The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1907-01-02

almost self-evident that Manual
training must by all ear be in
in the curriculum of every grade
of the elementary and secondary
schools. There is a tendency to much
discussion of the subject,
however. to be guarded against-to
the effect that ''The school should not
merely prepare for life. but should ac-
tually live life" The implication here
is that since life is maintained only by
productive labor the children in the
schools should produce: the schools
should be largely self-supporting:|
therefore, useful and productive labor
should be introduced into the curricu-
lum- manual training workshops
should turn out furniture, the school
garden should sell vegetables enough
to pay expenses, etc. This reasoning
is in error. The school is life. but it
is school life: it is to be spent in
learning the processes OF production
and the avenues leading to further
useful information concerning those
processes and in acquiring intelligent
control of the physical and mental
faculties of self. but not in actual pro-
! duction. which to be effective would
require so much time to develop skill
that there would be none left for en-
! larging the view and making broader
the range of possible future activities.
1t has Deer recognized by all who have
looked into the philosophy of manual
training as an essential part of the
school curriculum in a system of gen.
eral education that when once a man.
ual process is learned, it then ceases
to be educative and should not be
continually repeated. unless the end
aimed at is the acquiring of special
skill in that process to the exclusion
of others. Such continual repetition
it would be the function of the trade
school, to provide fOr-not the ordina-
ry school for general education. Man.
ual training, however. will always be
helpful as a foundation for manual
work in trades when such is afterwards
taken up as a means of livelihood. 1t
will also help in forming the esthetic
Judgment or art sense. and 1t will also
necessarily involve in a helpful way
the actual production of a few things,
crudely wrought by unskilled hands.
but such production will not have been
permitted to become the slave to a
false economy, but rather the free
agent of instruction.
But although the standard curricu-
lum for general education should
maintain an wen tenor of purely edu-
cational tone, providing no manual
work more technical in character than
this we have described as "Manual
training" yet there are undoubtedly
certain circumstances of time, place
and condition which create the Occa'
siOnal necessity for special school.
that do not conform to these CONVEX
tiOnal standards. If there be per
ceived, for example, an immediate
and pressing need for the development
of agricultural or mechanical indus
tries in any given section or country
!. or if a devastating war have suddenl.
freed an enslaved race and knocked
out the industrial underpinning of
, dominant race, leaving the one rae
in the helplessness of unguided ignO
( rance and the other in the helplessnes
!, of unaccustomed modes of labor: or i
there be perceived great and undu
. retardation of progress because o
: friction between races, creeds, nation
{ alities or language; or if there be al
{ almost unconquerable inertia of illit
, eracy-then, and in each such case o
, condition it will ever be the part Q
/ constructive craftsmanship to pro
: vide, in addition to the regular OF
5 ~ganization, various special school
. adapted to meet the peculiar need
and circumstances of the time. place
5 population, race, color or other cor
: dition. In such manner was fOunde
e the great system of Technical hig
e schools trade schools) of Germany
o which served to repair the incalculs
S BILE economic wastes of the Napoleoni
i wars. In such manner have the var
It Gus States of our Union built up the
splendid systems of normal school,
It to meet the imperative demand IL
teachers to take charge of the NJ
TONS children in the common schOo