gaining much insight. On this discovery, we at once change our methods. We break up mechanical discipline and have less of combined movement; appeal more to the inclination and humor of the pupil, perhaps even go so far as to adopt the self-reporting system. We lay stress on mental arithmetic and on grammatical analysis; discourage the use of the text-book and introduce oral teaching everywhere, and require much explanation on the part of the teacher. After a few years we discover again the defects of our methods. We are making immoral children by the selfreporting system, placing too much responsibility upon them in the way of self-direction, and this leads, first, to cunning and deceit, and then to open lying. They had more pressure than they were able to withstand. The reliance upon their good disposition was misplaced. The best pupils suffered the most from the school penalties, and the rogues escaped by additional roguery, lying themselves out of difficulty. We find, on the other hand, that they know nothing practically. They can perform astonishing feats of intellectual analysis, but cannot add a column of figures without mistakes, nor write a letter in a correct form with correct spelling and punctuation. They know much miscellaneous information regarding nature and history, but are not fitted for practical life. We immediately reverse our methods, and begin to approach the other pole.

Thus to and fro move the tendencies to reform in pedagogics. But a to-and-fro movement is not a progress, although it is a process. Progress requires a process which in its onward movement does not lose what it has already gained. The will must not be ignored in the cultivation of the intellect, nor vice versa. When we gain a high grade of self-activity in the pupil without any loss of moral training in self-restraint and obedience to principle, then we have made progress. Progress is synthetical; it combines elements before separated. Mere process to and fro is very frequently called progress, but involves the early contradiction of a return over the same path. Many, in fact, adopt one tendency in regard to one study or habit of discipline, and the opposite tendency with another; they believe in free self-activity to the last degree on general principles, but disparage the training of the power of thinking in grammatical analysis, and would entirely replace it with learning to write correct essays, according to the prescribed models of style.

But shall one be a skeptic or cynic, and refuse to believe in any of these movements? Not at all! There is great good in the enthusiasm which comes with a new aim. Fresh work is done with an energy not otherwise to be obtained. The naive, unconscious teacher, who is not aware of the one-sidedness of the new tendency as well as of the old, needed a new impulse to prevent from utter stagnation.

The chances in favor of widening his range of vision are doubled, for he has got so far as to make a distinction between one method and another, and to make a choice. Now there is a further possibility that he may note his position between two essential poles of thought, and make it his business to reconcile them by a synthesis, which is real progress. This progress to and fro, which moves in cycles like the vegetable world, is lamentable in spiritual life. It leads to indifference. But we are reconciled to it when we remember that for vegetable nature it is the very thing to be desired, and, indeed, for the vegetable stage of the human mind, for the naive, unconscious teacher, who implicitly follows "use and want," a cyclical process is indeed a very great blessing. The worst that could happen would be the petrification of the seed in the ground. With the cyclical process comes the unfolding of all the possible phases the complete differentiation of the subject, and this makes possible the synthesis, or combination of these various phases and sides of the process into one, and thus the change of mere process into progress.

A POINT to which I attach much importance is liveliness. This seems to me an essential condition of sympathy with creatures so lively as boys are naturally, and it is a great matter to make them understand that liveliness is not folly or thoughtlessness. . . . At least this applies, I think, to a young man; for when a teacher gets to an advanced age, gravity, I suppose, would not misbecome him, for liveliness might then seem unnatural, and his sympathy with boys must be limited, I suppose, then, to their great interests rather than their feelings. THOMAS ARNOLD.

HISTORY AND ECONOMICS IN MANUAL TRAINING

THE

SCHOOLS.

BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE.

HE period of the organization and equipment of manual training schools has opened. Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago have passed beyond the introductory experimental stage. Already may be gathered conveniently a literature devoted to this "departure" in education. The catalogue of the Philadelphia school declares: "The distinguishing feature of the school, as its name indicates, is its manual work." We read in the recent literature on manual schools, and we are told by those directing them, that when the school becomes a shop it is no longer a school. In the shops, that is, the woodshop, the metal-shop, the blacksmith-shop, the courses are still tentative. The last word has not been said. Nor do these shops present the work in the same order, or even the same work in any order. The first declension has for centuries been learned before the second, in Latin grammar; but a dovetail butt does not stand in similar relation to any other piece of manual work, say a miter joint or a ledge joint. The details of manual work in these schools is left to be ordered by experience. The exact value of the training obtained, or promised, in these schools is not yet determined. However, this is true of the training in any school for the same period of life, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year; experience does not yet fix indisputably the value nor the order of studies of any kind.

Within a few years many of these schools will be established. State legislatures-for example, of New York and Californiaare examining the system as now in operation in the three cities above mentioned, and appropriations have been made to organize and equip schools under the support of the State. Private schools, ever anxious to meet the wishes of the public, are putting in planes and benches and portable forges, and are employing an instructor for one or two days in the week. Fashionable summer schools advertise "departments of manual training," and the

prospectus of one of these informs us that "the instruction in manual training will be conducted on the theory that it should form a part of general education and should be carried on for the purpose of manual, mental, and moral development."1 However vague this may appear, the advertisement is one of the signs of the times. Philanthropic educators who support private schools are visiting manual schools in operation, with question and notebook, and are giving directions for the shipment of boxes of the pupils' work. The papers and the magazines contain current articles which are printed on the first pages so as to secure attention. The colleges are adding manual departments, just as a few years ago they added departments for physical culture.

Boys of fifteen are astonishing their elders with the work of their hands, because their hands have been tied for generations. Professional men are bringing in their sons that they may learn "things," and pleased mothers exhibit to friends and visitors the woodwork and the hasps and handles made by their sons. Parents and committees are surprised and delighted at the accuracy of the work and the enthusiasm of the workers. Many exclaim: "We have solved the educational problem at last. It was not free schools, nor co-education, nor free text-books, nor prize scholarships, nor high schools, but it is the manual training schools." In the organization of these schools every eye will be directed to the shops; tools, machinery, material, will be generously provided. Costly buildings, electric dynamos, artistic patterns, things in abundance will be at once supplied. Boys of tender years will continue to surprise the world with the delicacy of their handiwork, the fertility of their practical application, the fidelity with which they copy the work of maturer minds. Two hours a day for three years spent in the shops will thoroughly individualize the boy; he will have the elementary strength of the craftsman; he will doubtless know his course well. But the leaders in the departure assure us that so soon as the shop becomes a mere shop its value is lost; that there are two educations attempted in these schools, and that the two are to be harmonized as they have never been harmonized before. They say that the pupil is to spend one hour a day in the drawing-room, two hours in the shop, and three hours in that department of the school which for lack of a better name, or in neglect of a better,

1 Martha's Vineyard.

is called the literary department. The period called an hour varies from forty to fifty minutes in length.

We believe that manual training is a return to first principles, and that experience will soon organize a course in manual work as conventional as the college course itself. It is not our purpose to comment on the shop, its equipment, its course, its instructors. We only desire to call the attention of those about to equip these schools to the opportunity presented for the organization of courses of instruction in economics and history. There is a connection between the labor movement in this country and the organization of and call for manual training schools. This relation is not our subject and we cannot more than refer to it in passing. The industrial interests of the country are identifying fast, and these interests are the inflexible master that dictate the attempted solution of industrial problems, in part, by the formation of these schools. Labor is now organizing, and at last its organization will affect politics. But as men are industrial beings before they cast ballots, organized labor presents economic rather than political problems. It is significant too that these schools have sprung up in our largest cities first. In these, population centers and our urban population is nearly one fourth of our entire population. At present the pupils in the manual schools are the sons of wellto-do parents, who send to these schools that their boys may learn things. The workingman has not responded so freely to the opportunity as the founders of these schools had prophesied. St. Louis and Chicago charge tuition, but the school in Philadelphia is free to pupils resident in the city, who are qualified by age and preliminary training to enter upon the courses to advantage. The Philadelphia school contains the sons of professional men, workingmen, merchants, manufacturers, bankers, and gentlemen of wealth. It is therefore the typical school of its kind in the United States at the present time. Few of these boys will enter the learned professions. Many will become mechanics, some will become engineers, some artists, some teachers, and a few will continue a business already organized by elder members of the family. Most of these boys enter school in their fifteenth and leave in their nineteenth year. Few of them will continue studies. in technical school or college. The question is, What shall organizers of manual training schools put into them? The general answer is: money, men, and material. Let us examine for a moment some proposed material.