The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-06-20
MANUAL LABOR SCHOOLS.
Progress oftheI Industrial System Shown
in Various Cities of the Country.
Development of the Emersonian Idea of Forty
Years Ago-What Can Be Done for Both
the Boys and Girls in Public Schools.
written for the indianapolis Journal.

Written for the Indianapolis Journal.
In the class room of one of the grammar
grades of large city public school the writer
witnessed an experience. Every pups
was set the task of threading a needle.
In a few minutes nearly one-half the child
rem sat perplexed, staring at the innovator
who had disturbed the serene course of the daily
lessons touch of modification in their faces
at their utter inability to meet so simple test.
A few of the more sensitive seemed on the point
bursting into tears.
The little people of the seventy different
schools and institutions. specimens of whose
skill in handicraft were displayed at the chill
dren's industrial exhibition in New York, during
the first week of April. would have scorned the
idea of such helplessness They had had train
ing of hand and eye as well as of brain, or rath
er of brain through hand and eye, as well as out
of books; they had learned to see and to do, and
their work excited interest so general and so
widespread that, if the exhibition is repeated,
according to present plans, early next winter, it
will need to be planned on far larger scale, and
will call out emphatic testimony to the progress
in indutrial education which this springs dis
pay udo SLttu uldt6Q every WHITE Wltuln IuS
reach of its influence and which public senti-
ment, the country over, Is encouraging.
Forty years ago Emerson supplied the text
from which the modern advocates Of manual
training are now preaching their most forcible
lessons. ''We are, said he, students of words;
we are shut up in schools, and colleges and
recitation rooms for ten fifteen years. and
come out at last with a bag Of wind, memory
of words, and do not know thing. We cannot
use our hands, or our legs or our eyes, or our
arms. In hundred high schools and colleges this
warfare against common sense still goes on" The
philosopher struck responsive chord In the heart
of the practical man. Men and women iterested
in education began to ask almost simultaneously
"Why is it that we are teaching the children
nothing but books9' They are binding their
eyes with porting over print and coming ont of
school no better to get living than on the day
they entered it, Naturally tho first thought of
the reformers was that children should actually
earn their bread and butter while famiarizing
themselves with the three Rs or at least should
put themselves on direct road to selfsupport,
and the growing repubcanism of the age flew to
opposite extreme from that hitherto dominant
in the public school system. An effort to work
at trades, or at least to teach trades thoroughly
in the schools, was the result
For pupils above fourteen, with the element
airy education already completed, the new idea
has borne better fruit even than had been hoped
for; and the multiplication of technical inSti-
tutes. industrial and agricultural colleges
which, within the past few years, have been
springing up all over the country, testihes to
the strong hold which the practical element of
education has taken upon practical age. The
New York trades schools are educating genera
ton of skilled mechanics; the Womans lnsti-
tute OF Technical Design 10 New York
is turning to practical bread-and- butter account
the feminine talent that has wasted itself
on fancy" work and idle "sketching;' the man
ual training schools Of st. Louis and Chicago
are giving lads practical training in forging and
machine shop work, the study of machinery and
the management of engines and boilers. 1t is
coming to be conceded that there is too much
training of mon to get living by their wits.
and not enough to enable them to earn livel-
hood by their hands, and there is even pros
pect that in time the old dignity OF the right
arm may reassert itself that the actual pro-
Queer, the maker if it be of the simplest arti-
cle shall stand upon higher level than the clerk
who simply transmits.
But for children under fourteen trade teach
ing has not been success and never can be, and
the most important movement at present IN the
line of industrial education although as yet moro
unprstent;os th: .:,ds already described, is the
effort to engraft nontechnical industrial train
ing upon the common school system not by way
of apprenticeship to any craft but simply to de-
velop the hand and eye. to secure accuracy of
perception, facility and dexterity of touch, aud
to give practical bias toward manual skill that
may make the child complete master of itself,
and that will undoubtedly prove of the utmost
use in any branch of industry to be afterward
adopted. Sewing. cutting and fitting, cooking
and household economy are the branches taught
to girls; carpentry and the simpler forms of
woodwork, as the basis of all manual arts, are
tasks of the lads, with sometimes brasswork and
the lighter forms of machineshop work. Indus
trial drawing and modelling belong in the new
curriculum for both sexes
TO so much as catalogue the cities and towns
which have already adopted some form Of man.
ual training AS an integral part of their public
school system is beyond the limits of this article.
In Philadelphia. which early induced to
move in the matter by the efforts of Charles
g. Leland, the sewing lessons begin with the
A, B, c., and are carried through every grade
of the public schools. In the Industrial
Art School and the Manual Training
School Of that city, the children of the pub
lie schools taught drawing, free-hand and
mechanical; designing and modelling, wood
carving and carpentry metal work and the
executed by little people under fourteen years
are so neat and exact that it is difficult to re
alize that it is only intelligent training. and not
eyes abnormaly true and hands unnaturally
steady, by which such results have been accom-
plished. In Boston sewing and drawing are
taught in all the public schools, and the children
are BEAUTIFULLY rested and refreshed when tired
of copy-books and grammar by lessons in cook
cry and carpentry in the North Bennett-Street
and Heminway schools and in the Latin school,
In Baltimore the Manual Training School, which
provides thorough instruction in drawing, car
pentry and machine-shop work is maintained as
integral part of the public-school system. In
Worcester and Gloucester. Mass, in Hoboken,
Jersey City and Montclair, N. j., in Moline and
Peru, H., in New Haven. Conn. and in James
town, N. Y, industrial work has been cordially
adopted as a regular part of the public school
course. The branches taught include, as rule,
industrial drawing. sewing and carpentry. James
town. whose manual training course is as care
fully graded as her arithmetic classes, teaches
cooking, cutting and fitting to girls, printing to
boys, typewriting and shorthand to the older
pupils of either sex. Clay modelling and casting
in plaster are introduced with success especially
in New Haven. So far from interfering with in
struction in other lines the new system where
ever introduced has SO thoroughly awakened the
interest of pupils and has proved such relief. to
the wearisome iteration of the school routine
that in addition to its direct benefits it has