Public, society, and school libraries in the United

[Column 5: Building-0, owned; R, rented; F, furnished free. 6: Supported by-T, taxation;

R, reference;

States of 1,000 volumes and over in 1903—Continued.

C, corporation; D, donations. 7: F, free; S, subscription; Fr, free for reference. 8: C, circulating; B, both.]

CHAPTER XIX.

MANUAL, INDUSTRIAL, AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY PROF. CALVIN M. WOODWARD,

Director of the Manual Training School and Dean of the School of Engineering and Architecture, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

[Several pages of this paper, with the permission of the editor, are taken from the same author's article on ** Manual training" in the Encyclopedia Americana.]

MANUAL TRAINING.

This term, according to the best usage, signifies the systematic study of the theory and use of common tools, the nature of common materials, elementary and typical processes of construction, and the execution and reading of working drawings. The materials referred to are wood, metals, alloys, and plastic minerals; the drawing includes both free-hand and instrumental, with pen, pencil, and brush.

Some writers have endeavored to extend the meaning to cover every educational feature in which the hand is used and all materials which can be brought into the schoolroom. This servility to mere etymology is unnecessary and unwise. A definition always involves limits, and when all limits are removed there is no definition. The systematic study of tools, processes, and materials is the essential feature of manual training. Hence the incidental use of tools without system for some ulterior object is not manual training. There is, of course, a suggestion of manual training when the teacher shows a child how to handle a pitchfork; when a woodman teaches a novice how to swing an ax in cutting down a tree; when a foreman shows a green hand how to head a pin. Yet such cases are usually without system and continuity, and accordingly are excluded from the content of manual training. One does not give a boy manual training by turning him loose in a shop any more than he gives a literary education to a boy who can not read by locking him in a library. It follows that the manipulations of the kindergarten, the "busy work of the primary grades on the one hand, and the science laboratory and the commercial workshop on the other, are beyond the pale of manual training.

The definition given at the Leginning of this article had regard solely to the objective side. It did not state at all the effect upon the pupil, nor was the supreme purpose of manual training even hinted at. In point of fact, manual training proves to be a far better thing than was expected when the name was first used and when the first manual training school was opened, and the present purpose and object of manual training are stated so broadly and philosophically that the statement published for many years in the catalogue of the St. Louis Manual Training School seems very modest, to wit:

"1. To furnish a broader and more appropriate foundation for higher technical education.

2. To serve as a developing school where pupils could discover their inborn

capacities and aptitudes, whether in the direction of literature, science, engineering, or the practical arts.

"3. To furnish to those who look forward to industrial life opportunity to become familiar with tools, materials, the methods of construction, and exact drawing, as well as with mathematics, elementary science, and ordinary English branches." Manual training is essentially a culture study. Its function is to develop the body by developing the brain and increasing its cont: ol over materials through the hand and eye. In early years the work of a child is qualitative rather than quantitative. Physiologists tell us that the areas of the brain develop gradually and unequally; that a normal child does not recognize accuracy, and that he is incapable of precision, either in ideas or deeds, until he is several grades along in school. Tool work should result in accuracy in thought and in deed, and hence should not be attempted before the sixth or seventh grade. Dr. C. H. Henderson defines manual training as He adds: " The brain grows by what it feeds upon. Given perfect health and a wealth of sense impression, especially a wealth of quantitative sense impression— that is to say, well-trained senses-and we have the physical basis for a full intellectual life. Without this large quantitative knowledge and developed brain we live in a world of illusion, a guess world of very imperfect rationality. To cultivate the hand and eye and ear, even the nose and the tongue, is to enlarge the material of thought and the tool of thought."

quantitative handicraft."

In 1882, before the National Educational Association at Saratoga, the writer of this article defined manual training as "a new art of expression "in the concrete, as contrasted with verbal description and graphical representations. This view of manual training has been much elaborated of late, with the result that "expression" is by many persons regarded as the very essence of manual training. This result is unfortunate, since it confuses "expression" with the "art of expression." The former is a product of manual training. The logical study of the "art" constitutes the sum and substance of the educational feature known as "manual training."

It is impossible to take notice of all the vagaries into which enthusiastic teachers have been led by the notion that manual training is but the natural expression of what is already in the mind of the pupil, but the reader should reflect that there is a science of education, actual or potential, and that the very essence of a science is logical systematic management. All arithmetical operations depend upon the "fundamental rules; the processes of algebra consist of repeated applications of the four fundamental processes; the scientific study of a language begins with declensions and conjugations; so tool work, drawing, needlework, cooking, etc., begin with fundamental processes with typical appliances upon typical materials. The articles constructed, the figures drawn, the garment sewed, or the dishes cooked are incidental, like blackboard work in long division or algebraic subtraction or manuscript Latin prose; and like them they are valuable because they involve effort and result in mastery and power. The real end and aim of all education, whether "manual" or “spiritual,” is the developed, strengthened, disciplined executive person, regardless of the fate of the exercises or products which were the means of his development.

Originally, when manual training first took definite form in school education, it was generally assumed that it was intended to supersede the old form of trade apprenticeship, and not a few people defended and supported it on this ground. Because a boy learned how to use tools, how to keep them in order, and how to treat the common materials of construction, it was claimed that he was learning a trade or several trades, and so the manual training school was regarded as a trade school.

In spite of the fact that this assumption and this claim were both wrong, the