The Alaska sourdough., 1911-10-03
WHY MANUAL TRAININGg

Douglas is thousand miles from the educational centers and it should occasion no surprise if they fail to keep abreast f.3the improvements in the modern system of education. The wonder is that so many people do ap- preciate the efforts that the Douglas school board and the Douglas teachers are making to give. the Douglas child the very best which modern education affords.
 Methods of education, like methods of agriculture, like methods of every industry, are constantly improving.
 Public education has come to mean something more than the three r's. The methods of education today are as much better than the educational me- thods of yesterday, as the electric light of today is better than the rush light of hundred years ago.
 None of the inovations which have taken place in the schools in the last quarter of century, are so popular where they are understood, as the man ual training. And there is of course, a reason for it.
 It is not often that we stop to real ize the tremendous change in human life, and therefore the tremendous change that has been wrought in the l. L ,,f the machine. To our grandsires, the human hand was thousand times more important in the life of the in dividual than it is today. In the old lays the average American "cut wood, made rails and posts, built stone walls, furniture and farm utensils, involving carpentery, blacksmithing and paint ing, cared for bees, poultry, sheep, cattle and horses, could break colts and steers, milk, shear sheep and butcher, could blow, plant, cultivate and har vest vegetables; SOW, now, reap, thresh and winnow grain; could read the sky, tell birds, wild animals, insects and common plants at sight; could plant, prune and graft trees; make maple syrup; make vinegar, cure hams and bacon; fish trap and hunt successful ly; make shoes, harness and simple tools, repair anything, and make a tell ing speech at the town meetings
 The individual man was far more in teresting then than he is now. Because he needed them, every faculty was in creased to the utmost, now, though dis use, the individual is losing more and more of his efficiency.
 The modern man, as Henderson says, Ehas a voice which is bit of squeeqy and harsh, and boasts no great carry ing power, but then he has the long distance telephone, and can call prices from New York to Chicago. The mod @ ern man is rather near sighted and as Jigmatic, and may fail to recognize ] his best friend across the street, but then he can look at the moon through his great telescope, and can see things that Ptolemy- great astronomer in his day-never thought of. Our modern man may be little dull of hearing and rather hard to talk to-, but with a microphone he can hear fly walk. He as a trife short winded and finds run ming fatal, but the elevated shoots him over the city and the limited over the country. All along the line of human drift we find substitution of some mez chanical exellence. He has lost his wholesome appetite, but gained French cook He denies himself fresh air and pure water, but he has the san- itarium and the doctor. Stated in this bald fashion the illusion is evident.''
 The substitutes are poor trink to be offered in exchange for human pow ar and eyca1lanca