Manual training

“ At present the Manual Training School is a missionary enterprise. Its purpose is to create in the public mind an imperative demand for the incorporation of its scientific methods into the public-school course of instruction.
A vast majority of our people are employed in the useful arts, and distinction in every department of labor now depends upon scientific education. Without technical education or manual training the laborer of the future cannot hope to rise above the grade of a piece of automatic machinery. He falls into the routine of the shop like a cog or lever moved by steam. ”

“ The question may be answered in two ways: one is the very cold and matter-of-fact way of telling just what the graduates of a manual-training school are doing at the present moment; the other is the more rosy method of setting forth what we think these same graduates, in view of their education, ought to be doing, and what, when manual training shall have done its perfect work, they undoubtedly will be doing. ”

“ And I believe, further, that in manual training we have the open door to a more rational and thoroughgoing education, and that we have only to enlarge manual training into a more complete organic training to make it satisfy the educational needs of the human spirit. ”

“ Ham the establishment of Manual Training in connection with the primary grades of the school, nearly fifteen years ago; for without the practical aid he gave it, it could not have been accomplished at that time. The children—indeed, all the people of this country—owe him an immense debt of gratitude for his heroic championship of hand-work.
Manual Training gives a true dignity to labor; it calls attention to the place of hand-work in human progress, and as civilization goes on it will have a higher and still higher place in the hearts of the people. ”

“ We do not mean to imply that manual training and vocational training are the same, but we do mean to say that the educative value of any shop training, whether given from the point of view of general culture or of special preparation for life’s work, is evidenced in the attitude which pupils are allowed to assume toward their work. Incorrect and slovenly habits of thinking and doing have no more place in manual [2] training than in vocational training. Organization of subject matter is as essential in manual training as in any other line of endeavor. ”

“ I confidently believe that the development of the manual elements in school will prevent those serious errors in the choice of a vocation which too often wreck the fondest hopes. It is not assumed that every boy who enters a manual-training school is to be a mechanic; his training leaves him free. No pupils were ever more unprejudiced, better prepared to look below the surface, less the victims of a false gentility. Some find that they have no taste for manual arts, and will turn into other paths—law, medicine, or literature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The one-sided training of the schools has divided active men into two classes—those who have sought to live by the work of their own hands, and those who have sought to live by the work of other men's hands.
Hitherto men who have aimed to cultivate their minds have neglected their hands; and those who have labored with their hands have found no opportunity to specially cultivate their brains. The crying demand to-day is for intellectual combined with manual training. It is this want that the manual-training school aims to supply. ”

“ It is for this reason that manual work plays so great a part in the education of intellectually backward and neglected children. Manual training gives the child opportunity for productive work, and thus prepares it for its subsequent life. Manual training develops in the child precisely those faculties which it will most need in later life, namely, conscientiousness, precision, pleasure in its work, enterprise. It develops the hand and the eye, the two most important organs of the human body, to a fuller degree than can be effected by writing, drawing, or gymnastics ”

“ There is no doubt of the value of manual training as an aid in giving definiteness, directness, exactness to the mind, but mere technical training alone will be barren of those results, in general discriminating culture, which we hope to see in America. ”

“ For the hand stands for use, for service, and for unyielding integrity; and it may be confidently asserted on the conviction of observation, experience, and a studious consideration of historic facts, that its drill and discipline as enforced in the world’s workshops, and in the best of existing Manual-training schools, results in a far greater degree of mind development than is produced by any exclusively academic course, and hence that Manual Training is the most important of all methods of education. ”

“ And here is the mistake of those who would degrade a manual training school into a manufacturing establishment. The fact should never be lost sight of for an instant that the product of the school should be, not the polished article of furniture, not the perfect piece of machinery, but the polished, perfect boy. The acquisition of industrial skill should be the means of promoting the general education of the pupil; the education of the hand [351] should be the means of more completely and more efficaciously educating the brain.... ”

“ Possibly, the latest authoritative expression of opinion on the importance of manual training was a resolution, unanimously agreed to at the International Congress on Commercial and Technical Education, recently held at Bordeaux, to the effect that it is desirable that manual work should be rendered obligatory in primary schools of all grades. ”

“ It is this which gives to manual training its value as an educational discipline, and it is mainly for this reason that it is coming to be regarded as an important part of the educational system of nearly every country. "The introduction of manual work into our schools is important," says Sir John Lubbock, "not merely from the advantage which would result to health, not merely from the training of the hand as an instrument, but also from its effect on the mind itself." ”

“ It has been found that the use of tools in our manual training schools develops the brain, strengthens the deficient faculties and brings out latent powers. The farm-reared boy is in the best manual training school in the world and is constantly forced to plan things, make things; he is always using tools. ”

“ Manual and Industrial Training.—The marvelous industrial development of recent years, together with the attitude of labor unions towards apprenticeships, creates a demand for a reconstruction of courses of study. Much of education that was secured in the shop and field must now be furnished in the school. "Educate the whole child" is the watchword. The motor activities must be trained as well as the mental activities. Indeed, the latter cannot attain their proper development without the former. Hence, manual training has been adopted as a part of the curriculum. ”

“ Manual-Training schools are now maintained in almost every city in the Union. Much remains to be done before Manual Training takes its true place in education. The majority of these schools now in existence are for boys who have graduated from the grammar school, which leaves the years between six and fourteen with little or no hand-work. Thus the most important period for brain-growth through hand activity is neglected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By manual training one commonly means exercises in the use of the tools employed in working wood and iron.
It can not be too often repeated that the object of workshop practice, as a part of general education, is not to teach a boy a trade, but to develop his faculties and to give him manual skill ”

“ It admits that manual training is an educative influence, and that, in so far as the schools teach the scientific principles that underlie the practical points of their work, they add intellectual education to physical education. ”

“ THE object of this paper is to consider directly the fruits of manual training. By manual training I do not mean merely the training of the hand and arm. If a school should attempt the very narrow task of teaching only the manual details of a particular trade or trades, it would, as Felix Adler says, violate the rights of the children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where there is sufficient perception to see that the one problem is shared by all, and sufficient tact to co-operate in both spirit and letter, it becomes possible to realize the broad purpose of manual training. I confess that the demands made upon human nature by such a scheme are tolerably large, but I think that if you will go among the training schools of the country you will see that these demands are met here and there, and that the schools where they are met are animated by a singularly fine spirit of helpfulness and high purpose. ”

“ The manual training school that does not by its work inspire thought and encourage investigation is poor indeed; the school that assumes its work to be mind training by hand practice is the ideal school, and the school that will succeed.... ”

“ Adaptation of general training to the presumable needs and wants of the individual, rather than to his social requirements, is the programme of the new education that has already modified the old-school routine through the introduction of the psychological basis, and which now proposes manual training as one more step forward. ”

“ The rational scheme of education to which such an examination as we have just been making would unavoidably lead us, must include manual training as an integral element. If we substitute for manual training some more general and comprehensive term, such as faculty training, organic training, or, better still, if we dismiss all special terms of any kind whatever, and use education to mean the conscious process of human evolution, we shall have reached the rational scheme of education itself, and may feel that our search is ended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Manual training is also advocated, on the ground that it is necessary to ensure that there shall be an adequate supply of skilled manual workers. This, we are told, may contribute to keep alive the lesser industries which tend to disappear before the great manufacturing industry. But the replacement of handwork by the work of machines is a tendency of evolution which no one has the power to arrest. It is not truly the aim of manual instruction to produce skilled adult manual workers; we advocate it simply as a means of education which has nothing whatever to do with technical education. ”

“ In a broad sense, all of the manual and laboratory work in the curriculum is in the nature of manual training, but especial attention is given to the branches mentioned and to weaving and basketry and other work which prepares students for positions as manual training teachers in the public schools. ”

“ The idea that the growth of machine industry has rendered manual training superfluous is utterly erroneous. Manual training is good for the health and the physical strength of the child. At the period of the puberal development, manual training is of especial importance to children. ”

“ Manual training occupies the exceptional position of having come from both directions, from above, from the technical schools, and from below, from the kindergarten and from sloyd, and to have brought from both of these sources fundamental ideas much at variance with each other. In the technical schools manual training is pursued purely as an end in itself and absolutely without thought of its culture value. ”

“ The trade-school differs from the manual training-school. Manual training is educational. "It develops the motor and executive sides of a child's nature," to quote Dean T.M. Balliet, of the School of Pedagogy in New York University. ”

“ But of this I am confident, that three years of a manual training school will give at least as much purely intellectual growth as three years of the ordinary high school, because, as has been said, every school hour, whether spent in the class-room, the drawing-room, or in the shop, is an hour devoted to intellectual training. ”

“ The rapid progress of the revolution in education is shown by the fact that manual training in some form has been adopted in certain of the schools of at least twenty-four of the States of the American Union.
In some of the higher educational institutions the new education is warmly welcomed, while in others public sentiment alone compels its adoption. ”