EDUCATION Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature of Education VOL. XXV OCTOBER, 1904 No. 2 The Reasons for Manual Training' WALTER J. KENYON, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, SAN FRANCISCO HE time is still fresh in mind when the neurologist stood up and assured us that the child is something different from merely an undersized man; that there are differences which should be more signifi cant to the teacher than those merely of inches and avoirdupois. And he said, further, that the evidence permitted us, in a general way, to consider the pupil as a child until the neighborhood of his thirteenth year. The teaching circles of the country took these statements in good faith and did considerable planning upon the strength of them. The general understanding was that education, during the first six years of school life, might be thought of as having a predominantly formative character as distinguished from a predominantly vocational one. Of course it goes without saying that all education should fit for life. But vocational or trade instruction does this directly and determinately, while there are other influences such as travel, fresh air, food and good companionship that also fit for life, but in a generally indirect and preparatory way. This pedagogical distinction between the child and the adult promised in time to give some stability to our teaching practice; but now comes the psychologist back, in the rôle of iconoclast, 1 Read before the Scholia Club of California. and intimates that life is too short for such distinctions, and that the thing to do is to do nothing we have been doing. Out of the general mêlée into which we are thus thrown a recent utterance by Dr. Stanley Hall will serve as well as any to illustrate the situation. He is quoted as deprecating the "idiotic busy work of the lower grades, learning to read without knowing the alphabet, typewriting and shorthand in the high school, four foreign languages for girls and boys in the early teens, who have almost nothing in their minds to express in the vernacular, Latin and algebra in the grammar school, wood and iron work in manual training; courses that are wooden in their intelligence and iron in their inflexibility." This fusillade from the flagship, if correctly quoted, is somewhat bewildering to the men behind the guns; particularly as the same authority has said that "No kind of education so demonstrably develops brain as hand training." There is a bright side to it all, however. Dr. Hall's broadside leaves no room for jealousy. It kills us all equally dead. The hard beset champion of the humanities, the aggressive exponent of manual training, and the soulless typewriter man may now lie down in one grave and become the same cabbage. I am personally optimistic enough to believe that there is something of a nightmare in all this rudderless beating about, and that we shall wake up in the morning comfortably secure again in the authorized belief that the child is, really and truly, a radically different being from the adult, and that in this fact we have a stable basis for the shaping of our system of public education. In order to evaluate manual training with any profit it is absolutely necessary to revive this neglected idea, and to consider the formative manual training of the first six elementary grades as essentially different in purpose and character from the more or less vocationalized instruction of the secondary school. In the following attempt to give succinct shape to the several reasons for manual training, this distinction will again and again be held to the front, in the hope of clearing away some of the fog which now more than ever seems to bedim our discussions of the subject. THE FUNDAMENTAL REASON If we cite all the authorities we shall find as many reasons behind manual training as there are special view points in educational and social science. The psychologist has been at some pains to show that manual training is brain building. The sociologist has arrayed all the statistics of the reformatory to show that manual training converts public charges into responsible beings. The kindergartners build half their creed upon the occupations. The school administrators produce records to show that manual training wins the boy to an extended school attendance and that elsewhere it builds up an alumni list to be proud of. The various utilitarians swell the general acclaim, and altogether we have a heavy consensus of endorsement for the subject. I say heavy because much of the evidence is scientifically phrased and drawn from far afield, and much of the logic is profound and not so framed that he who runs may read. In the midst of a contemplation of this great bulk of affirmative contribution, it is interesting to reflect that the really fundamental reason for manual training has been generally overlooked. It consists in the obvious fact that the children of men are born with hands, while the beasts of the field have none. In the chronology of school affairs it was long ago that the debate first began as to whether the school should limit its attention to the imparting of a group of so-called rudiments or whether, on the contrary, its responsibility did not extend to a broad consideration of its pupils' welfare from every point of view. That the latter interpretation has established itself is readily seen in the bath rooms, the gymnasia, the sanitary systems and a score of other phases of a strictly modern school system. In the golden days of yore, toward which the occasional teacher turns a regretful glance, the schoolmaster was a social outcast, the hobo of his period. He regarded soap as one of the unnecessary evils, and between engagements as the lord of the rudiments he eked out a precarious existence by private forays on his patrons' hen-roosts. The public school has arisen. out of the circumstances of that day by a series of consistent steps. It is regrettable that the precise chronology of these cannot be given. At any rate, it occurred to some unwritten innovator that the pupils' lungs needed a continuous supply of fresh air, and that, furthermore, whether fresh air could authoritatively be classed as a rudiment or not, it was manifestly the school's business to see that it was furnished. From that day forward ventilation has enjoyed the unquestioned consideration. of school authorities, endorsed in theory and more or less effectively practised. Another of the earlier innovations was built upon the idea that the voice, together with the soul behind it, was improved by practice in vocal music; and in the long run that subject was added to the course of study. Like every other departure before or since, it had its fight, which is not entirely over yet. The occasional utilitarian still flourishes his old syllogism to the effect that the public school should teach only rudiments, and that inasmuch as music is not a rudiment it can have no legitimate place in the course of study. And he will prove that music is not a rudiment by citing an acquaintance of his who has amassed the wealth of Croesus without ever having been able to distinguish do from sol. But all present signs indicate that school music is safe. The school had now burdened itself with a concern for the pupil's lungs, ear, and larynx, in addition to the primeval duty of imparting the alleged rudiments. It was inevitable that consistency should some day compel the educational argonauts to perceive a duty toward the pupil's eye, and forthwith drawing was added to the course of study. Without elaborating further on this evolution of the educationist's ideal, we may note, in passing, the recent experiments in adjustable desks, whereby the schoolmaster commits himself to some concern for the pupil's spine and rib-basket. The generalized educational creed is, that to secure the results we nowadays hold ourselves responsible for, every function of the child's mind and body must be subject to an intelligent surveillance and guidance. And since there are only the parent and school to assume this universal charge, and since the parent is admittedly unequal to the task, the inevitable outcome must be that this inclusive duty should fall to the lot of the public school. Indeed, the only alternative is that repulsive, medieval notion that the teacher is not an educator, but merely an instructor, concerned solely with the imparting of certain so-called rudiments. Among educationists there are even now a few inveterate humorists who affect to support that barbaric idea; but we know better than to take them seriously. In the light of this consistent growth of the educational ideal toward a complete responsibility, it is a fit source of wonder that we ever were so sluggish in perceiving that a duty toward the eye, the ear, and the vocal organs should imply also the hand. It is instantly apparent that our logical question is not, Why train the hand? but, Why not train it? Why debar it from that inclusive culture which it is our prima facie business to prosecute? The contributions of the sociologist and the psychologist, therefore, conclusive as they are, are of a secondary significance. The real, the fundamental, point is that the pupil has hands. Confronting ourselves now with this fact somewhat as Newton perceived gravitation, the manual training idea may yet ask the psychologist how, but the time is past for asking him why. And as a corollary to all the foregoing, it becomes apparent that special instruction, instead of being a late innovation, is indeed the most archaic and least reputable aspect of school work; and that we have been slowly ascending out of a puerile conceit of specialized instruction in certain so-called rudiments to the more tenable idea of an education that addresses intelligently and inclusively the whole pupil. In brief, the old futile term, instruction, has now come to apply chiefly to the studies pursued in a business college; while the inclusive but immensely more significant word, education, applies to those cultural processes peculiarly fitting the formative years. THE PSYCHOLOGIST'S REASON The neurologist has given us two broad statements which constitute the pyschological argument for manual training. The first of these is that in the cortex of the brain certain well |