The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-07-15
MANUAL TRAINING.
Its Proposed Introduction i'm State
Normal and Truant Schools.

To the Editor Of the Indianapolis Journal:
That manual training Is to be introduced
into our State Normal School will be
surprise to most people and a profound re-
greet to all who have carefully and impair
TALLY studied the question. 1t means, if it
means anything, that 1t is TO become a
part of the system Of our free schools and
is to form part of the instruction given
in them, as arithmetic is, and, of course,
all the necessary appliances for teaching it
are 10 be provided, as bIackboards and
crayons are and that all the pupils, male
and female, are to be eligible to it. Only
think of the schools in country districts
and small towns where girls are taught to
wash dishes and to make cakes and pies at
home and where the boys have their hands
trained under parental instruction in the
thousand ways a well-regulated home finds
for boys, having to provide tools for the
boys to put in their spare time with, by
working in wood or metal, making nothing
OF any value, and with material for
fancy cooking! We may come to that in a
half-century or so, but it seems extremely
preposterous just now to the average man
or woman of to-day. Now, 1 mean no dis
arrangement of manual training as a luxury
for those who have time to indulge i'm it
and who have the money necessary to
maintain IL, but as a matter of general or
special utility there is absolutely nothing in
II, except to the very few who expect to go
to a technical school with a purpose of
following one of the very few vocations in
which technology cuts a figure. There are
in city like Indianapolis a few score bows
of genius who have time, after getting the
prescribed lessons of the school, to devote
TO manual training. and IT is TO their credit
that they would rather be handling tools,
though making nothing, than to be running
in the streets, doing nothing, and there are
score or more talented girls who would
rather take lessons in fancy cooking and
dlShWaShing under mothers instruction
in kitchen, but who would scorn to take
lessons in dreSsmaking or typewriting or
any vulgar act by which a living can be
made, for 1t must be forever remembered
that no trades are taught in manual train
ing schools. to boys or girls, nor anything
that will help them make a living. The
boy who graduates in the manual training
SchOoI has no precedence over any other
boy If he wants to become an apprentice
to some trade, and the girl who must MAKE
her living at typewriting or selling goods
has to begin just where unframed girls be
gin, and all she has learned in culinary
work counts not half as much in her own
Kitchen if she ever has one, as the whole
some instructions of a sensible mother
would count. AS a luxury, however, to
those who can afford the time it ranks
high-really higher, in my opinion, than
golf or tennis or even than football. Ii is
somewhat expensive to the city, but we
/ can afford it, and, as it is a local tax, no
outsider has any right to put in his say.
But, when it comes TO equipping the State
! Normal with the necessary appliances for
I teaching teachers how to teach it in cOun-
/ try and village schools. | imagine some tax
| payers will kick, but the most vigorous
| kicking will be when the manufactured
! schoolmarm demands an outfit for teaching
scientifically the training of the hands of
| country girls and boys who have had all
| they want of that kind of training at
| home.
But the latest and most absurd propo-
/ sitiOn concerning the fad is the proposition
/ to attach a manual training department 20
boys who try Judge Stubs every Friday
| are all truants, and now it is proposed tC
sufficiently increase the number of truant
officers 10 run all of them into the truant
schools and to make these schools attrac-
tive by incorporating manual training into
their curriculum, and the mayor is to draft
! a bill for the next Legislature to provide
for all this. Only think of trying to train
! the hands of the army of truants who in
! fest the city, Many of them would work
! IL they had chance but our State laws
/ in any kind of steady work until he is four.
teen years old, and then IL keeps him in q
species of puPilage until he is sixteen.
Butler and the like of them had better turr
! their efforts to the repeal of that fnhumar
law that will not allow bad boy or CIR
! time habits OF idlenesS are so formed tC
| probably be lifelong unless the parent ha:
| some kind of work the child can do, anC
| even these are restricted in the kind OF
| work the parents themselves may put then
! children to- Let me suggest, therefore
that bill repeating every restriction OF
child labor is the bill for the mayor to pre-
| pare for the next Legislature, and tha
| every humane man and woman should use
! every possible means to have it passed. i
| is responsible for more Juvenile depravity
than the saloon itself. Only think ninety
| eight per cent. of the boys at the Plain
field Reform School-the only kind of
| school that manual training is possible fol
| bad boys-are from towns and cities il
! which so few have work at home for the
! childreni Only a few weeks ago a widow
| took her thirteen-year-old boy to an estab
lishment in Indianapolis to find work fo
him. The boy wanted to work and til,
proprietor wanted just the kind of worl
! the boy could do. but the law forbids tn,
! employment of a boy young, and he Il
on the streets, with nothing to do. Is j
any wonder Judge Stubs is so tried will
bad boys? Give the boys chance to worl
and we will have no need of a manua
training department in the truant school.
L. L. SEE
,AIfn VUrlxr