The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-04-14
TWELVE PAGES.
MANUAL TRAINING.

twelve years-in the life of the lad who
takes full course in the city graded schools
the divorce between hand and mind is MAIN
tanned. AT eighteen years of age 1t is
difficult to get youth who has done no con-
tinuous manual labor to engage in it, and
the divorce is continued. He becomes
clerk, bookkeeper a second-rate profess
sional man. This class of young men abound
in the larger cities. In school systems for
cities of over 900 inhabitants mechanic
art shops should be introduced, with OPP
honal courses of study, just as laboratories
are for the teaching of other arts and sciences,
physics and chemistry. Handicraft teaches
observation and accuracy as does botany
and zoology, and so is in the line of general
education in city high schools. Shops at
taohed to high schools, giving opportunity
for two lessons of two or three hours dura-
ton each week through four years. would
give ample time for shop instruction, and
would attract to such schools students who
now see no gain in high-school work unless
they have the college or teaching in view.
There is intellectual discipline in such work.
the pupil is gaining manual skill in accord
ance with a definite and progressive plan of
work in which principles and processes are
made prominent, and mental growth must
follow. 1t would not be necessary in making
this addition to the high-school work in this
city, for instance, to go to great expense or
disturb the present system. All that is re-
quired is a room, few sets of tools and a
competent instructor. The same is re-
quired to teach any other science rightly
drawing, physics or chemistry.
The constructive SYSTEM" teaching
the nature, theory and use of tools, the
principles of the trades, a knowledge of
materials and processes, the relation between
different kinds of mechanical work. their Sc
quence and dependence-all this can be car
red on by the laboratory methods now in
use. The moral and disciplinary value of
such work is great. Whatever cultivates care,
close observation, exactness patience and
method, must be a valuable training and
preparation for all studies and pursuits.
We may thus in the high schools of graded
systems bridge over in part the chasm of
physical inactivity, with all its accompani-
ments of mental and moral evil which
lies between the activities of childhood and
the demands for intelligently- directed
effort belonging to normal manhood.
Public interest is awakening in re gard to
manual education. The Commercial Club OF
Chicago has just raised by subscription
100000 for the founding of manual train
ing school for lads of high-school years. OF
the Chicago manual training school the
Tribune says;
"Its purpose is to make manual training
part of mental training, and to supplement
the purely literary culture of the fashionable
schools with the more practical, but not less
intellectual, instruction that teaches things.
1t is not to turn out apprentices but schol-
ars of nature Its instruction is practical,
but Its object is essentially intellectual. Its
theory is that our boys can be taught from
things much that will be as useful as that
which they are now learning from books. 1t
has become abundantly evident that the con-
servatsm of our academical pedagogues in
schools and colleges will resent to
the end the contagion of the new
mind and man is more interesting than the
growth, all over the civilized world, by the
side OF the gymnasia grammar-sChools, col
leges and universities, of these schools for
IT, new learning In Germany, France,
England and the United States it is in this
department of education that the real fer
ment of inspiration and progress is working.
1t does not seem TOO much to say that what
the Greek and Latin revelation was to the
students OF Europe when it first came to
them few centuries ago this intrusion of
science and art is destined to be in the men
tai culture of our day. This is the special
Characteristic of our era, and that it has not
long before this profoundly modified the
literary and scholastic system of our colleges
and universities is one of the most singular
instances in history of human persistence in
beaten tracks"
This is a matter in which the workingmen
OF the United States should take as much
interest as employers and capitalists.
The workingmen of Great Brit
ain have spent $150OO0O00 on
trades unions They have uprooted the
old apprentice system of manual education
and built nothing in its place. Mr.. Samuel
Morley, NJ. p, said lately, in a meeting
called in London TO discuss the progress and
methods of technical education in England,
that the competition of hands was becon-
ing competition of intellects." He cited
Ease where, by means OF instruction received
in industrial art schools, two workmen were
enabled to earn guinea day instead of
guinea a week. The report for 1880 of the
Commissioner of Education gives interest
ing details of what is doing in the United
States to train the hand with the mind and
eye. Massachusetts, has the Institute
Institute the Lawrence Scientific School