Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/364

352 of the shop train mental power rather than load the memory; they fill the mind with the solid merchandise of knowledge, and not with its empty packing-cases."—(Professor E. P. Seaver, Boston.)

3. —The finest fruit of education is character; and the more complete and symmetrical, the more perfectly balanced the education, the choicer the fruit.

To begin with, I have noted the good effect of occupation. The programme of a manual-training school has something to interest and inspire every boy. The daily session is six full hours, but I have never found it too long. The school is not a bore, and holidays, except for the name of the thing, are unpopular. I have been forced to make strict rules to prevent the boys from crowding into the shops and drawing-rooms on Saturdays and after school-hours. There is little tendency, therefore, to stroll about, looking for excitement. The exercises of the day fill the mind with thoughts pleasant and profitable, at home and at night. A boy's natural passion for handling, fixing, and making things is systematically guided into channels instructive and useful, as parents freely relate.

Again, success in one branch or study (shop-exercises are marked like those of the recitation-room) encourages effort in others, and the methods of the shop affect the whole school. Gradually the students acquire two most valuable habits which are certain to influence their whole lives for good—namely, precision and method. As Professor Runkle says, "Whatever cultivates care, close observation, exactness, patience, and method, must be valuable training and preparation for all studies and all pursuits."

Dr. Adler has pointed out, with great force and elegance, the influence of the exercises of the shop upon the formation of character. This influence, he holds, will be "nothing short of revolutionary, inasmuch as it will help to overthrow many of the impure conceptions that prevail at the present day." The tasks we set are not to be judged by commercial standards; our standard is one hundred per cent; the articles we make are not to be sold; they have no pecuniary value; they are merely typical forms; their worth consists in being true, or in being beautiful, as the case may be.

The manual-training school, when well conducted, seems to me to furnish to its pupils just the opportunity which Walter Scott, in "Waverley," says that his young hero was losing forever—"the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application; of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation—an art far more essential than even that intimate acquaintance with classical learning which is the primary object of study" (at school).

4. —The proverbially poor judgments of scholars have led to the popular belief that theory is one thing and practice a very different thing; that theoretically a