Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-06-16
INDUSTRIAL DRAWING.

Industrial education is making rapid
progress at the East and in Europe. Train
ing and technical schools are multiplying
and the pupils are turning out to be fair
workmen, and well adapted to enter upon
salaried brief apprenticeship. Now the
very foundation of good mechanical edu-
cation, the one great and essential helper
to 1t, the necessary prerequisite to the
highest success and the greatest ease and
rapidity of advancement, is some instruc-
tion in mechanical drawing, and the more
the better. The lad, to be well-itted for
any handicraft, should be taught the fund
amental principles of industrial drawing
first. He need have no art taste, no great
dexterity of hand, no high appreciation of
the beautiful effects of free-hand drawing,
in order to use draughting instruments,
and lay out the plan of machine or super
structure. OF course, very severe schooling
in mathematical branches is desirable, and
something of study in geometry should
preesde industrial drawing. But this is
not absolutely necessary, though vastly
beneficial and time-saving, and contribut-
ing TO higher achievements Industrial
drawing, therefore, is a preface scarcely to
be omitted from an industrial education.
In this city an experiment has been made
in this direction, and that it has been
success, though greatly DISTRACTED by diff
culties is undeniable by those who have
watched the progress of the class. 1t has
been demonstrated that lads who have had
no previous training in this direction
whatever. can, inside of eight months, with
five evening lessons in each of about thirty
weeks, be brought TO reasonable proficiency
in the application of the fundamental
principles OF the study. They can be
taught something in advance of this, in
deed, and get glimpse of architectural
drawing. Now, this is much to ac-
oomplish. Ii argues nothing that
the class has been small The size of it in
no way involved the experiment When
the objects and possibilities of the study
are better understood there will be no diff
Guilty about class Numbers 1t is unfortu-
nate that the lessons must be given at
night, 3or the study IS Of such high i'm
portance that we believe it should supplant,
or at least have preference over free-hand
drawing in the grammar grades. If intro
duced into she last year of the grammar
course, it would result in large classes later
on specially formed for teaching it Il is
practical, useful to every man and woman
no matter what the occupation adopted,
and is the one study to which every pupil
may be proftably introduced. 1t qualities
the youth in greater or less degree to lay
out any simple pieceef machinery in draw
ing detail, to plan a structure, to reproduce
plats and plans and maps, 10 understand the
principles of shading and shadows, in short
to plat any design needed in any trade or
business. The matter Of proficiency must,
of course, depend upon theextent to which
the study is pursued, and the amount of
practice INDUCED in. II is study highly
esteemed in the most advanced educational
systems, and that has broad and indis-
putably practical side. Thequestion of its
abandonment after the brief experiment
with the special class referred to, or of its |