Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/350

334 hand—tends rather, indeed, to make it too heavy. Moreover, the work is rather hard for children. In basket-work, the fingers alone are exercised; few tools are required or mastered, the younger children can not finish off a basket, and it is an additional disadvantage that the work is done sitting. Bookbinding is too limited and too difficult; moreover, it does not afford sufficient opportunities of progressive difficulty. Work with cardboard is in many respects very suitable, but it trains the fingers rather than the hand, and does not sufficiently develop the bodily vigor. On the whole, then, working in wood is recommended, and it is remarkable that it was long ago suggested by Rousseau:

Tout bien considéré, le métier que j'aimerais le mieux qui fût du goût de mon élève est celui de menuisier. II est propre, il est utile, il peut s'exercer dans la maison, il tient suffisamment le corps en haleine; il exige dans l'ouvrier de l'adresse et de l'industrie et dans la forme des ouvrages que l'utilité détermine, l'élégance et le goût ne sont pas exclus.

Abrahamson has prepared a hundred models, which the children are successively taught to make, commencing with a very easy form, and passing on to others more and more difficult. The series begins with a simple wooden peg, and the series includes a paper-knife, spoon, shovel, axe-handle, flower-stand, mallet, boot-jack, a cubic décimètre, a mason's level, chair, butter-mold, and ends with a milk-pail.

When the model is finished it is inspected. If unsatisfactory, it is destroyed; yet if it passes muster, the child is allowed to take it home. It is all his own work; no one has helped. It is, indeed, found important that the children should make something which they can carry away, and much stress is laid on the condition that they should make it entirely themselves, from the beginning to the end. If one does one part, and one another, if one begins and another finishes it, neither practically takes much interest in it.

The objects made are all useful. At first, some were selected which were playthings, or merely ornamental, but the parents took little interest in articles of this character; they were regarded as mere waste of time, and have gradually been discarded.

The different objects must be gradually more difficult. When the child is able to make any model satisfactorily, he passes on to the next. He must never be kept doing the same thing over and over again. Useless repetition is almost sure to disgust. The man has to do the same thing over and over again, but the child works to learn, not to live.

Lastly, I may mention that the objects selected are such as not to require any expensive outlay in the matter of tools.

The result, we are assured, gives much satisfaction to the parents, and great pleasure to the children.

A weak point in our present educational system is, that it does not