsettled as often as progress was to be made. The present age is one of progress along all lines. Is it strange that some of us who are devoted to the cause of educational progress should insist upon unsettling the question of course of study sufficiently, not to destroy or mutilate it, but to improve it ? The art of education is, or should ever be, pro- gressive. With every new phase in civilisation has come a new phase in education. The history of education, from the Centaur who trained Achilles and the Argonauts, down to the Manual Training School, is full of records, of conflicts between the Old and the New. The Old has been justified by all the past with its traditions and authorities. The New has fought for recognition as the demand of the age, as essential to the progress which education ought to make, if it is kept abreast the other institu- tions of civilisation. Educational progress has been first the effect of progress, and then the cause of more progress. It must here suffice if I refer the reader to his history. I speak of it only to say that the present state of affairs in educational matters is in no essential particular unlike what it has been 4 MANUAL TRAINING. hundreds of times in the past, when education was undergoing a decided step in its process of evolution. The programme of progress of evolution has always been, first, a gradual recognition of the fact that the methods, appliances, and conduct of education were falling behind ; second, criticisms, protests, and de- nunciations for failures and defects ; third, suggestions of what should be added, what subtracted, what modified, what incorporated ; fourth, experiments on new lines, generally failures, sometimes successes, always instructive; finally, the incorporation of new features, and the elimination of old ones. The present age is one of rapid progress in every field. Never was there a century or a half-century so progressive. The story of our industrial, scientific, and commercial progress under the leadership of Watt, Fulton, the Stephensons, Franklin, Morse, Ericsson, Bessemer, Siemens, Edison, and others, is almost threadbare, yet I doubt if we half realise it ourselves. There is to-day scarcely an occupation among us which has not been transformed, or actually created, since the year 1800. Think of the way we build, furnish, warm and light our houses ; how we cultivate our fields, and harvest our crops ; how we travel, and transport goods over land and sea ; how we make our clothes, our tools, our books ; how we tell the news ; how we make war ; how we govern ; and how we make peace. To be sure, the world is full of Rip Van Winkles who persist that the change is seldom progress, and lament that the "good old days " can never come again. DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 5 In spite of many improvements, our methods of education have changed least of all, unless it be in our Art, which is nothing if it is not old. In the main it is well to be conservative in education. All that glitters is not gold, and all that offers is not fruitful nor wholesome. The nature of mind is unchanged, and the laws by which intellectual, moral, and physical powers are de- veloped, and faculties are acquired, are essentially the same in all ages. On one hand the ends of education are the same now as they have always been. On the other hand they are new, and the new aims demand new appliances. The new aims point to the new duties, the new functions, the new responsibilities which demand a measure of definite preparation on the part of youth. The system of education which is to develop a maximum of intel- lectual vigour is also to produce practical power ; to open the doors into the world of to-day, and to give the best preparation for taking up the world's work successfully. Dr. Samuel Johnson thought that "education was needful to the embellishments of life." Said he, "Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation ; and those purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians." It is here that our schools have been and are most deficient. They at first failed to recognise legitimate claims of the useful branches, and then having to a certain extent recognised those claims, they refuse still to recognise MANUAL TRAINING. the best means for meeting them. In other words, the schools persisted in ignoring or decrying the value and necessity for scientific and industrial training as compared with an almost exclusively literary culture ; and secondly, having in some degree admitted that value, they persistently refuse to adopt the means whereby that scientific and industrial training may be most efficiently secured. There is in this statement of mine no denial of the pre-eminent value of intellectual training irrespec- tive of the subsequent value of a familiarity with the means by which that training is gained. If the mind could be disciplined only through the instru- mentality of some far-off and no longer used literature, science, or art, it would then be our patent duty to resort to it, so important is such discipline. But if it can be shown that not only mental discipline, but useful practical skill, imme- diately applicable to the affairs of life, can be simultaneously secured, then it must clearly be our duty to secure them both. I have no great amount of sympathy with those who oppose the introduction of the useful into school education. In the first place, these decriers of all useful branches are generally extremely inconsistent. While asserting that it is a great wrong to the student to "intrude the instruments and the spirit of money-getting into his educational life" (by which they mean manual training), they are evidently entirely willing to teach the science of wealth, the details of banking, exchange, stock-buying and selling, and speech-making, the DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. / high art of political demagogues. The educational world has yet to accept the statement of Dr. Way- land, the accomplished scholar and college president, to wit: "It is the intention of the all-wise Creator that all intellectual culture shall issue to knowledge that is of the greatest intrinsic value ; and that all useful knowledge, properly acquired, tends equally to intellectual development." Let us now take up in order the steps I have indicated as necessary to a move forward in education. The first step was Criticism; friendly, candid, searching criticism. The witnesses I shall call can- not be impeached. They are educators, scholars, men of affairs, philanthropists. The prevailing systems of education in England and America are much more nearly alike than perhaps would be supposed. I shall freely use the words and observa- tions of critics on either side of the Atlantic, whose judgments cannot be called in question either on the ground of unfriendliness or unfamiliarity. No one of them is an enemy of public education ; on the contrary, they are all strong advocates of broad, generous, high education. Professor John D. Runkle, late president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says : " Public Education should touch practical life in a larger number of points ; it should better fit all for that sphere in life in which they are destined to find their highest happiness and well-being. It is not meant by this that our education should be lowered 8 MANUAL TRAINING. mentally, but that it should be based, if possible, upon those elements which may serve the double purpose of a mental culture and discipline and a de- velopment of the capacity of the individual with and through the acquisition of artistic tastes and manual skill in the graphic and mechanic arts which most largely apply in our industries. The student who completes his high school course at eighteen seldom willingly enters the shop as an apprentice with the intention of becoming a skilled mechanic and earning a livelihood by manual labour. His twelve or fourteen years of mental school-work, whether successful or not, have, through habit, if in no other way, unfitted him for all manual work, even if he has not in many ways been taught to despise such labour." Mr. H. K. Oliver, of Salem, Mass., recently said : " Our system (of education) trains boys not to become better craftsmen, but to be unwilling to be put to any kind of craft. Such ought not to be the effect of education, understood in its relation to our people. But a very small proportion can be of the so-called learned professions, and most of us must be of the productive, toiling class ; and while the mind should be justly cultivated that the future workman may be able to read understandingly, to think wisely, and to express his thoughts well, to keep his business records, to apply his knowledge of the science of form, and to be guided by the forms of Christian morality, the main business of his coming life should receive at least some degree of attention. . . . The DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. Q actual influence of our method of education is to make our youth in reality revolt from manual labour ; they shrink from entering upon lives wherein physical labour is to be their means of living." An eminent and successful teacher, Miss Anna C. Garlin, says in appeal for a new education : " Let the child be taken to school whole, instead of in parts ; let him be considered to have a body as well as a mind ; let him be trained physically towards use, by a wise shaping of the eager animal activity ; let him be protected from the cupidity of the manufac- turer and the pressure of home poverty by utilising the active energy which in more primitive times was of so much account in the family economy ; let him be gradually introduced into that hard world of work for which he is destined by a training which shall be of the hands as well as of the brain. ... If we are to protect the children of the very poor from the very worst consequences of their condition without making paupers of them or their parents, we must continue (after the training of the kindergarten) in some way to give them study and work together." State-Superintendent Wickersham of Pennsylvania said in a recent report : " It is not enough to instruct a boy in the branches of learning usually taught in our common schools and there leave him. It must be seen by some authority that he is allowed a chance to prepare himself to earn a livelihood. It takes more than a mere knowledge of books to make a useful member of society and a good citizen. The present product of our schools seems to be, in too 10 MANUAL TRAINING. great a degree, clerks, book-keepers, salesmen, agents, office-seekers, and office-holders. We must so modify our system of instruction as to send out instead large classes of young people fitted for trades, for business, and willing and able to work'' The finished scholar, orator, and philanthropist, Wendell Phillips, said : " The discrimination against those who prefer to work with their hands is very unjust. Our system of education helps the literary class to an unfair extent when compared with what it affords to those who choose some mechanical pursuit. Our system stops too short; and as a justice to boys and girls, as well as to society, it should see to it that those whose life is to become one of manual labour should be better trained for it." The eminent Shakespearian critic, Dr. H. N. Hudson, is perhaps too sweeping in his criticism, but he adds a suggestion of value : " So long as people proceed upon the notion that their children's main business in this world is to shine and not to work, and that the school has it in special charge to fit them out on all points, just so long they will continue to expect and to demand of the school that which the school cannot give. . . . " It is desirable that children should learn to think, but it is indispensable that they should learn to work ; and I believe it is possible for a large, perhaps the larger, portion of them to be so educated as to find pleasure in both. But the great question is, how to render the desirable thing and the indispensable thing mutually helpful and supplementary. For surely the DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. II two parts of education the education of the mind, and the education of the hand, though quite distinct in idea, and separate in act, are not, or need not be, at all antagonistic." " In these days of repeating rifles, Harvard sent me and my classmates out into the strife equipped with shields and swords and javelins," said Charles Francis Adams, jun., in his remarkable Phi Beta Kappa address. "We cannot continue in this age full of modern artillery to turn out our boys to do battle in it, equipped only with the sword and shield of the ancient gladiator," says Professor Huxley, using the same striking figure. Sir Lyon Playfair changes the metaphor, but is none the less expressive. What he protests against is not literary study, but the exclusion of those modern subjects which bear directly upon the duties and responsibilities of life. He says, " In a scientific and keenly competitive age, an exclusive education in the dead languages is a perplexing anomaly. The flowers of literature should be cultivated and gathered, though it is not wise to send men into our fields of industry to gather the harvest, when they have been taught only to cull the poppies, and to push aside the wheat." 1 Professor Ripper, the Director of the Sheffield Technical School, speaking of the striking inadequacy of present school education, which recognises the close relation between school -work and many occupations which are likely to follow, declares that 1 British Association Address, 1885. 12 MANUAL TRAINING. " there is at present no sort of connection between the school-room and the workshop ; between the training and the future employment of boys. Work, work- shops, tools, materials, or workshop problems are never mentioned in the school ; they have no place there ; all reference to these things is excluded as a sort of necessary evil which it will be time enough for the children to deal with when they are obliged. But the present grinding, aimless system of mere book-learning and cram is not destined to live much longer in its present form." One is reminded of the state of mind of the good Mrs. Rouncewell in Bleak House when she dis- covered in her second son a disposition to construct " steam engines out of sauce-pans, and to invent apparatus whereby his canary could pump water for his bath. She, poor soul, with a mother's anguish, felt it to be a move in the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester Dedlock (from whom she always took her cue) had that general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be considered essential/' But in spite of his mother's gloomy foreboding, and Sir Leicester's violent prejudices, the lad "shew no sign of grace as he got older, but, on the contrary, constructed the model of a power loom, etc." 1 1 " If Sir Leicester ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or ever thought of him afterward, it is certain that he only regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousand con- spirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight, two or three nights in the week, for unlawful purposes." DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 13 There are plenty of Sir Leicesters and Mrs. Rouncewells still living and still looking with strong disapprobation upon every educational feature which would recognise as wholesome any such aptitudes, not to speak of fostering and encouraging them. A city school superintendent said at a convention in Washington, in March 1889, that those useful features of education whereby one is directly helped to earn his bread, and to provide a home for his family, may safely be left to " a number of pressing necessities which will drive men up to " a proper training in them. Education for use (it is argued) may therefore be left to itself; it is only the education that is not for use in the struggle for bread-winning and home- making that must be provided for by the State in the common schools. 1 1 Superintendent Frederick M. Campbell, of Oakland, Cal., said: "The education of the hand can be left to the individual; the education of the mind must be secured, beyond all peradventure, by the State. Mark the essential difference ; the necessity of getting a living forces itself upon every man, for his own immediate selfish interest. The necessity of educating his children has no such visible urgency upon the ignorant man ; that is, for the interest of others, rather than for his own selfish interest ; and the consequences, even to them, are too remote and far-reaching to his dull mind. No doubt the State would be better off for having an abundance of skilled artisans, but intelligent men it must have.'* It is not worth while to more than point out two fallacies in that argument. The writer has given a reason for " compulsory educa- tion," and yet he appears to think he has shown that the industrial education of the children may safely be left to the father, or to the hard circumstances of their life, while their book education cannot be so left. Secondly, he assumes that if industrial features should be 14 MANUAL TRAINING. Superintendent Button of New Haven, Conn., says " we are brought face to face with the serious fact that social and industrial progress has outstripped educa- tion and left it far behind. The education of the three R's, or even the most varied and complete culture now furnished by the schools, will not give those habits of acute perception, clear judgment, and manual dexterity essential to the greatest usefulness in industrial life. Our graduates have not even an elementary knowledge of materials and processes." Elsewhere the same educator says : " It may be admitted that during one period in the history of schools, it was permitted to teach anything but what was immediately useful." To this he hopefully adds, " That time has passed It is now conceded that if the useful arts can be taught so systematically as to train and discipline the highest powers of mind and character, there is no sound reason for neglecting them." I would gladly believe that so much is conceded by educators, but I fear that such con- cession is far from general. In most cases the school deliberately steers away from matters directly useful to labouring people in order that, as they say, " the spirit and instruments of money-getting may not be incorporated into education by the State, and some of the school children should grow up and become artisans, they would fail to be intelligent men. This is closely following the lead of some eminent English writer who urges us to "teach the beautiful the useful will take care of itself." It is probable that Herbert Spencer was fully justified in his remark that the education which has made England what she is to-day has " got itself taught in nooks and corners." DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 15 intruded into one's educational life." Every item of practical knowledge, every step in industrial skill, is supposed to be base and mercenary in motive and influence. There is a strong disinclination to give a boy a chance to fall in love with mechanics, and to so perfect him in his daily work that he shall be not only willing but eager to continue a mechanic and make his future promotion dependent upon his success in the industrial field. f I remember once hearing of a man by the name of William Gray who had achieved a position of wealth, influence, and usefulness in the city of Boston. On one occasion he reproved a workman for poor work. Smarting under deserved censure, the man retorted, " Well, you needn't put on airs to me ! I can remem- ber when you were only ' Billy Gray, the Fiddler/ " "Very true," replied Mr. Gray, " I was a fiddler, but did I not fiddle well? I got on because I did my work well, whatever it was ; and now I am able to tell whether you do your work well or not." I fancy that there is really no more of the mer- cenary spirit in aiming at a high standard of excellence in tool work, and in putting into it all available art and science, than there is in making zealous and thorough preparation for the business of a teacher, a journalist, or a physician. Nevertheless, if a boy looks forward to being a lawyer, every one gladly urges him to study this and that because it will directly help him in his pro- fession. But suppose he says he hopes to be a mechanic or a farmer ; instead of urging him to make l6 MANUAL TRAINING. a thorough study of the science and art of wood working, drafting, forging, or agriculture, in order to become a superior pattern-maker, or smith, or farmer, he is generally told to study something else which bears only remotely, if at all, on his chosen career, in the conscious hope that he may be cured of his fancy or whim, and finally give up his idea altogether and follow something more genteel and cheerful than mechanism and husbandry. Note how Mr. Adams, quoted above, speaks of his college training : " As a training-place for youth to enable them to engage to advantage in the actual struggle of life, to fit them to hold their own in it and to carry off the prizes, I must, in all honesty, say that, looking back through the years and recalling the requirements and methods of the ancient institution, I am unable to speak of it with respect. Such train- ing as I got, useful for the struggle, I got after instead of before graduation, and it came hard. While 'l have never been able, and now, no matter how long I may live, I never shall be able, to overcome some great disadvantages which the superstitions and wrong theories and worse practices of my Alma Mater inflicted upon me. . . . "The college fitted us for this active, bustling, hard-hitting, many-tongued world, caring nothing for authority and little for the past, but full of its living thought and living issues, in dealing with which there was no man who did not stand in pressing and con- stant need of every possible preparation as respects knowledge, exactitude, and thoroughness the poor DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. I/ old college prepared us to play our parts in this world by compelling us, directly and indirectly, to devote the best part of our school lives to acquiring a con- fessedly superficial knowledge of two dead languages. I shall hold that I was not myself sacrificed wholly in vain if what I have said here may contribute to so shaping the policy of Harvard that it will. not much longer use its prodigious influence toward indirectly closing for its students, as it closed for me, the avenues to modern life and living thought" 1 Sir Philip Magnus says that "people often talk and write as if school time should be utilised for teaching those things which a child is not likely to care to learn in after-life, whereas the real aim of school education should be to prepare, as far as possible, for the whole work of life. It is because the opposite theory has so long prevailed that our school training has proved so inadequate a preparation for the real work of life." As I write the above I recall an incident of two days ago. A widow came to consult with me about the education of her two boys, aged fifteen and sixteen years respectively. By her own labour in the counting-room of a business house she had main- tained them at a classical school till, in spite of all the advice and authority of the educators thereof, she had broken away and come to me. Her boys, she said, were accustomed to spend the entire morning of every day on the Latin and Greek languages ; after 1 Harvard is less deserving of this criticism to-day. See what President Eliot says, pp. 24, 25. 1 8 MANUAL TRAINING. noon they had Greek history and pure mathematics. In two or three years they both must go to work, earning not only their own support but their mother's as well. The boys were only of average ability, and as they looked forward to the coming responsibility they had felt strongly the unfitness of their schooling, and had begged for some change. It was only after a long struggle that the mother sufficiently overcame the scholastic influence to apply to the manual training school. One of the boys entered that school yesterday. The case is one of many, and well illustrates the drift of popular educational endeavour. I am reminded of the severe strictures of Canon Farrar on the unfruitfulness of English classical schools. They who differ have no reason to decry him nor to explain away his words on the ground of prejudice. I can assign no reason for supposing that he does not speak the honest truth as it had revealed itself to him. In a lecture delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Canon Farrar, the dis- tinguished author and philologist, a master of Harrow, and for thirteen years a classical teacher, thus avows " his deliberate opinion, arrived at in the teeth of the strongest possible bias and prejudice in the opposite direction, arrived at with the fullest possible know- ledge of every single argument which may be urged on the other side " : " I must avow my distinct conviction that our present system of exclusively classical education, as a whole, and carried on as we do carry it on, is a deplorable failure. I say it knowing that the words are strong words, but not DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. IQ without having considered them well. I say it because that system has been 'weighed in the balance and found wanting.' It is no epigram, but a simple fact, to say that classical education neglects all the powers of some minds, and some of the powers of all minds." He regrets especially the "deadening" effect on the sensibilities of burdening the memory with unmeaning and useless words. Professor Thomas Eggleton, the eminent scientist of Columbia College, New York, says : " There is no longer room for doubt that in the old system of education, where the reasoning powers were trained by abstract mental processes alone, without the aid of the eye and the hand, and the brain was crammed with facts, the application of principles to the circum- stances of everyday life was rendered difficult. This was because the pupil was not taught how to make such application, nor did he see any use made of the principles he was acquiring. They were to him only theories, and consequently the retention of facts was a mere matter of memory without interest. As for the principles which underlay them, they were in many cases either misapplied because they were not understood, or were forgotten altogether." If one scans closely the programme of actual school work for pupils of all ages, he finds it chiefly literary. The pupil of fourteen or sixteen years is found study- ing Greek, Roman, and domestic history ; Latin, orations and poems ; grammar, Greek, French, or German ; modern literature, chiefly poetry ; rhetoric and English composition ; mathematics ; and a little 20 MANUAL TRAINING. science from a book. One is impressed with its highly literary character. Now when I claim, and when others claim, that such a programme is faulty, it is not to be understood that we fail to duly appreciate the classics, or history, or poetry, or modern languages. The above pro- gramme was mine as a pupil, and for years mine as a teacher. I know something of the enthusiasm with which both pupil and teacher may prosecute such studies. My criticisms therefore do not spring from a lack of knowledge of what is doing in schools, nor from a lack of sympathy with the greater part of the work itself. I know how pure, how generous, how delightful, and how satisfying all this may be. What can be finer than to take the children of the people and lead them along these paths? What can more ennoble, more inspire good thoughts and chaste ambitions ? Yet when I' lift my eyes from my books and study life, the life that is, the activities that make up the civilisation of to-day, the responsibilities that must soon fall upon the shoulders of my pupils, the demands that to-morrow will put upon them I am brought face to face with the solemn fact that we have ignored the actual demands of our own age and trained them for an ideal age wherein they are to live exempt from all problems of labour, manufacture, construction, transportation, invention, and domestic economy. Ruskin once said that the education of a gentleman was chiefly the classics and English History ; but he gave to the term "gentleman" a narrow meaning. DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 21 He was not thinking of the three hundred thousand boys of school age in London. Sir Philip Magnus said in his Report to the Education Conference in 1884: "A literary training is not the best preparation for the pursuits in which a large proportion of the population are now engaged. . . . This (literary) training is the survival of a method well enough adapted at one time to those who alone received education /.#., the English gentry and the nobility but unintentionally ex- tended to the other classes, who, on account of the difference of their pursuits, require a totally different system of education." Similarly, President Walker says that it is little less than a shame that the American high schools, the crowning glory of the system of free public education, "should graduate pupils highly accom- plished in languages, composition, and declamation, but weak in perception, practical judgment, manual dexterity, and executive faculty ; who have been trained in description without having been taught to observe the things they should describe ; who have spent years in the art of rhetorical elaboration and ornamentation without acquiring any adequate body and substance upon which to exercise those arts ; who are great at second-hand knowledge, but con- fused and diffident when thrown upon their own resources ; skilful with the pen, but using any other tool awkwardly and ignorantly." William Mather, M.P., declares that in spite of educational progress the traditional character of 22 MANUAL TRAINING. teaching remains, and that it furnishes but a one- aided training. " Memory, rather than the whole mind is appealed to ; names, dates, events, grammar, rhetoric, and literature engage an unreasonable share of the school time." He, too, asserts the comparative inutility of so much exclusively literary culture. " It is of secondary importance, after reading and writing have been acquired to serve as useful instruments, to pursue systematically the study of grammar, language, and literature, analysis of sentences, refine- ment of composition, elegance of expression, and remote historical events." When Mr. Mather asserts that "the present methods of teaching do not meet the wants of the nation, or do justice to the children who are com- pelled to attend our public elementary schools," he utters the thought which every student of social science must share. Professor Edmund J. James, of the University of Pennsylvania, is a student of social science and a close observer of schools and teaching. He refers to public education when he says : " When we take a broad view of the curriculum as a whole, we must acknowledge that it is very one-sided. The schools cannot be successfully defended from the charge that their effort is chiefly, if not altogether, devoted to training one side of the child one set of activities to the exclusion or neglect of the rest. It must confess, after all, that so far from being the purely liberal school of which its defenders boast so much, it is largely professional in character, preparing almost as directly DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 23 and immediately for certain definite callings as if it were a trade school pure and simple. In other words, our public schools at present and let us not be confused here by any cry about liberal training are in a sense professional schools for such callings as book- keepers, copying clerk, selling clerk, etc., where bright- ness and ability to write a fair hand or add a column of figures are the only necessary qualities. The in- evitable result is that such callings are continually overcrowded." In respect to the incompleteness of the school curriculum, the United States and England are much alike, and observing Englishmen are pointing out the same faults that we see. Professor Huxley sympathises greatly in the new movement. Of course he knows well what the old education has accomplished, but he is not blind to its defects. He says : " The old method has the effect of being too bookish and of being too little practical. The child is brought too little into contact with actual facts and things, and as the system stands at present it con- stitutes next to no education of those particular faculties which are of the utmost importance to industrial life. I mean the faculty of working accurately, of dealing with things instead of words." One of the greatest evils in all communities lies in the early withdrawal of pupils from school. In America, where the law does not compel attendance at school as a general thing, the great majority of boys leave school before they are twelve years old. In England there is a very general withdrawal as soon as the point required by law is reached. There is, I 24 MANUAL TRAINING. suspect, a very wrong impression as to the causes of such withdrawal in America. Poverty is occasionally the cause ; sometimes it is stupidity, no doubt. The usual explanation is : a mercenary spirit, a desire to earn money, as compared with the supposed non- mercenary spirit of those who remain in school. This probably does great injustice to this class of boys. The fact is, the boys who withdraw do not take a lively interest in the work of the schools ; the extravagant amount of memory work does not attract nor inspire ; they are generally poor spellers and poor penmen ; they have poor memories for words, and are slow of speech. Such boys stand a poor show for positions as clerks where a glib tongue and good hand-writing are essential to success. Hence the motive of those who leave school is precisely the same as that of those who remain namely, that they may secure a kind of training that is to be to their ultimate advantage. The unsatis- factory, unattractive nature of the curriculum is well pointed out by President Eliot of Harvard University, while discussing the possibility of enriching the pro- grammes of lower schools. " As a rule the American programmes do not seem to be substantial enough ; from the first year in the primary school onward there is not meat enough in the diet. They do not bring the child forward fast enough to maintain his interest and induce him to put forth his strength. Frequent complaint is made of overpressure in the public schools, but it is not work which causes overfatigue so much as lack of DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 25 interest and lack of conscious progress. The sense that, work as he may, he is not accomplishing anything will wear upon the stoutest adult, much more than upon a child. One hour of work in which he can take no intelligent interest will wear him out more than two hours of work in which he cannot help being interested. Now the trouble with much of the work in the public schools is that it is pro- foundly and inevitably uninteresting to the childish mind. The best way to diminish strain is to increase interest, attractiveness, and the sense of achievement and growth." That is a very discriminating statement, and it bears with great force upon the secondary schools where the pupils first become conscious of tastes, likes and dislikes, in different studies. Being un- disciplined, they are largely controlled by their interest or their lack of it. President Eliot might have added that not only do the schools in a measure fail with such as remain pupils, on account of their " profoundly and inevitably uninteresting work," but it is this unattractive work which drives the great majority away. The children ask for bread : the schools offer them stones, and the children turn away. This language seems harsh, but it is just. Not one boy in fifty goes through tJie high school, though it is free, and in many cities even text-books are furnished. No more conclusive evidence can be imagined to prove that the curriculum of secondary schools is unpopular. Forty-nine boys withdraw to one who 26 MANUAL TRAINING. goes through. Why do they withdraw? It would be well if we knew just why in any large city, though reasons would vary in different places. But we know enough of boys, and programmes, and family necessi- ties to enable us to approximate to the truth. One school superintendent, evidently a teacher of ex- perience, says : " It is a matter of fact that 75% of ' third-reader boys ' drop out of school before they reach the next round. It is not the children of the abject poor alone, but of the well-to-do parents also. By far the greater number of absentees stay at home because they or their parents lack that interest which would insure prompt attention." Suppose we make our estimates as follows : Of those who leave school Five per cent, are withdrawn by illness and death .05 Ten per cent, are driven away by poverty 10 Ten per cent, are deficient in brain power 10 Ten per cent, are vicious, will neither study nor work, but shun school and all decent society. .10 Ten per cent, are put to work by cruel and selfish parents or guardians who want their wages... .10 Ten per cent, withdraw to go to private schools... .10 Forty-five per cent, withdraw because they find school dull, tiresome, and unprofitable. To them it offers neither the stimulus of a strong interest nor the promise of adequate reward, in the way of valuable preparation for the work of life, as compared with the sort of apprenticeship a lad may serve in mercantile or manufacturing establishments 45 100% I have no hesitation in saying that with well- organised and free public manual training schools DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 27 more than one-half of this withdrawal could be prevented. See Chapter XL As an instance of secondary schools, take the public high schools for boys in the city of Boston. It has two kinds of high schools for boys I. The Latin School, 1 which prescribes for its pupils a classical course with particular reference to their probable future occupations in the so-called learned professions. It is probable that few boys enter the Latin School who do not expect to go to college. And it is generally thought that if a boy does not go to college he has wasted his time in the Latin School. II. The English High School, which was established in 1821. Its young men go mostly into mercantile life. The English High School chooses particular subjects for its course of instruction, with an eye to the wants of the majority of its pupils whose pursuits in after-life are to be mercantile or commercial. Such are Boston's two high schools for boys, both necessary and excellent, as I have every reason to believe. The city may well cherish them with pride. But where is its third high school, which shall impart a culture as truly liberal as that given by either of the others, but which shall at the same time select studies and exercises with the fact in view that most of its pupils will be looking forward to occupations in which an experimental acquaintance with the mechanical arts will be either highly serviceable or 1 The Boston Latin School was established in 1635. "It prepares boys for college. Thence they go out to follow the professions of divinity, law, and medicine." School Document No. 15, 1889. 28 MANUAL TRAINING. absolutely indispensable ? The number of pupils who would naturally and properly seek the training of such a school is probably far greater than that seek- ing both the others combined ; yet as such a school does not exist in Boston, all its possible pupils drop out of the grammar grades and disappear from the school records. Then (marvellous instance of poor logic !) the wiseacres declare that it is folly to talk of spending money to provide school facilities for those who do not stay in school long enough to take advantage of them I 1 I am happy to be able to say that the city of Boston is likely soon to extricate itself from its illogical position. The School Committee have resolved to establish the third High School that of Manual Training on the same plan as the English High School. I have little doubt that before my words are in print the work will be in progress. 2 I am well aware that many educators, and even many communities, do not deserve the above criti- cism. I should be sorry to appear to criticise any 1 See the paper by Superintendent E. P. Seaver, of Boston, on "Mechanic Arts High Schools," in Circular No. 2, 1889. Bureau of Education, Washington. 2 See Appendix for the greater part of the Report of Super- intendent Seaver. This admirable report, on which the action of the Boston School Board was based, is recommended to all students of this subject. Its value arises from the fact that Mr. Seaver took time and trouble to visit and study thoroughly all the prominent schools of Manual Training in the United States, and adopted his plans after careful comparison. It is of course very gratifying to the writer to find that, with some few modifications, the plan and details of his own school have been adopted by Superintendent Seaver. DEFECTIVE NATURE OF THE CURRICULUM. 29 one unjustly, or to repeat old criticisms upon a condition of things which has passed away. Just as in prehistoric times different tribes and races progressed at widely different rates of speed some virtually standing still while others rose through all the stages of savagery and barbarism into civilisa- tion ; so in different communities the spirit of educa- tional progress varies greatly in force. Educational leaders have wide followings, whether conservative or progressive. A strong superintendent often determines the tendency of his constituency. He, like Lincoln, both leads and is led. He creates and obeys public opinion. School Boards composed of educated men are apt to have ideas of their own, and the superintendent often takes his cue from them. As a rule School Boards, composed as they are of business men with much shrewdness and little sentiment, are less con- servative than school teachers. The latter have records which require consistency, and have accom- plishments which are not to be discounted by new and unfamiliar standards. The former have learned to discard methods and ideas which the time has outgrown, and they would reconstruct a school and its course of study as readily as they would use a stenographer, put in electric lights, use a triple expansion engine, or build a monitor. Just as Cambridge and Oxford are the most conservative forces in England, so the hundreds of classical colleges, and their feeders, the literary high schools, are the strongholds of our conservative educational 3