St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-11-13
MANUAL TRAINING,

Having been an earnest advocate of in
dustrial education i'll connection with our
public school system, the GLOBE naturally
feels gratifed that the experiment made by
Philadelphia in this matter has proved
such decided success. Philadelphia is the
second largest city in the Union and was
the first to try the experiment of manual
training in connection with its public
schools. In other cities where manual
schools have been established they have been
maintained by private enterprise. Their
adoption in Philadelphia seems to have
given fresh impulse to industrial educa-
ton all over the country. Boston is
pleased with the plan and is commence
ing to experiment in small way.
Chicago, st. Louis and other cities
are now agitating the matter, and the prob
abilities are that in a very short time man.
ual training will be an important branch of
our public schools. The GLOBE is particu-
larly gratifed to find that, in it's discussion
of this subject, that level-headed news
paper, the Chicago Tribune, so fully con-
ours with, and Endorses the views hereto
fore presented by us upon this subject. The
Tribune says: 1T is time that some atten-
ton should be given to the hand as we'll as
to the head, and that children should be
taught that it is just as honorable to live by
work as by their wits. The radical fault of
our public system of education, and indeed
of our whole social system, is that the first
is based upon mere book knowledge and
excludes the idea of manual labor, and that
the second sympathizes with it. 1t presup-
poses that every boy is going to make
his living outside of productive in
dustry by mental plotting and scheming or
by mere mechanical routine behind the
desk or counter. The Misunderstanding sys-
tenn will change all this. Its first result
will be to make labor respectable; and as
soon as that is accomplished every depart
ment of work in the arts and sciences, as
we'll as the various agricultural, mining,
engineering and constructive branches of
labor. will be filled with busy workers and
the burdens of life will be correspondingly
decreased. No one has yet seriously con-
sidered how much of the misery, poverty
and crime of this country grows out of this
almost universal tendency to live upon
ones wits, which is the immediate out
growth of our present system of public
school, seminary, academy and university
education. Not one of these institutions
comprehensively teaches boy how to work
with his hands or even contemplates such a
possibility.
''As the result of such one-sided system,
which fails to put hand and head together,
bows are habituated to look down upon
manual labor as something disgraceful, and
fly from the pillow. the lathe, the anvil and
enginery of all descriptions as if they were
instruments of torture. They throng into
stores as clerks. and into business offices as
accountants. They hang around bucket
shops and pool-rOoms, whence the descent
to the saloon and gambling house is both
easy and sure. They haunt boards of trade
and stock exchanges. where they are
tempted into speculation by the success of
a few big operators. They swarm into pro-
fessions already overcrowded without any
special fitness for them. and the
result is multitude of poor doctors,
lawyers, architects and clergymen.
They are influenced in this not
alone by the public school training, but by
the home training-for there are few moth
ers who look upon handwork as res pect-
able either for their boys or their girls. Out
of thousand thus trying to live by their
wits handful succeed. and the story of the
rest is told in the appalling list of thefts,
embellishments and forgeries in the great