The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1884-01-05

--Ats UuAlty Tor Oumx Arths1Ah-AcssSns
10 be Learned fron English schools Of
Design.
Mr.. Edwin P. Seaver, superintendent of the
Boston public schools, has prepared an extend
ed argument in favor of the introduction OF
manual training in the school system. The
problem, he says, is this: "How shall right
and adequate training be provided tor the great
number of youth who are to find employment
In Industrial pursuits, il they find it anywhereY
An education leading as naturally to the
skilled handcrafts as some forms OF our pres
ent education lead to mercantile and profess
sional pursuits ia what thoughtful minds are
beginning to regard as a necessity growing out
OF our present social conditions. Ii this be 80,
work with tools in q workshop will become an
element in all education, not only in the edu-
cation given as charity to the poor, or as disci-
pllne to the truant, but also in the general edu-
cation given to all. The want of IL Is every
year more and moro felt
1t has been said that our present education
OF the schools, SO far from meeting this want,
tends rather to unfit cur youth for any form Of
manual labor by creating distasts for it, and
fostering the notion that employment in
store or in an Office is somehow more respecta-
be. 1t is indeed probable that other causes
have helped to produce this effect, as mistaken
deslreS In the parental mind, wrong public
sentiment working on the minds OF the young,
or even the bare absence of the right means
and opportunities for industrial education.
The last seems to me to be the most important.
However this may be, the fact is familiar
enough that multitudes of our boys are grow
ing up to manhood untitled for or disinclined
to industrial pursuits The same unpleasant
fact seems to be troublesome in England
There was good deal of discussion about is
last summer in the English newspapers. One
OF them the Daily Telegrph, opened its col
umns TO parents and others who had anything
to say on that perpetual slbject-the difficulty
OF providing for the boys. The Boston Ad-
vertiser's London correspondent writes OF these
utterances as follows:
The experiences Of anxious parents, as revealed
in the columns of the Telegraph iorm quite melan-
choly reading. These parents one and all declare
that their sons have been brought up ignorant of
any trade on the assumption taat they were going
to get their living by some gelteel occupation. The
consequence is that wherever any vacancy arises
in "genteel' calling tbsre are hundreds OF appH-
eants equally competent to MI 1t, Thus one cor:
splendid salary ESQ (s15Ol per annum being vacant,
there were over cl00 applicants And the best
positions of this kind in the large towns are filed,
not by young EngHshmen, but by young Germans,
who come over in swarms every year, who are bet
ter educated than our young men, and who will
work longer hours for smaller pay. The condition,
indeed is serious enough, for London is already
full of idle youn men, who have nothing to do, and
who often go fast "to the bad" The correspon-
ies Whist they imagine to be like it is not easy 10
say; for they seem to think that sniploads OF
English youth can be once landed colonial soil,
some mysterious path to fortune will be opened to
them. This superstition keeps firm hold on the
English middle classes, although the colonial au-
thorties inform them from time to time that their
sons are not wanted in these young countries.
Farmers and skilled mechanics can make their way
in Canada and Australia but the average young
Englishman is drug il the market. unless he can
Immediately turn his hand to some menial occupa-
don Respectable English families do not seem to
mind it if their are cleaning boots sweeping
floors in Australia, but would regard with horror
any proposal that these young gentlemen should
engage in like occupations at home. And yet the
critics very truly tell them that the only solution of
the difficulty is that young of the middle class
IS should learn mechanical trades, and be ready to
follow manual occupations in England. The Spec
tator says that young men of the middle classes
will not like an artisans life, and that is true
enough but if they remain in England what else is
open to them?
In this country Horace Greeley's advice was,
$50 West, young man." but that advice fails
to cure the difficulty here, just as emigration
10 the colonies fails to cure it in England. The
new countries mest assed, not clerks and
scholars, but skilled workhcsp. But how shall |
we bring it about that many Of our boys shall
learn handicraft? Where are the opportuni-
ties to be found? If you have ever ried it,
you know how difficult it is to find place in u I
modern workshop or factory where trade can
be thoroughly learned. There has been a |
great change in our ways OF living and doing |
work. Two generations ago, boys were less in |
school and more in the workshop and on the |
farm than are the boys of to-day. And very |
valuable part of their training the farm and |
the workshop gave them. The skill of eye and |
hand, the ready knsck at doing things, the |
habit of finding way through all practical |
iificulties-in word, the Yankee ingenuity |
which we boast of as trait of our character as |
people-come5 from Just such training as |
his. Now take this all away, as we do in |
modern city life, and keep the boy at his |
cooks 40 weeks year till he is 16 or is years 1
Did, and what else have you fitted him for but |
10 be a clerk in a store or student in col |
ege? Education through apprenticeship to |
;rsdes has disappeared, and the time has |
been filled up with larger amounts of school |
book instruction, and the consequence is that, |
through lack OF opportunity, the native apti- /
ude of many boys for handicrsft is quite /
gnored. There doubtless is in our city boys 1
IN ample fund OF latent mechanical Ingenuity, |
which only awaits proper treatment to bring /
: out and lead its possessors to the right oc-
,upations for using it.
But, supposing the desirabeness of manual
raining TO be admitted on general grounds of |
Iocial utility, how are you going to join things
10 dissimilsF as shop-vork and ordinary school |
york? This is not now an easy question to |
answer to the full satisfaction of the conserva- |
i've sceptic. There is as yet in this country |
10 large fund of accumulated experience to /
appeal to. And, however sure we may feel in |
,ur theoretical conclusions or in our deduc- |
ions from experience abroad, we cannot hope |
10 convince the multitude of doubters without |
,ut amongst ourselves. This is why such ex- |
,eriments as the Industrial Home is making, |
ire interesting and valuable. This is why the |
chool committee Of Boston has already allow |
ID some experiments on small scale, and has |
ately proposed substantially to repeat the |
Dwight school experiment on a larger scale, |
md at the public expense. And, finally this |
s why the success of such schools as the school |
If mechanic arts in Boston, and the manual |
raining school in st. Louis, is so welcome. |
These schools are doing something toward |
Meeting great want in the community bat |
hey will not meet the whole want, because |
hey are not free Schools-there is very con- |
siderable fee changed for tuition. Unless |
can be done to make this kind of |
instruction free to all, the greater part of the
5ween staying in school without it, or leaving |
school permanently to seek such heller, skelter
as modern shops and factories af.
lord. My hope is thai public free school of
mechanical arts may be established in Boston.
The place for it in our system is side by side |
with the high school. This can be done as
soon as the taxpayers and their representatives
at City Hall see the wisdom of it.
But, leaving the ground Of utility, We may
may take higher ground and advocate manual |
training as essential to the right and full de- |
velopment of the human mind, and therefore |
no less beneficial to those who are not going
to become artisans than to those who are.
That father was wise, whose son, having been
admitted with honors to college, was directed
to postpone the commencement of his college
studies to take years tuition in the school
of mechanic arts The young man will there
bring into activity powers of mind which have
lain dormant during the time he has been alb
sorbel in Latin, Greek, and pure mathematics.
For q while he will be occupied with things,
not with words; with realities, not with alb
stractions; he will not be acting, shaping, Gre
ating, not passively absorbing and contempla-
ting. Hand and eye will engage in the artists
work, which Lord Bacon describes as 'con-
forming the outward show of things to the de-
sires of the mind Thus his whole education
will be broader, faller, and richer than it
would be were he to pass at once from the Lat
in school to the college. Let it not be supposed
that the manual training proposed as part of
general education consists in learning this
trade or that trade, nor yet in learning the
fragmentary beginning of dozen trades; but
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