The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-11-11
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER IL, 1899.
MANUAL TRAINING.


IN recent issue of the Manual
Training Magazine, Frank H. Hill,
secretary Of the Massachusetts board
of education, has written with penetra-
ton and good sense of 1.-THE manual
training idea Prof. Hill quotes with
approval the dictum Of Prof James of
Harvard university, that 1.-The most
colossal improvement which recent
years have seen in secondary education
lies in the introduction of the manual
training schools and says on his own
account:
1T is significant fact that our lit
erary schools, on the one hand, are Civ
ing increasing recognition to labora-
tory and kindred values, while our
technical schools, on the other hand,
insist.on their loyalty to literary values.
That is to say, they both agree that
manual training, in its essential idea,
is not matter of the hand only, but of
the head and heart as we'll"
Where authorities so high and so
well equipped for surveying the field
and commenting on what they see
agree in magnifying the mission of
manual training, the neophyte in mod
ern educational systems may well be
cautious in expressing an opinion. But
it may not be out of place in this con-
nection to recall to how many whims
and caprices the public school system
of America has fallen a victim during
the last fifteen years, and how these
whims and caprices, after fulfilling
their mission of suggestion or modifica-
ton or elimination, have slipped off into
the sea of oblivion, where they lie
buried in teachers journals and educa-
tional reviews innumerable. Now it is
new system of arithmetic teaching
that is invented as a panacea for the
evils Of the secondary school curricu-
lum; now it is geography that threat
ems to revolutionize pedagogy. Again,
the cut paper craze is to the fore, and
teachers Of drawing whose pupils only
know how to draw and paint pretty
well are severely criticised for their
lack of advancement. A few years ago
it was patent to whoever listened to
the Undergraduates that if the kinder
garten only lived up to its opportun-
tiles, the next generations of school
boys and girls, and through them the
world, would be regenerated? AS for
manual training, there has been moth
ing in the physical mental or moral
nature Of a child that it could not i'm
prove and beautify-according to the
rosy views of its supporters.
Yet today the public school pupil is
about the same that he was a decade
ago. After all these experiments that
have been applied so passionately to
the problem of educating the youth of
the country, that youth persists in re-
naming the same kind Of boy or girl it
was. The world has not yet been re-
generated-even the colleges and nor
NAL schools have rich strain of the
old Adam in them.
1t would be going too far to i'm
ply that because the new medicines
have not proved quite as eficacious as
their authors hoped, they are a fail
ure. Only it behooves the educator,
whether professional or amateur, or
just plain public, not to put all it's eggs
in one basket, not to pin its faith to
this or the other system. Manual
training is a useful discipline, but it
will not bring the kingdom of heaven
down upon earth, as some of it's Wor-
cester supporters seem TO think.
Neither will cooking or sewing. Moth
ing that can be introduced into the
curriculum can take the place, in the
competition of life, with character, and
that the public schools cannot or do not
teach When the public schools shall
succeed in educating the consciences,
training the wills and stimulating the
emotions Of their pupils, then. and not
till then, will they have accomplished
their real mission to the nation.