The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1910-04-12
THE TRAINING
OF CHILDREN
[ooNT1NUED FROM FIRST PAGE. |

changed from the days when vaca
tions we're three times as long as now
and when every boy and girl served q
splendid apprenticeship in assisting
father and mother in the multitude Of
tasks that constituted the days work
before steam had come to displace
muscle. Trees we're TO be chopped
down, lumber prepared, the house and
barns built, fences to be kept up, the
ground titled, the harveSts gathered,
the animals to be erred for and tools
to be made and repaired. Initiative
and responsibility we're developed in a
hundred directions. Truly those were
incompatible days of manual training
and of nature study.
Swiftly has come sweeping change,
Machinery has superseded muscle
The handicraftS have been banished
from the home. From farm and vii
lage our people have followed them to
the great factories in crowded cities,
until ninety out of one hundred in
Massachusetts, and ninety-fye out OF
one hundred in Rhode Island, have
city homes.
To train our children in manual en-
ployment as their parents were trained,
we are introducing into the school the
handwork banished from the home.
Through constructive work in draw
ing, paper cutting and folding, weav-
ing, basketry, knife and benchwor.I,
we are again training hand and eye to
quicknesS and accuracy and sure CO.
operation with each other that are the
bases alike of the skill of the mechanic
and the success of the surgeon,
Hand work and nature study have
come to have a recognized value and
place in elementary education. They
make thought travel a multitude of
new and otherwise untrodden paths !;
they train hand and eye to quick and
sure cooperation they assist in dis
covering tastes and aptitudes that
may lead into life work.
The three r IS all the while hold first
place and receive first emphasis, for
they are the necessary tools with
which to master other subjects.
Education is administered to-day in
more democratic spirit. To too large
an extent the school has spent its
best energies on children who come
from intellectual homes and who love
the study of books. For them the
course of study has been planned.
Other children OF less intellectual
tastes must follow the course, or drop
out; and that they have been ready TO
drop out, school records abundantly
show. Out of one hundred who begin
school, about one,half have left at the
end Of the sixth year, while eight of
the one hundred persist to finish the
high school course. What is the con-
aec6ion, one wonders, between this
fact and the fact that ninety-six per
cent. of our breadwinnerS are engaged
in industrial and commercial work,
while four per cent. are ia the pro-
LESSONS and in public life The ma
jority of children at fourteen years OF
age are hungry and thirsty for the
training that will enable them to earn
living. A steady diet of book learn
ing becomes uninviting, even nauSeat-
ing. They burn to use their hands, to
do something. So, partly educated,
unframed, they go out too often to
give inefficient service in poorly paid
positions, and to contribute weakness
rather than strength to the common
wealth. For poverty is a prolific mo-
Their Of vice and crime. Whereas an
intelligent and prosperous working
class is chief source of national
strength and greatness. That these
children of labor may be SO instructed
in school that they will be more in
telligent and more Skillful in their
chosen vocation, is great problem to
which education is now bending its
energies.
Commercial education is already
niUnn In n N fhn hinh
school. instruction in trades and in
housekeeping arts is vocational train
ing that is sure to find place in our
tion, the great captains of industry
and practical men in the tradeS-unions
all demand it. Says Professor Hanus,
of Harvard 1.-THE great masses of
our population must go to work when
they leave the grammar school. What
shall we do to equip them for the re-
SponSibilitieS fife, so that when they
enter upon their life careers, they may
have some promise of a progressive
usefulness and its accompaniment, a
steady job and an increasing wage
based on increasing efficiency? We
want TO help our pupils not only to be
wise and good, but to be wise to some
purpose, TO be good for something. My
point is, therefore, that at the upper
end of the grammar school we must
provide proper vocational training
adapted to the station in life which
these people must till."
The National Association of Manu-
facturerS in 1908 at New York city
adopted report which concludes g 1t
is genuine practical industrial educa-
ton that we stand for"
Organized Dor is equally out
spoken in favor of Industrial educa-
tion in the schools, and trades-unlon
officials are filling places as teachers.
Organized labor" says the presi-
dent OF the United Textile Workers of
America, realizes just as keenly as
anybody else that this movement in
the interest of industrial education is
not fad, but stern reality and an
absolute necessity. If this country is
to preserve and maintain it's industrial
supremacy. men and women in all
walks OF life, irrespective of their sta
tion, must join hands in one united
effort"
We have long recognized the value
of hand work and trade instruction
for the bad boys we send to reform
school. We are in rapidly increasing
number OF public schools giving SINH
lar instruction to the good boys who
| remain in our homes.
Medical inspection of school chill
dren is now recognized by law in New
Jersey. We have come to realize how
close is the relation, often times OBJ.
scure, between physical disability and
mental stupidity and moral perver.
sion, The number of children suffer