rational course of study in the grammar and high schools, and the equipment of manualtraining facilities is an essential part of the physical equipment of every school system.

The great variety of manual-training courses in this country is bewildering. The great need of our schools today is an authoritative statement of the best courses of study in manual work. The many courses proposed and carried out in different schools should be carefully studied and sifted by a competent educational committee, and their judgment given to the world in the form of a report to this association.

L. E. WOLFE, superintendent of schools, San Antonio, Texas.-Professor Dresslar, in his valuable paper has presented a great variety of subject-matter for manual training The selection of the proper subject-matter for manual training is very difficult. I am sure however that we will not go far wrong if we keep constantly in view the general principle that such educative material must be selected as will most vitally relate the pupil to industrial life. As some doubt has been expressed as to the feasibility of school gardens and school farms, I would like briefly to refer to what is being done in our city. For nearly three years we have had school gardens in connection with each of our twenty-four schools. These gardens are on the school grounds, and are in size from a tenth- to a half-acre. The boys of the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades devote one hour a week to gardening while the girls sew. The work is in charge of a competent supervisor who goes from school to school.

While the gardening was made voluntary when first introduced, only a few requests to be excused came from the parents. The boys look forward to the garden hour with delight. They love the work and are especially glad to have an opportunity to stretch their limbs. We must not think of this gardening as simply digging in dirt. On the contrary, it is highly educative. The boys are more or less familiar with the necessity for economy in the use of material in woodwork-in the building of houses, etc. They learn that a like economy must be used with the soil and moisture out of which grains, grasses, fruits, and vegetables are made.

We are looking forward with the beginning of school next September to a school farm of twenty or thirty acres, located near the terminus of a car line, where boys of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and the high school can be taken for a half-day or more once every two or three weeks, for the practice and study of tree culture and for the purpose of carrying out such systematic experiments as are being made under the direction of the state experiment stations and the United States department of agriculture.

I am satisfied that there is a great future for school gardens and school farms thruout the South, where a spring and a fall garden can be planted, cultivated, and harvested during the school session. In the North,where the growing-period is chiefly during vacation, we may have to resort to vacation schools, to secure the best results. For these reasons I can not entertain the idea of omitting the dealing with mother earth in our manual training, especially at a time when the government of the United States is doing more than ever before in this line and when Luther Burbank and others are showing the possibilities in the field of agriculture.

CREE T. WORK, president of the College of Industrial Arts, Denton, Texas.-By way of information touching the subject of agricultural instruction, which has been included in the presentation of this question, you will be interested to know that day after tomorrow (July 11) there becomes effective in the state of Texas a law requiring that the elements of agriculture shall be taught in all school districts having a scholastic population of three hundred or less. I also desire to announce what the gentleman from San Antonio (Superintendent Wolfe) was too modest to say, namely, that not only does San Antonio teach agriculture in the schools, but that she has also been making generous provision for, and a good beginning in, bench work, domestic science, domestic art, and other forms of manualtraining work.

I desire to call your attention to two points bearing upon the adequacy of our courses in elementary manual training, and to commend them to your consideration: The first is, that the adequacy of our courses depends in part upon their adaptability to the sex of the

pupils. Girls and boys have an intellectual recognition of sex and the consequent differences in habits, work, and even thought processes, before they reach the period of physical change. In all of our schoolwork we have been too prone to overlook this great fact. We have followed most faithfully the tendency of our forefathers to masculinize the curricula of our schools thruout, from the A-B-C class to the end of the high-school course, and even thru the college. Search your textbooks and see what a dearth of reference there is to the interests, activities, and life of women and girls. If we will recognize the existence and interests of both sexes in our courses of manual training, as well as in other schoolwork in the elementary grades, we will thereby do much to vitalize the process we call education.

The second point I would make is that the adequacy of our courses in manual training depends in good part upon the attitude of the school authorities-the board of education, the superintendents, the principals, and the teachers-toward the work, and particularly in the matter of the credit given to the work by them. The esteem in which any line of schoolwork is held by the authorities and teachers has much to do with the manner in which it is received by, and with the consequent educational effect on, the students. We cannot expect our courses in manual training to be the most beneficial so long as they are regarded as ornaments, extras, tag-ends, or "non-essentials;" or so long as we relegate the work to the attic, the corner, or the damp, dark basement of the school building, where we would not think of placing the history or the mathematics work which really requires less light and less pure air than the manual training. Neither can we hope for the best results until the manual-training courses are taken with the same seriousness by teachers and superintendents as is bestowed upon other subjects, and credit given on the records and reports accordingly. I would not have in my school work for which I could not give credit. If the manual-training work is not worth classifying with other schoolwork in this respect let us dispense with it and put in something that is worth while. But since its worth has been well demonstrated, it seems reasonable to ask and to expect that it be formally respected. This will result in the greater effectiveness of the work in the school, as well as in a positive advantage to the individual pupil.

EMMA C. DAVIS, supervisor of public schools, Cleveland, Ohio, stated that an experiment in school gardens had been carried on in that city for three years. Gardens, in which both girls and boys worked, were in eight school districts under the supervision of a director of school gardens. These gardens were devoted mainly to vegetables, tho flowers also were grown. The gardens varied in size from plots in the school yard to a half-acre of ground adjoining a school building. Talks and experiments on soils, growth, pollination, etc., formed an important part of the work. It is considered a valuable adjunct to both the manual training and nature-study in Cleveland.

A. H. CHAMBERLAIN, Throop Polytechnic Institute, Pasadena, Cal.-Fifteen years ago it would have been an easy matter for me to have outlined a course of study in manual training best adapted to the elementary school. Today I should hesitate about making a dogmatic statement in this direction. Indeed I should oppose any uniform course of study proposed. But whether the course be suggested by the school superintendent, the childstudy specialist, the grade teacher, the art, or the manual-training teacher, the first element necessary is common sense. True it is that the work adapted to one locality may not be best suited to another, and even in a given locality the work demanded at one time may differ materially from that which should be offered at another.

Too long has the "bread and butter" idea been in seeming conflict with the culture side-the utilitarian as opposed to the so-called educational phase. There is and should be no conflict. It is necessary that in any locality the children be taught to use those elements and materials that lie about them. Too frequently the teacher ignores the facilities at hand and reaches out after the non-attainable. While we should always strive to better conditions the effort should be made to utilize to the utmost the materials at hand and to use the equipments in the most effective way.

In a given city or state an expert should be provided to visit the various schools. He should study the equipments and see how they may be improved at the least possible expense. He should investigate the possibilities of materials in the immediate neighborhood; he should learn the needs and demands of the locality; he should study the teachers and their methods and be what the English would call an organizer in manual training. He should combine the necessary qualifications of superintendent, child-study specialist, art, manual-training, and grade teacher and be possessed of a large amount of tact and

common sense.

THE RELATION OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION TO PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

INTRODUCTION BY THE PRESIDENT

FRANK M. LEAVITT, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DRAWING AND MANUAL TRAINING, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, BOSTON, MASS.

It is probable that no single topic has engaged the attention of educational conventions more frequently, during the past two years, than has this topic of industrial education. Certainly there is no question which has been so insistently urged as being of immediate and vital concern to the country at large. Furthermore the discussion has been remarkable in that there seems to be but one opinion regarding the necessity for, and the benefits to be derived from, the establishment of a wise and far-reaching system of industrial training.

The conditions which have led to this urgent need have been set forth so fully and are doubtless so familiar to most of us that I will merely mention the most obvious of them without comment.

The industrial and commercial prosperity of our country has resulted from peculiarly advantageous circumstances. Our raw material has been comparatively cheap and seemingly unlimited. In addition to foreign customers we have had a large and prosperous home market. Our native population. has been almost instinctively industrial and is virile, aggressive, and adaptable. We have had also the advantage of a liberal sprinkling of skilled and industrially trained workmen from the Old World, attracted by the superior opportunities offered in our new and rapidly growing country. While never as perfect as some seem to imagine, we formerly had an apprenticeship system which provided a thoro industrial training for a considerable number of our workmen.

It is apparent that these advantages over other industrial countries are fast disappearing and that they do not today exist in a degree sufficient to warrant us in ignoring longer the crying need of a thorogoing system of industrial education.

While there is unanimity of opinion as to the needs of the establishment of a system of industrial education, there is no agreement whatsoever as to the agencies by which such education shall be given. Shall it be provided at public expense thru an extension of the present school system? Shall the state give local aid in establishing special schools for this purpose? Shall

private enterprise provide such opportunity at the expense of the pupils, as in the case of many excellent commercial schools? Shall the industries themselves establish schools for the training of their workmen? Shall philanthropic institutions support, wholly or in part, classes for instruction in industrial subjects?

It is certain that experiments will be made by each of these agencies. The Y. M. C. A. is already doing excellent work in the line of vocational training. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, vice-president of the National City Bank, of New York, and one of the managers of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, says:

With proper financial backing no organization is better fitted to meet the great demand for industrial education in New England than the Y. M. C. A.

In this connection it is interesting to note that, in the Association Evening Schools of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the receipts from tuition fees have increased more rapidly than the expenses of the classwork and that they will equal each other next year if the same rates of increase continue. This indicates that working-men want industrial education and that industrial education is worth to the workman all that it costs.

As an illustration of the method of establishing special schools with state aid, I will outline, in the briefest way, what has recently been done by the state of Massachusetts. In June, 1905, Governor Douglas appointed a Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, consisting of eight members with the Honorable Carroll D. Wright as chairman. Their findings and recommendations are embodied in a report dated April, 1906. So numerous were the calls for this report that it was necessary to print the second edition. It was one of two books recommended to the Eastern Manual Training Association and the Eastern Art Teachers' Association, at their convention last year, by Mr. John Cotton Dana, librarian of the Newark Public Library, and it is now being reprinted and offered for sale by the Publication Board of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

Following the recommendations of this first commission, a second and permanent commission was appointed by Governor Guild under the chairmanship of Professor Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard University. Work was begun last September and broad definition was given to the policies which are to serve as guides in establishing local industrial schools. Among others, the policy of granting state aid was adopted and any city or town establishing an industrial school may receive a subsidy amounting to from one-fifth to one-half of the total expense of the school. Already two or three towns have taken definite action toward the establishment of such schools. The permanent commission recently submitted a report under date of March, 1907.

But the National Education Association is primarily an association of teachers and we are mainly interested in problems pertaining especially to the schools. It was with the hope of determining to what extent the present publicschool system might be made to serve the needs of industrial education that

today's program was planned with the general topic, "The Relation of Industrial Education to Public Instruction."

There are some of us who feel that the scope of public instruction should be broad enough to include a considerable amount of training with real vocational purpose. We believe that training for the industries is bound to come. We note the suspicion of organized labor and feel that there may be reasonable ground for such suspicion if the working-out of the problem is to be left entirely to industrial corporations, for there is a possibility that, in this event, the least desirable features of present industrial methods may be carried over into the schools. We realize that the public schools have ever changed with the growing needs of society and that subject after subject has been added to the early curriculum as each has been brought by changing conditions into the list of essentials. We even feel that our schools are on trial and that they must help in the solution of this problem if they are to maintain their place in the esteem of the people at large, as an important factor in our national existence.

Manual training was originally urged for vocational purposes but it has come so largely under the influence of the academic spirit of the schools that it is frequently given place solely on account of its cultural value. Cultural value it has of a high order; but is it not possible to conserve this feature and add something of the vocational purpose?

I. MANUAL TRAINING VERSUS INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

B. W. JOHNSON, DIRECTOR OF MANUAL TRAINING, SEATTLE, WASH. The situation in regard to industrial education and the conditions which are now demanding that educators give the problem their immediate attention, have already been clearly stated.

My topic, fortunately, limits this paper to a consideration of the high school and its relations to this situation.

The charge has been made that manual training, the one subject more. closely related to industry than any other in the curriculum, is administered as "a sort of mustard relish, an appetizer conducted without reference to an industrial end." There is doubtless much truth in this statement of the position of manual training in the service of education. But the term "education" is used with different meaning by different classes of individuals according to the needs it is supposed to supply. The manufacturer and the merchant want skilled help; the school teacher holds up the cultural ideal of knowledge acquired; while society is calling for men and women who blend these attainments into an efficiency for service to self and to others.

Education is a systematized means for aiding the individual to live successfully, and to live successfully he must co-operate with his fellows. He must be equipped with skill in some calling and possessed of intelligence to direct this skill for service to himself and to others. He must, therefore, be able to