of education has enabled pupils, parents, and teachers by co-operative effort to determine earlier the bent of the student. We often fail to reckon with heredity in assigning or advising a student to do manual-training work. If the youth's antecedents for generations have been intimately connected with machine or shop or mill, the slumbering talent may never be aroused and cultivated unless some phase of education is forthcoming which will best and soonest bring out this talent. Many a first-class machinist has been utterly ruined by the advice of some one to enter the profession of law or medicine. Far better have in society a good carpenter, a good molder, a good mason, a good machinist, with a good general education extending to the middle of the secondary school period, than to turn loose on society one more quack, one more shyster, and one more Ichabod Crane. Manual training is exceedingly valuable in helping to determine what is the line of greatest usefulness for the young man and young woman. The variety of manual training may be selected to fit the particular needs of the community, i. e., if the town and the people at large are devoted mainly to industries requiring a knowledge of wood-working, the course in manual training may be planned with especial reference to this dominant industry. This local flavor is of practical benefit but it must not dominate the coursemaker of the school. The making of useful things at all stages of the work is more important than shaping the work to meet the particular demands of the locality. The making of useful things has much to do with the making of men, and all education in sympathy with, and out of sympathy with, manual training must sooner or later admit this fact and arrange their courses of study accordingly. The word "service" contains the quintessence of the newest and best education. Manual training very largely performs its function and manifests its broadest meaning in training most directly for real everyday service. We have attempted to show that manual training originated in the mind of John Locke, who was opposed to any kind of public school, but thought the children of the laboring classes might be benefited by manual training. The subject today has passed the fad stage and is among those subjects whose content changes rapidly because they are continuously progressive. The meaning and function of manual training are growing broader as better understanding of the child mind is shown. It is estimated that more than three-fourths of the American people earn their living by doing work with their hands. If we maintain that the ideal citizen should be self-supporting, it is clear that manual training ought to be found and given a prominent place in public education. Horace Mann said that for all that grows one former of things is worth one hundred reformers. Manual training means that one great field of education appealing especially to the mechanically inclined must be cultivated. It means that one more broad avenue of approach to the youth is open to the teacher. It means one more line of work toward perpetuating a true democratic spirit in public education. No life ever reaches its upward limit of usefulness unless early in its growth. some well-defined work, suited to that life, is marked out to be done. Concentration counts for more than dissipation of energy. Manual training performs one of its greatest functions in assisting the youth to determine what is his work and thereby makes a great contribution to human happiness. MANUAL TRAINING IN RURAL SCHOOLS OF INDIANA ELLSWORTH ROBEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF COUNTY SCHOOLS, KOKOMO, IND. Indiana is consolidating its schools and transporting the children. I believe that the commercial side must be touched in the schools. Of two farmers living next to each other one who has been using every opportunity for informing himself regarding the principles of agriculture raised last year ninety bushels of corn per acre; the other forty-eight bushels per acre. They had similar soil and similar conditions generally. This simply indicates what study will do. Corn clubs have been formed by the boys in rural schools. In a certain county each boy in a club of one hundred twenty-five raised one acre of corn, one boy obtained 117 bushels from his acre, the lowest obtained 50 bushels, the average for the entire club was 72 bushels per acre, the average for the farmers of the same county was 37 bushels per acre. Of course each boy put a large amount of energy into that one acre of ground; but that points a most valuable principle, farmers must soon learn to get the same crop from half the land. In these clubs boys are taught what constitutes a good ear of corn. They learn to test seed. Most of the work is done out of school. It is being carried into high school in some places. By means of this work we are holding more boys on the farm. Of course, some ought to go to the city; but many would remain on the farm if their eyes were opened to the possibilities of the farm. In the case of one boy who has carried on an experimental plot of ground on his father's farm, the boy has been sought for as a speaker at farmers' institutes and his letters to the press are valuable and are read with interest. He will certainly become a proficient agriculturist. Domestic science for the girls is found in some high schools and even in rural schools. County farmers' institutes take up domestic science work at their sessions. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON AN EQUAL DIVISION OF THE BY GILBERT B. MORRISON, PRINCIPAL OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL, The question of dividing the twelve years of the public-school course equally between the primary and secondary schools, giving six years to each, presents a twofold aspect: the first is educational or pedagogic; the second is economic. In the consideration of the first, the educational, it is pertinent to ask what would be the gain or loss to the pupils if the time that now occupies them in the seventh and eighth grades in the primary schools were employed in a school using secondary-school methods, that is, in a high school in which the course and work would be extended downward and adapted to meet the needs of children two years younger than those formerly admitted. In approaching the pedagogic side of this question, we would first call attention to two distinct phases in the process of learning. These may be called symbolic, or the acquisition of the symbols of thought, and substantial, or the exercise of thought processes that employ objects of the physical world, showing their properties and relations to one another, and that also employ human experience in its relations to the physical world and in the social relations which exist between individuals. There is a growing belief that the schools of the past have drifted too far toward the purely symbolic. As an illustration of this, the primary schools of our large cities, as shown by statistics of the United States commissioner of education, have been, and still are, employing on an average 30 per cent. of the whole time of the grades in the process of learning to read, and another 20 per cent. on the formal process of learning to spell. This time is spent in formal reading and spelling exercises, in which the content of the lesson is incidental and the calling and spelling of words are paramount. A majority of the committee are inclined to believe that the requirements of purely symbolic training should be limited during the early part of a process of education to the time necessary to acquire the power of calling ordinary words at sight. Words are the symbols of thought, but the ready perception of them merely as words must be acquired somewhat independently of the meaning that they convey. By this it is of course not to be inferred that they should be studied apart from their meaning, but we here refer to them simply as symbols to be recognized as units in sight perception. When this power is acquired, further continuation of the reading lesson, merely as such, is probably a waste of time, inasmuch as every thought process which the exercises of the school furnish requires the constant use of words. There is a growing feeling that much is learned in our schools today by great painstaking, which if left until the riper experience of tomorrow, would be learned incidentally, and without conscious effort. It is further believed that the tendency to symbolize second-hand ideas early in the course is often continued into the higher grades, and even into the high school in the form of nature-studies from books, and of textbook science. These general reflections prepare the way for the consideration of the question before us. From the standpoint of the pupils, there appear to be several advantages to be gained by a change both in method and in subject matter of the seventh and eighth grades. This change might possibly be made in the schools without removing these grades from the places they now occupy, and might be made by the schools themselves. But, since the methods and the subject-matter to which reference is made, would be of a nature more in accord with those which are already familiar to the high-school teachers, the belief seems to be growing that the incorporation of the seventh and eighth grades into the high-school course might more surely accomplish the object sought. The committee, after considerable correspondence, finds that while on the question of the proposed change there is not a complete unanimity of opinion, there are preponderating arguments in its favor. In presenting these opinions we wish to disclaim any intention either to disparage the work of the elementary schools or to praise the present work of the high schools. We are mindful that the most urgent need in making such a change would be a better knowledge of the child than is usually displayed either by the grade teacher or by the average teacher in the high school. The reasons in favor of an equal division are as follows: 1. This plan would give the pupils the advantage of being taught by teachers specially trained for the different branches, such as English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. Much gain would come from the better teaching that results from the adaptation of the teacher to work for which he is best fitted, and for which he has made special preparation. This, it should be understood, need not be in the direction of any tendency toward requiring the pupils to specialize. It only means that a teacher, specially adapted by nature and education to teach a certain branch, can do more for his pupils in that subject than when he is required to divide his attention among several branches for which he is less fitted, and for which he has made no special preparation. It is within the last twenty years that this principle has come to be recognized in high-school work. It seems clear that the better a teacher knows a subject, the better he will understand its real essentials, and better know what to omit as the work passes down to the elements. It is now generally recognized that an artist can do more to interest a child in drawing than can a teacher who has no talent or interest in art; that a physicist can arouse an interest in the laws and phenomena of nature when the general teacher would fail; that the skilled mechanic can command the respect and interest in toolwork when the novice would become the laughingstock of his pupils; that it takes a musician to teach time and harmony so that it will be appreciated. Altho there is not a consensus of opinion on this point, the belief is growing that it should not be different with the teaching of arithmetic, of geography, of history, or of grammar. Another effect of the suggested change would be to provide departmental study for many who do not enter the high school. Some significant data on this question has recently been obtained by a questionnaire recently sent out by Mr. C. S. Hartwell under the auspices of the Brooklyn, N. Y., Teachers' Association. Of the 362 answers to the question as to whether the extension of departmental methods downward would provide such methods for many who do not enter high school, 268 answered yes, and 94 answered no. In answer to the question: "Would you favor departmental teaching thruout the three last years of the grammar school at least in large cities?" out of 451 answers, 324 answered yes, and 127 answered no. The individual opinions of your committee stand in about the same proportion, the majority favoring departmental extension at least to the seventh and eighth grades, especially in the large cities. In small towns and villages the additional expense would make the change more difficult. The objection to departmental methods and special teachers comes in the main from private schools in the East, in which the teachers are college graduates. In these schools the English plan of form-master is thought to have advantages. The arguments in favor of departmental methods have in the main come from the public schools, where we have to rely on women who, however efficient they may be, have usually at best only normal school training. 2. The departmental plan would give the children the advantage of daily contact with several personalities instead of that all-day association with one teacher which often breeds an artificial psychic atmosphere that savors of the abnormal. It requires more genius than is possessed by the average teacher, with a room full of children from ten to fourteen years of age, to preserve for six hours, an atmosphere perfectly wholesome and free from maudlin sentimentality on the one hand or from a carping artificial restraint on the other. The apprehension usually felt at the untying of the apron string is quite unnecessary and results from a misjudgment of the true conditions. The consensus of scientific opinion is that the dawn of adolescense calls for a change in the child's environment, that the period of love of change, adventure, and individual initiative has arrived and should be indulged by giving him more freedom and elbow room than are usually accorded in the seventhand eighth-grade rooms of an elementary school where the child is made to suffer the cramping influences of one teacher in a somewhat monotonous drill in which perhaps the three R's occupy too much of the time. The change of teachers from hour to hour which the child experiences in the secondary school under the departmental plan, answers a natural craving for movement and variety which takes possession of him at the dawn of adolescence and accompanies him till its close. The committee desires to emphasize that it is presupposed that the teachers in the high school are exercising a co-operating oversight of the pupil, and that they consult together concerning his welfare and proper management. 3. In the high school, the pupils would have the advantage of laboratories in which elementary science might be advantageously begun much earlier than it is at present. The science in present high-school courses is not elementary enough for beginners and should be preceded by a year or two of simplified objective lessons which should form the basis of written and oral expression. Such work done by carefully selected teachers and with proper apparatus would greatly enrich the pupil's curriculum, and would give full play to the practice and exercise of the common symbols of thought and would be in strong contrast to the ancient methods of laboriously teaching the symbols as ends in themselves. This again is presupposing that this thoughtwork would be properly correlated with the written and oral expressions in the English classes thru carefully prepared and corrected note-books and essays. 4. If in the high school, the manual-training shops could be modified, enlarged, and employed to start the pupil in this work without sending him off to another school in another part of the city, the work itself, being under one head, could be unified and graded to better advantage than at present, and its true relation to drawing could better be shown and brought out. 5. The work in the modern languages could be begun earlier and continued longer than at present, thereby making it possible to learn the language naturally by means of conversation and primary reading before making the study of grammar and construction such laborious and strenuous affairs. Grammar is always in order, except when followed as a business. Many teachers are beginning to question the value of studying the modern foreign languages merely as dead languages by syntactic translations for disciplinary purposes. If our pupils could have a year or two of primary training in this line, a majority of your committee believe that the work now attempted in the high school would become more efficient and less artificial. 6. The downward extension of secondary school work would mitigate the present abruptness of the transition from the district school. The distinct break between the primary and secondary schools, the radical change of method on entering the higher school constitutes one of the chief evils of the system. This transition results in the withdrawal of 50 per cent. of those entering the high school during the first year. The committee unanimously believes that the downward extension of the secondary school might check this enormous loss of pupils in what seems to be the critical period. We do not believe, however, that this downward extension would to any considerable degree shorten the school life of the pupil or that the change should be undertaken with that end in view, but that it should be done rather to the end of fitting more thoroly the pupils for what is now the first year in the high school. There is no doubt that the numerous failures during the earlier years in the high school are caused largely by a lack of preparation for this work. This preparation should be made thru departmental methods in an elementary form not with a view to gaining time but for the purpose of that development, assimilation and growth needed for the grade of work now constituting the high-school course. The element of growth that requires time should not be ignored and extension downward of high-school work should therefore be made for the purpose of a better preparation for higher work and not for the earlier beginning of it in its present form. Elementary science and observation lessons under special teachers, constructional geometry, concrete graphical notions in algebra, elementary lessons in foreign languages by direct methods, and a large amount of easy English reading more for the purpose of inculcating habits of reading than for learning rules of reading, should, we think, take the place of some of the reading, writing, and arithmetic as now practiced in the seventh and eighth grades. Such a course would be natural and continuous and it would lessen the abruptness that now exists between the primary and secondary schools. Such a preliminary mastery of the elements would make it possible to treat the subjects of the secondary school in a more leisurely and more satisfactory manner. 7. In the opinion of the Committee the six years' division would cause more pupils to enter the ninth year than do under the present plan. The present plan which is generally understood to constitute a completion of the three R's educates parents into the belief |
