indeed, a thousand eyes, and there are a thousand lanes by which the light may be let in. No school and no human agency can hope to offer to a youth all the opportunities by which these approaches to the soul may be utilized. The manual training school has brought an intellectual quickening to a very large number who would never have responded to the teaching of, the old-time school. To have furnished such an avenue of development for minds which failed to find such under older formal methods of instruction is a distinct and noteworthy gain.

The manual-training school has made also a great contribution to the cause of education by the fresh demonstration which it has given of the pedagogic value of mechanical and free-hand drawing. The value of this lesson it would be difficult to overestimate. There is no study, not even chemistry, which approaches drawing as a means for training the eye and for developing the power of observation. For the purposes of the school it is one of the ready and most available studies, and it ought to form a part of the curriculum of every high school. The manual-training schools owe, in a very large degree, the measure of pedagogic success which they have attained to the presence in their curriculum of well-taught courses in drawing. And one of the reasons for this has been that this subject, altho taught in an elementary way, has been made to conform to an accurate standard of scholarship.

These and other positive contributions of the manual-training high school have not been rendered without results on the negative side. The manual-training school has shared with all other educational efforts in America the characteristics of our time and of our people. Enthusiastic friends have claimed for it more than it has done or can do. While it is true that some, nay many, students find in the manual instruction new means for intellectual quickening, it is also true that this school is no more fitted to the needs of all boys than is the school of any other type. And no school has shared more fully in the dilution of scholarship which comes from trying to teach many subjects in a short time than the manualtraining school. The motto, "The cultured mind, the skillful hand," which one finds over the doorway of every manual-training school, is adopted in the spirit of Paul's definition of faith: "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The evidence which the average boy has to furnish of the possession of this culture and skill consists of a very limited knowledge of his own language, a smattering of German, French, or Spanish, a very fair grounding in plane and solid. geometry and elementary algebra, excellent training in drawing, a notebook containing forty experiments in some one or more of the natural sciences, and a very limited knowledge of and experience with tools in a well-appointed shop, which last he is inclined to consider of greater value than all the rest.

There are two popular impressions concerning the work of the manual

training school which are, to my mind, somewhat misleading. One is the belief that the practice and the instruction which a boy receives in the school shop are an equivalent for the experience which he obtains in dealing with the physical problems of an outdoor life, such, for instance, as comes to a boy raised on a farm. The experience which a boy gets in the use of tools in the school, as well as that which he gets in the use of tools on a farm, falls short of skill; but in the one case he deals with the actual problems and difficulties of daily life, and his resourcefulness and ability to solve a problem with the means at hand are constantly strengthened. For most city boys the work in a well-kept shop is as much apart from the daily problems of life as are the lessons in Latin; and, while they appeal in a new way, and often a most successful way, to the boy's intelligence, they do not take the place of the experience with living problems.

The other impression to which I refer is that voiced in the attractive phrase: "Send the whole boy to school." Whatever this may mean, it has no significance with respect to a manual-training school which it does not have with respect to any other well-conducted school. While it is true that for certain boys the manual-training school furnishes just the opportunity needed to call out their latent powers, the whole boy goes to school there in no greater sense than to any other school. What does it mean to send the whole boy to school? If the boy is to grow up to be a whole man or a citizen of the state, in the best sense, it means that his moral nature is to be developed, that his mind is to be trained to think clearly, that his sympathy with his fellow-man is to be quick and true, and that all these qualities are to join in effective work.

An infinite number of agencies contribute to this end, of which the school is one of the most important, and is the only one which is devoted to the formal training of the mind. Doubtless the school will always continue to give its best service by developing the intellectual power of men. It no doubt contributes most directly to all human progress by teaching men to think; for clear thinking lies at the base of all right progress. A school which gives a part of its instruction by means of manual training may prove the very place to develop a particular boy, but it no more puts. the whole boy to school than does any other school. West Point and Annapolis, in this narrow sense, come nearer to putting the whole boy to school, because they require him to give attention, not alone to the training of the hand, but to the training of the foot as well; and their experience has shown that dancing as a required course has no small value.

Let me say one word concerning the work of the manual-training high school as a preparation for the technical training of the engineer. More and more in the past decade the tendency has strengthened to regard the manual-training high school as the natural fitting school for the school of technology, while the regular high school leads to the college, just as in Germany the Gymnasium is the door to the university, while the Real

gymnasium leads to the technical school. I do not believe that in this country our educational progress has yet come to the point where this can be assumed. Assuredly it is true that for some boys the manualtraining high school is the most inspiring school of preparation, but it is equally true that for a very large number of boys its training will be onesided, and will tend to put the emphasis on the wrong place. The question as to whether the boy who is looking toward the profession of the engineer should go thru the manual-training high school, or the English or classical high school, is one which depends largely on the boy's temperament, preparation, and attitude of mind. It goes without saying that when a large proportion of the school day is given to hand-training, this part of the education will have, in the boy's estimation, a very large value, and there will not only be left less time for other studies, but they are likely to receive less relative emphasis.

It is only fair to parents who have boys to educate to set these facts clearly before their eyes and let them judge in the light of their knowledge of the boy whether he should get his preparation in the one school or in the other.

. I hesitate to speak from my own personal experience, and yet such experience is after all a real test. For sixteen years I taught mathematics in a western university whose pupils were drawn almost wholly from three schools. One was a city high school of high grade, offering courses with the classics, and also courses without Latin and Greek; one was a similar high school of high grade, conducted under private control; and the third was a manual-training high school of wide reputation. As a teacher of mathematics I came in contact with all students. My observation was -and the experience of my colleagues coincided with my own that the students who came to us from the city high school were uniformly the best prepared in respect to those matters which have to do with general scholarship, such as correct use of English, neatness and accuracy of work, and scholarly interest in all subjects. In these matters the students coming from the manual-training school were, on the whole, the most backward. The reason for this may have been partly found in the difference in the quality of the students, but on the whole it seemed to me to be in large measure due to the two causes which I have mentioned the smaller amount of time spent on such subjects, and the higher importance very naturally given by the pupils to manual training.

There are, in my judgment, many cases in which the manual-training school is better fitted to take the boy who is to enter college than the boy who is to enter the school of technology. It is also a question whether at student who is to enter the technical school may not better get at least a part of his instruction in the mechanic arts in the technical school itself. While elementary work in wood and metal may well be given in the high school, advanced wood-work, such as pattern-making and work with

machine tools, will mean much more after the student has reached a greater maturity and has studied mechanism, and the mature student will attain in less time a higher skill and a far more definite and practical point of view.

It seems to me, therefore, that in trying to estimate the value of the manual-training school in American education we must not only give it credit for the really great service it is doing in the way of preparing men for business life, or as a school of preparation for college and the technical school, but we must also recognize clearly its weaknesses and its limitations. It has opened a new door to intellectual and moral progress for a class of students who under the old régime would never have found their way to scholarship, and it has shown the way to improved pedagogic methods. But its ministry has as yet been almost wholly on the side of pedagogics. It has not reached down to serve the great mass of youth to whom mechanical training and manual skill would mean most of all. Its advocates have taken pride rather in supplanting the old instruction than in serving a class of citizens for whom in America no instruction that is available has been offered. The manual-training school is no educational specific. It is no better adapted to meet the wants of all boys than is any other school. And, finally, the manual-training school must share with most American educational projects the responsibility for that dilution of scholarship which comes from the effort to teach a great many subjects in a limited time.

Our schools reflect, or possibly account for, the national tendency to make a little knowledge go a great way. The American is alert, energetic, resourceful, and superficial. He can make a little knowledge go farther than the citizen of any other country, and this lesson he has had every opportunity to learn in the school. Initiative, resourcefulness, and nervous energy were great factors in our pioneer work, and they are great factors still; but they will not endure in competition with efficient training, patient study, and exact knowledge. The pioneer epoch has passed. To my thinking, an American boy who has a good knowledge of his own language — a knowledge which has led him to read and to love good books who is master of his elementary mathematics, whose accuracy of observation has been trained by a good elementary course in drawing, and who knows well Latin or some modern language, with such familiarity with natural science as his own reading and simple laboratory talks and experiments supply; such a boy has a better education with which to go into the world, and is better prepared to enter the college or technical school, than a student who knows in a partial and superficial way four times as many things, even tho these include subjects of such apparent significance as the shop and the workbench suggest. In a word, the study of the manual-training school suggests, as will the study of any other American school, that those who have to do today with American

education must turn their eyes, not so much toward the making of new schools for fitting men for college, as toward providing simple and effective schools which may reach those who never go to college; and that, so far as pedagogic methods are concerned, it is not to a multiplication of such methods which we should look, but rather turn our faces and the faces of the American people toward simplicity, sincerity, and thoroness in education.

SCHOOL GARDENS, CITY SCHOOL YARDS, AND THE SURROUNDINGS OF RURAL SCHOOLS

ORVILLE T. BRIGHT, PRINCIPAL OF THE JAMES R. DOOLITTLE SCHOOL, CHICAGO, ILL.

When one considers that all sustenance for animal life comes directly or indirectly from the plants that grow out of the ground; that all clothing for human beings, and most of their shelter, are derived from the same source; and that these same plants, more than all else combined, are responsible for the beauty that makes the earth so pleasant a dwelling-place, the indifference of the schools of the United States to plant culture as matter for study is, indeed, cause for amazement.

Whether this culture is considered from the economic, botanic, or æsthetic standpoint, the indifference is much the same. To be sure, the subject of botany has been in the curriculum of the secondary schools for many a year, but the study, in so far as it has affected the lives and characters of students, has been comparatively barren of results. It has been a study in dissection and classification rather than of growth. Colleges here and there have very effectively engaged in the scientific study of agriculture; but these are so few, and the classes have been so poorly attended, that their influence has scarcely affected the masses or practices of the farmers. This may be because the lavish supply of land has led to the vicious waste that has obtained in American farming. Fortunately the vast acreage that has been had almost for the asking is no longer available. Consequently, with increasing population farming must become more intensive, scientific, and economic.

When we come to the study of plants, because of their value in enhancing the beauty of city, village, or country, neither the college, high school, nor elementary school has as yet to any extent felt even the thrill of movement. The school garden is a thing almost unknown in the United States. As compared with European countries, we have assumed superiority in public-school education, and in some respects perhaps with justice; but in this regard we have no standing for comparison. Long before public schools had an existence, the value of the school garden was recognized in Europe, and we are told that by the middle of the six