Morning journal and courier., 1880-11-12
AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM.

AN EDUCATlONAL PEfOBLEms There is an article in recent number of the Contemporary Reoteao which well deserves the attention of thoughtful and intelligent Americans. Its subject is Education as Hindrance to Manual Occupation" and it thus deals with one of the important ques- tions of the present day. We are accus- toned to regard our common schools with
 considerable complacency, sand they are, of course, of inestimab1e value, but it is begin ming to be asked in earnest, Is it certain that
 the methods which we have adopted are
 those which are best suited to promote the
 greatest happiness of the greatest number
 At present we proceed upon the theory that
 it is not proper or necessary to teach any
 thing at the public schools but what may be most conveniently described as book learning, and judging from the routine followed, it seems further to be assumed that to acquire smattering of as large an assortment as possible of miscellaneous arts and sciences should be the height of the young Americans ambition.
 The evil complained of is widely extend ed one. It exists not in this country alone, but in England Germany, France and other countries In a recent able work upon pri- mary education and apprenticeship in France M Salicis speaks in forcible terms of it. Says he: ''These little bureaucrats, boys and girls, outlaws from real labor by no fault of their own, come naturally to the end of their school course with one fear before them-that of being forced to become work men and workwomen but with one wish also, the boys to become clerks, the girls shopwomen. And hence this un- defined, uncertain overstocked class of book keepers, cashiers, salesmen, clerks, agents with a thousand qualifications, scorning the cap and blouse for the sake of broadcloth and silk hat /; and the corresponding class, still more to be pitied, of young ladies, of no shop, perhaps and some with the coveted bonnet, but alas! how procured ?" What M. Salicis says of the children who graduate from the elementary schools of Paris is ap- plicable in all the countries where similar 1 system of training prevails
 The writer in the Reoieao referred to asks l what will be the verdict of future generations ] on learning that the education offered to the l children of artisans, to the class that will l form the artisans of the next generation, was | of a character purely literary, in sense | technical or even scientific. And ought we, he inquiries, to be surprised if, in pursuance | of the system we have deliberately marked out for the rising generation, we keep our future artisans, till they fifteen or sixteen, employed in no other work than sitting at 8 l desk to follow. pen in hand, the literary course of studies of our educational code, we discover that on arriving at that age they have lost the taste for manual work, and pre- fer to starve on a threadbare pittance as clerks or bookkeepers, rather than live comfortably by the less exacting and more renumerative labor of their hands
 Difficult as the problem of preventing the distaste for manual labor (which distaste is so prevalent and so harmful among the ris- ing generation) is, the writer in the ReUieeo | does not shrink from attempting to solve it. In his opinion the reform needed, as first step is the substitution of certain technical and scientific studies for some of the htera- ry studies at present prescribed. Not that these literary studies are not in themselves good-quite the reverse; only, they must be deferred till little later in the educational GOuESo- bAAO ouOJOSeo OA1oU VIII III l lieu claim prominence are drawing (the rep resentation of real objects to scale as work men have them represented in the drawings from which they work) and the elements of the physical sciences so far as they can be illustrated by the common things of every day life. But this is only the first and easiest step in reform. It does not probe to it's depths the malady. The distaste for work on the part of the children the one hand and the incapacity and ignorance which result from the chaotic state of apprentice ship on the other hand alike call for more remedy. It is absolutely necessa- ry, in the first place, that the children should enter earlier upon manual labor, that they may gain some skill with their fingers ere they pass the perilous point at which their taste distaste for work may be acquired ;-I and, in the second, that their education, the training of their mental capacities, should continue till later period, when their minds are more matured and their faculties sharp ened by experience. The whole question of technical education lies, in the opinion of the author of the article in the IPe0iear, in the