Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-04
THE MANUAL TRAINING QUESTION
AGAIN,

Professor w T. Harris, in the Foram
for February, in the course Of an educa-
tional article, discusses the subject of
manual training in the public schools,
taking view to which the RECORD
UNION has aherded ever since the debate
became general-that is, that while man
ual training among children is to be en-
Outraged, it will, if introduced into the
public schools, make such displacement of
essential studies that the system of intel
lectual training will be seriously impaired.
The theory is that children must be
taught in the schools to earn their own
living-a premise we do not concede to be
well laid that to fit them for that end is
therefore an essential part of all proper
educational systems that the culture of
character which comes from the labor of
the hands is the best. To this Professor
Harris replies;
Manual training at school is not devoted TO
productive industry, because its interests is not
TO supply the market of the world. The great
moral culture that comes from the labor that
earns ones daily bread is not derived from the
muscular exercise of the hands and body, nor
from the mental activity that directs the mus
cleS, bat rather from the subordination of ones
self for the good of Others the earnest bending
OF all ones powers to the task of producing
something for the market of the world, so as to
share in the production OF ones fellows by the
process of exchange. To earn ones living has
therefore, a special educational value of its
own. But manual training is not of this char
acter. Hence the industry over books and
science, which is genuine Industry, is superior
in character training. To train all pupils for
the wood and metal industries is to overcrowd
those occupations, In the twenty-five indus
tries relating to woodwork, and in the twenty
two relating to the metals, there were engaged,
according to our last census, IN the aggregate
less than three in one hundred of the popula-
ton, or counting in the families about per
cent, or one in thirteen OF the entire populs-
ton. The number is not likely TO increase, be-
cause the invention of machinery continually
increases the production of each laborer.
These are forcible reasons. But that
which appears to us stronger still is the OBJ
lection raised years ago by this Journal,
that as the great mass of pupils in the pub
lie schools do not go beyond the grammar
grades, but are put to work by their
parents, therefore the time between the
lower primary and first grade of the gram
mar school is not one hour too long in
which to implant substantial truths in the
mind Of the child, absolutely essential to
his intellectual capacity to earn his liyeli-
hood. Indeed, with the multiplicity of
studies our modern courses provide, the
grammar graduate is but lightly equipped
in mathematics, scarcely at all in English
composition, can have but mere smatter-
ing and vague idea of natural philosophy,
very little physiology, physical geography
and the history of his own country, and
has none at all of the simplest and most
necessary truths of chemistry. Now, if in
the grammar grades we introduce the use
of tools, and attempt some instruction in
the mechanic arts, we must rob the child
of needed instruction in other lines that
Is essential TO successful work in any
calling. Moreover, there is wide dis
tinction between manual training schools
and trade schools. The former do not pre-
tend to outfit the pupil with practical
knowledge of trade, while the latter, by
finishing, does As the manual training
school is therefore more of the disciplinary
order than otherwise, it ought to be sep
arate and distinct branch of education.
If it isstill insisted that the pupil ought
to have manual training in the years Of
ordinary school life, to spare him from
some of the toll Of apprenticeship then it