The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1885-12-24
A MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL.

A MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
A public school system is inadequate,
inefficient and incomplete without man
ual training school connected with its or
ganization.
The public schools of this country are
meant to subserve the uses of the poorer
classes, in order that their children should
be educated and elevated above the con-
dition of their parents.
Every working man has this ambition
way down in the most secret and sacred
ambitions of his heart, and to forward
that end he bends the strongest energies
and practices the most rigid economy
1t is natural and praiseworthy ambition
and ought to be fostered by laborers and
encouraged by humanitarians.
An ordinary laborer, mere ''hewer of
wood and drawer of water" looks about
AMI he sees no opportunity by reason of
the limitation and exclusiveness of trades
unions, to even get his son bound out"
to mechanic in order that the son may
|
step on the rung of the ladder above him.
He knows that the policy of trades I'M
| ions are to limit workmen and to cut off
as many as possible from learning trades,
SO that there may be as few to control the
market of work as possible, under an or
gained prohibitory union, and he be-
| comes careless about the education of
his child, knowing what mountains
of difficulty stand between him
and intellectual success. He feels that
unless his son is an extraordinary genius,
he cannot stem the tide of opposition he
will meet, by young men upheld and sup
ported by their fathers in the same pro-
fession.
Even skilled artizans, who belong to
these prohibitory trades unions, do not
have an opportunity to give their sons the
same mechanical education as they them
selves bad 1efeFe'f6a Line was So strictly richly
What has been the result?
Simply this, that workingmen and me-
chanics have been so entirely and so COM
pletely discouraged in placing their sons
on higher rung of the ladder of occupa-
ton and society, that they have permitted
them, with all their splendid energy and
capacity, to run to waste, drones in the
community.
They have failed to find way to ele-
vate them above themselves and dissatis-
fed with their own work, they have left
them to be idlers on our street corners
and the material from which our jails
and penitentiaries are filed. For who
ever neglects to fit his son for some &C
tive duty in life by which he can support
himself and those dependent upon
him, whether he be the unlettered
day laborer or the dweller in the brown
stone front. Whoever he may be, that
father is fitting his son to join the Ish
maels of society and law, and if that father
be likely to see that sons degradation.
A class of our people, the working men
Of the country, the men who toll with
hand and brain, are dependent upon the
public school system to aid them in eleva-
ting their children in the 81 i, moral and
intellectual scale of the world.
AS we have intimated these men
are debarred from apprenticeship by the
trades union, and they must find the rem
edy in our public school.
Many of our educators think that a
book education is enough. 1t is, perhaps,
enough for an ambitious boy, but all
educators will recognize the fact that many
boys who attend the public schools will not
study, and lag way behind in their
classes.
A few very thoughtful men have had
the kindness to pay some attention to this
class of boys who will not study and
they have found that nine out of ten of
them are geniuses, with their minds
fixed upon some mechanical pursuit, and
these thoughtful men have made examples
of these boys who would not study and
found them to be mechanics with the
highest gifts. whossonly needed an oppor-
tunity to develop that genius and become
eminently useful to the world.
The only way to give these boys the op-
portunity they desire, is to organize in
every city, in connection with the public
schools. manual training school with all
the practical and theoretical mechanical
departments thoroughly taught.
We suggest this to our very capable
board of public instruction and sincerely
hope to see some good come out of it.
CHOLERA has appeared at Venice. It is
not through with Europe yet.