The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1905-04-05
VALUE Of MANUAL TRAIMInG
IN The PUBLIC SCHOOLS
How the knowledge 10 Impaired in Diff
ferent Grades and the Benefits
That Result.

The world is full of people who do not
| know how to take care of themselves.
Many of them are willing to be useful,
but find themselves crippled by some
defect in their early education.
There is a large class of children in
the schools of the land today who have
little interest in school exercises be-
cause they do not appeal to them at
that stage of development. They are
the ones who begin school late in the
fall and drop out with the first dawn of
spring. They are never well in touch
with the school and serve as a bad ex-
ample and a source of pernicious inhu
ences on those who are more regular in
attendance; and yet when they are Civ
en- something to do with their hands,
some plan to execute that the mind has
blocked out, some useful article to make
that calls for intelligent and accurate do
ing, they suddenly wake up and are
billiards no more and become the most
regular and faithful students in school
The spirit and interest of the kinder
garten should be carried up into the
grammar grades and thus furnish OPP
portunity and motive for these pupils
They are passing the critical stage of
life. The school shop and kitchen have
tided many a boy and girl over this
most important period of life, have set
tied their feelings of unrest, have taught
them the true view of life, its opportun-
tiles and the means of preparation.
Best of all, this industrial training
has trained in accuracy, honesty and
persistence. and has made men and wo-
men of character who otherwise would
never have been useful members of So
phatic testimony of parents and of
adults who have grown up under the
benefits of industrial work in the schools.
1t does not take a philosopher to see
the relation that interest in school has
to truancy, vagrancy, idleness and
crime.
Manual training will not merely re-
duce these evils, but will help to re-
veal the boy to himself and teach him.
his parents and teachers, what he is
best fitted for in life, and any influence
that will enable one to find his place in
life should be encouraged. Home making
and home keeping will be made more in
tclligcnt and easier. A new dignity will
be given to labor by showing the neces-
sity for cultivated brain back of the
skilful hand. Labor will be more eff
fective in making and securing its de-
mands. become first in its claims and
more intelligent in its methods,
Industrial education, when fully in
stalled in schools, provides knife work
for children of the fourth. fifth and
sixth grades, sewing for the same grades
and for the seventh and eighth. Not on
~ are the girls taught the different
kinds of stitches in making garments
and useful articles, but they learn the
value of different material. and economy.
Cooking and other forms of domestic
science and economy are taught the
girls of the seventh, eighth and ninth
grades. This means close touch with
the sciences of philosophy, chemistry
and physics, besides giving the girls
that mastery of home duties and re-
sponsibilites that means much for the
happiness of the home and welfare of
society.
grades are studying domestic science
the boys are put to work in the car
penter and blacksmith shops and draft
ing room, where they learn the appli-
cation of many principles that their les
sons have stated, and where they gain
a broader view of education and their
place in life.
One afternoon a week is usually de-
voted to this line of work and all is
dovetailed into the other regular stud
les, so as to give intent and meaning to
the whole. While industrial training in
the schools is not cure for all evils,
reason and experience have shown it
to be powerful factor in well rounded
education, and a strong force in the
moral training of the youth. For these
reasons it ought to be introduced into
the school system of the city.
w. +. F. SEILECK, Superintendent.