THE EFFECTS OF MANUAL TRAINING.

BY PRINCIPAL CHARLES D. LARKINS OF THE MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Manual training is an outgrowth of a mixed desire on the part of both the educational and the general public, born of dissatisfaction with conditions existing a dozen or fifteen years ago and a craving for more useful training than the schools of that day gave. Like an exploring expedition, the effort to found a manual training school was a plunge into an unknown region, and was made in the dark. The whole matter was an experiment. With a desire to determine the effects of the training and the results obtained by means of it, the president of this department sent out a circular letter to all schools known to him in which manual training was a part of the course, asking replies to the following questions:

1. What grade of work have you in mind while an

4. Effect upon physical development..

31

5. Effect upon eyesight

15

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610

348

30

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8

2

12

13

14

4

24. Inclination to go on with college, university, or

1

31. Moral purpose

17

32. Sentiment among the people as to manual training schools

The answers obtained have been tabulated and are before you. In this report they will be combined into groups, so far as is possible, and the general opinion to be gleaned from them will be given.

Thirty-six schools, covering all grades from the primary to the college, made replies. Of this number, twenty-eight are high schools or colleges, thirteen represent only grades below the high school, and five cover both high school and lower grades. The pupils represent all ages from five to twenty-six, the greater part being from fourteen to nineteen years of age. Some schools admit as students boys only; others both boys and girls, and all either had a complete course in book work and drawing or were connected with schools having such a course, in which schools the pupils did the book-work. The report will close with a discussion of the present status of the subject, and does not necessarily express the opinion of either the president or secretary of this department, but, on the contrary, is intended to be a summation of the opinions expressed in the replies obtained.

So far as the effect upon the health is concerned, the answers place no small stress upon the fact that the effect of manual training is very beneficial. Not one person expresses a contrary opinion. It is admitted, that, at the beginning of shop-work, the result is sometimes overwork, lameness, blisters, bruises, and other small bodily discomforts; but these pass away quickly. All agree that the effect is to improve the general health, increase growth, and more fully develop the body. This is particularly noticeable in the second year, and the graduates are generally large, strong, and healthy.

There are two adverse opinions regarding the effect upon the eyesight. In all others the report is favorable, and the concensus of opinion is that the improvement of the general health reacts on weak and defective eyes to their advantage. These two adverse reports lead one to wonder whether the injury to the eyes is not a result of the particular exercises used, or of the conditions regarding light that surround the student.

Although the amount of physical exercise obtained from the shopwork is slight, it is regular in both time and quantity, and tends to fixed bodily habits. The bodily organs perform their functions with regularity. This tends to do away with unnatural cravings of appetite. For example, the smoking of cigarettes is comparatively slight in manual training schools. It may also be said, in passing, that the work in such schools is usually destructive to school athletics. Indeed, it is a rare thing for a manual training school to maintain a baseball or a football team that is a credit to the school as such. Indeed, little in the way of athletics, or anything else, is thought of outside of the regular school work.

It is the universal testimony of the answers obtained that the

work of these schools as a whole produces an unusually beneficial effect upon the purely intellectual processes. By it the power to command and concentrate the attention is greatly increased. Accuracy of observation is secured, the perception is enlivened, and the gener alizations are quick and accurate. The effect upon the imagination is very marked. The reproductive imagination is stimulated, and its images are clear and correct. The work in literature and design gives unusual opportunity for the cultivation of the constructive imagination. This culture is almost entirely absent in other schools. No one thing impresses itself upon the mind of one visiting a manual training school for the first time so much as the power shown by the pupils in original work. The training also results in great good to the pupil's judgment. He learns not only what to do and how to do it, but he learns to decide quickly and accurately. The forge-work is specially valuable in this respect.

The fact that it is necessary in nearly every manual training school to make a rule requiring the pupils to leave the school promptly at the close of the session, to prevent their working after school so long as to retard the next day's work, is an evidence that manual training is a great incentive to work. It is to be specially mentioned that all who are engaged in the work agree, that, when once a pupil has become interested in any single line of school work, his interest will usually spread to all other lines. He is cheerful and enthusiastic; considerate of his fellows; helpful to others when necessary; sympathetic, generous, and unselfish; persistent in the performance of his duties; self-reliant; keeps himself in order without restraint, and takes pride in the good name and good work of his school. Since only one person declares that manual training tends to destroy discipline in school, we are again led to question local conditions, and to suspect that it is not the manual training but something else that pulls down the discipline.

The testimony that the training is very beneficial in case of mathematics and science is unanimous, but there seems to be a difference of opinion as to the other scholastic subjects. Three to one who give an opinion assert that the effect is increased interest in language and literature, and seven to one that such is the case in history; while a large proportion contend that there is no perceptible effect upon these subjects. In the Brooklyn Manual Training High School the effect has been to increase the interest very greatly in all language and literary work, as well as in history. The possibilities of making the drawing and shop-work contribute to the work in these branches are great, and full advantage has been taken of them. The writer has the impression that some schools are not making the best of the conditions.

The economic advantages of manual training are clearly brought out in the answers. The first great gain is a longer school-life on the part of the student. This is an advantage to both the student and the state. The chances of his success are greatly increased, both during his school-work and after his leaving school. He more readily obtains employment, and nearly, if not quite always, secures greater remuneration for his services than those who have not had such training. The concensus of opinion seems to be that the course usually urges a student on to a higher training, and enables him to maintain a high standing in advanced work; but there is one person who expresses a contrary opinion, and several think it makes no difference. Local conditions may again account for the contrary opinion.

The answers regarding questions 29 and 31 surprise the writer most. Less than half of the replies recognize the good effect of the system upon the moral nature of the student. No one asserts that it is bad, but many either see no effect or they express no opinion. In the writer's many years of experience he has never met so potent a factor in ethical culture as manual training. He finds it a rare thing for a pupil who has had much of this training to be dishonest or untrue in anything that those words imply.

Whether the training increases the love for and appreciation of the beautiful seems to depend upon the course of studies in the particular school. In some schools great stress is laid upon æsthetical culture; in others it receives no attention. Some schools have pride in the fact that nothing is taught in them except what is practical. Freehand drawing, modeling, and kindred work is eliminated. Other schools make those subjects a part of the course. This may account for the great diversity of opinions expressed. It is evident that twenty-one out of thirty-six give some attention to æsthetics, and it is to be hoped that all will do so in the near future. The danger, if any exists, is that manual training will be wrecked upon the rock of prac ticality. If manual training has any excuse for a place in school work, it is a factor in general education.

Probably the term "manual training" is the most misunderstood term in educational science. By it not only the uninformed public but some teachers as well include everything from the mere learning of a trade to an elaborate technical education. A school principal, endowed with the right to be called "Doctor," told me that he had four boys who had failed to pass the necessary examination for graduation from the grammar school, and who were so dull that they could never do the book-work of the high school, and asked that I should violate the rules of the board of education by admitting them to my

school, because, he said, they were just the kind of boys I wanted; and he assured me that if they did not learn a trade they would never amount to anything. From this complete and persistent misunderstanding the cause is suffering; but it is a subject for congratulation that the best informed educators and philosophers of the time have placed themselves squarely on the side of manual training.

Within the past year the writer has heard Professor James of Harvard, Professor Sargent of Yale, Dr. G. Stanley Hall, and several others of almost equal prominence contend that manual training is not only a necessity in education, but also that it bears promise of being one of the most potent factors in the working out of the great educational problems of the day.

Perhaps there can be no more fitting conclusion to this report than the following verbatim extract from the letter of W. A. McAndrew, director of Pratt Institute High School, Brooklyn, when replying to the above questions. Mr. McAndrew says:

In general, I should like to say, that three years' careful observation of the influence of manual training upon young men and women has convinced me thoroughly that it is the nearest to the ideal scheme of American education yet discovered. I was graduated from the classical course at college myself, and I began my teaching as an instructor in Latin and Greek; was then the principal of a public classical school in Hyde Park, a suburb of Chicago, and after a short experience in the employ of a railroad company, returned eagerly to the pursuit of teaching, as I had an opportunity to ally myself with an academy where art and manual instruction were essential parts of the system.

The aim of the manual training school, I think, should be the same as that of any academy-to fit for useful, industrious American citizenship. It is the business of the directors of such a school to select the subjects of instruction which seem most likely to develop the powers needed by the ideal citizen. Almost every subject taught in any school seems to me to have training and strengthening powers, but there is not time for all. Every course of study must be a compromise. In our course we have endeavored to select those things which combine the largest possibilities for a board education with the subjects most likely to work directly and pertinently towards strengthening the will, the feelings, and the intellect.

The senior boys in this school (and our course is but three years long) are quicker, readier, broader, more enterprising, as a class, than the seniors at the end of four years' classical instruction in the other schools with which I have been connected.