Manual skill

“ Never again will there be such susceptibility to drill and discipline, such plasticity to habituation, or such ready adjustment to new conditions. It is the age of external and mechanical training. Reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical technic, foreign tongues and their pronunciations, the manipulation of numbers and of geometrical elements, and many kinds of skill have now their golden hour; and if it passes unimproved, all these can never be acquired later without a heavy handicap of disadvantage and loss. ”

“ As a matter of fact a fine machine-tool is more liable than a watch to get out of order through careless handling, and it no more than a watch, can be properly repaired by a bungler. It follows that skill in the use of machine-tools is as essential to a successful mechanical career now, as skill in the use of hand-tools was formerly. ”

“ We may conclude from this brief statement of the situation that it is desirable to organize and have courses in our manual training and mechanical drawing and that whatever system is adopted it must make allowance for emphasis upon both the thought element and upon skill. ”

“ They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams. The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour. ”

“ The taste for manual work is imbibed at a very early age, and there is not wanting evidence to prove most distinctly that even a very small amount of manual labor introduced into the elementary school serves to keep alive the capacity for active employment, and the manipulative skill of the fingers. ”

“ With the acquisition of skill in himself comes the ability and willingness to recognize skill in his fellows. When once he appreciates skill in handicraft, he regards the workman with sympathy and respect.”
Considerable progress in manual training has been made in the State agricultural colleges of the country. In twelve of these colleges drawing and tool practice have been introduced. Generally the tool practice covers pattern-making, blacksmithing, moulding and founding, forging and bench-work, and machine-tool work in iron. ”

“ Invention is in its youth, and manual training is the very breath of its nostrils.
7. The Elevation of Manual Occupations from the Realm of Brute, Unintelligent Labor to one requiring and rewarding Cultivation and Skill.—A brute can exert brute strength; to man alone is it given to invent and use tools. Man subdues Nature and develops art through the instrumentality of tools. ”

“ In a former chapter we sought to show that the use of mechanical tools stimulates the intellect; in the present chapter it is our purpose to endeavor to show that manual training tends to the promotion of rectitude, to the up building of character. ”

“ While the other boys would stand in the presence of the huge Titan of the shop lost in the wonder of ignorance, the manual training boy would gaze with delight on the marvel of mechanism, wrapped in the admiration begotten of a thorough understanding of its construction, and strong in the consciousness of his mastery of it. ”

“ These are only a few of the many illustrations that might be given of progress in the useful arts, and they all emanate from the machine-tool shop.
At the threshold of the most important inquiry that ever occupied the mind of man stand the twenty-four students we have followed, with more or less regularity, through the various laboratories which constitute the preliminary steps in the manual training course. It is the most important inquiry that ever engaged the attention of man, because it touches modern civilization at [83] more points than any other. ”

“ To you who are beginning the work of life, the mastery of technique may seem a comparatively unimportant matter. You recognize its necessity, of course, but you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,—an integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in itself,—something to be reduced as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon you. ”

“ When it shall have been demonstrated that the highest degree of education results from combining manual with intellectual training, the laborer will feel the pride of a genuine triumph; for the consciousness that every thought-impelled blow educates him, and so raises him in the scale of manhood, will nerve his arm, and fire his brain with hope and courage. ”

“ And, in the shop where metals are wrought cold (which, for want of a better name, we call our machine-shop) , every new exercise is like a delightful trip into a new field of thought and investigation. Every exercise, if properly conducted, is both mental and manual. Every tool used and every process followed has its history, its genesis, and its evolution. ”

“ There is a fine spirit of free activity, eager interest, and industry permeating most of the manual training classrooms. Even the inferior work is done with a happy glow of achievement that half excuses it. * * * To emphasize unduly the aim of rigid mechanical accuracy generally means a sacrifice of the thought side of the work. Those qualities which lead eventually to the realization of the pupil’s highest powers—such qualities as intelligent self direction ”

“ THE INTELLECTUAL EFFECT OF MANUAL TRAINING.
Intelligence is the Basis of Character. — The more Practical the Intelligence the Higher the Development of Character. — The use of Tools quickens the Intellect. — Making Things rouses the Attention, sharpens the Observation, and steadies the Judgment. — History of Inventions in England, 1740-1840. — Poor, Ignorant Apprentices become learned Men. — Cort, Huntsman, Mushet, Neilson, Stephenson, and Watt. ”

“ But those heroes of the workshop had none of the opportunities afforded by the manual training school of the present age. They toiled many hours each day for a shilling or two, and lived in stuffy hovels, and puzzled over the a b c of mechanics by the light of a tallow-candle. Some of them gained fortunes, while others were robbed of the fruits of genius, and slept in unknown graves; but all their names are treasured and honored now. The world moves, and in this age it moves always toward a higher appreciation of the value of the useful arts. ”

“ An essential element of integral education, manual X comes to make of balance of intellectual instruction, to which it is in a constant relation of change and reciprocity. Manual labor can also be considered from two different viewpoints: as an exercise meant to perfect the machinery of the senses and to develop manual dexterity—this is the aspect of organic education—and as a study of the means and doings of work—the aspect of technical training. ”

“ If manual training has, as I fully believe that it has, this vastly important psychological import, it is the herald of a coming education. If it has not, then its only value is industrial and utilitarian. It is an artisan movement, useful and in its way valuable, but nothing more. ”

“ Whilst we are learning any mechanical operation, or whilst we are acquiring any technical art, the mind is commonly passive. In the first attempts, perhaps, we reason or invent ways of abridging our own labour, and the awkwardness of the unpractised hand is assisted by ingenuity and reflection; but as we improve in manual dexterity, attention and ingenuity are no longer exerted ”

“ Manual labour is distinguished from manual gymnastics by the fact that the object of the latter is to exercise the hand, and the former, to accomplish a determinate work, being, or simulating, a socially useful object. ”

“ The manual training school student is an investigator—as much so as a student in chemistry. His mind must always guide his hand, his reasoning opens new fields of thought with every stroke of the chisel. ”

“ Such was also the early training of the great inventors and mechanics described in the preceding pages, whose contrivance and intelligence were practically trained by the constant use of their hands in early life. Even where men belonging to the manual labor class have risen above it, and become more purely intellectual laborers, they have found the advantages of their early training in their later pursuits. ”

“ Other technical arts.Technical schools are so much the fashion of the day, that I may perhaps add something more on the subject of manual training. All students of Pestalozzi and Fröbel knew the great educational value of manual work, but the general public, though they knew that mind acted on muscle, did not realise the fact that muscle reacted on mind ”

“ And this expansion must go on pari passu, not the abnormal growth of one center through the undue exercise of its corresponding function, with the starving of surrounding centers and functions, but the normal and wholesome growth of all. As the hand is the chief instrument of touch, its exercise will cultivate the tactile and visual centers. By the skillful framing of these manual activities, and their arrangement in due sequence, we shall bring about a corresponding series of mental reactions of the highest evolutionary and educational value. Manual training means hand training ”

“ The introduction of manual work into our schools is important, not merely from the advantage which would result to health not merely from the training of the hand as an instrument, but abo from its effect on the mind itself. ”

“ Finally the student reaches the engine, every part of which is made the subject of exhaustive study; the facts of every part are represented on paper, working drawings of every part are made, and every part is reproduced in steel and iron in miniature, and, as a triumph of drawing, a representation on paper of the completed engine is produced.
The value of drawing as an educational agency is simply incalculable. It is the first step in manual training. It brings the eye and the mind into relations of the closest intimacy, and makes the hand the organ of both. ”

“ It is not the purpose here to emphasize the training of the hand or the development of technique in handwork processes to the extent commonly expected of a course in manual arts, though considerable dexterity in the use of tools and materials will undoubtedly be developed as the work proceeds. While careless work is never to be tolerated in construction any more than it would be tolerated in writing or drawing, the standard is to be only such a degree of perfection as is possible through a child's unaided efforts. ”

“ The short-sighted method which falls back on mechanical routine and repetition to secure external efficiency of habit, motor skill without accompanying thought, marks a deliberate closing in of surroundings upon growth. ”

“ Manual Training is the acquisition by the hand of the arts through which man expresses himself in things. It is a series of educational generalizations in things. The purpose of it is to put the mind and hand en rapport with each other; to make the hand acquainted with the elementary manipulations of the typical arts, by actual exercises, as the mind is familiarized with the fundamental principles of the sciences by studying their laws. ”

“ I have confidence that this humanizing spirit will conquer, and that manual training will ultimately mean in all our schools what it means to-day in a few of them, and is coming to mean in many more—a complete, human, educational process and not simply an artisan training. ”

“ And now I’m able to do what I’d like to see every other fellow in the world able to do—work hard, at some kind of useful, manual work until he’s thirty, and then play for three or four years, before he settles down to work his brain. Brains aren’t much good until they’ve had those two things—manual work and play. ”

“ If the present demand for vocational training teaches manual training anything, it is that the subject matter of manual training must receive more serious attention. The aims of manual training and vocational training, in one sense, are not so very different ”

“ The students of a well-conducted manual-training school are intellectually as active and vigorous as in any high-school. Nay, more, I claim, and I have had good opportunity to observe the facts, that even on the intellectual side the manual-training boy has a decided advantage. I have been in charge of both kinds of school, and I know whereof I speak. The education of the hand is the means of more completely and efficaciously educating the brain. ”

“ Some persons are trained by suitable practical exercises for capacity in doing things, for ability to use the mechanical tools involved in turning out physical commodities and rendering personal service. This training is a mere matter of habituation and technical skill ”

“ When you come to the carrying out of a special scheme of education, such as manual training, you will readily see that its methods necessarily depend very largely upon teacher psychology, and I propose to devote the first part of this paper, which has to do with the methods of manual training, to an examination of the attitude of mind which the teacher of manual training brings to his work. ”

“ Which of us has not been profoundly astonished at the enormous difficulty experienced in accomplishing some simple act of manual toil that we see performed without the least effort by a workman trained to this particular task? ”

“ Workingmen of our day should ponder over this, and take to heart the truth that manual mechanical labor is the likeliest career to develop mechanical inventors and lead them to such distinction as these benefactors of man achieved. ”