Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/511

Rh naturally lead up to it. The endeavor of all educators should be to establish such a relation between school instruction and the occupations of life as to prevent any break of continuity in passing from one to the other. The methods by which we gain information and experience in the busy world should be identical with those adopted in schools.

It is because the opposite theory has so long prevailed, that our school-training has proved so inadequate a preparation for the real work of life. This was not the case in former times; and the demand for technical instruction, both in our elementary and in our secondary schools, is a protest against the contrast which has so long existed between the subjects and methods of school-teaching and the practical work of every-day life.

We are always justly complaining that in this country children leave school at too young an age, before they can have had time to properly assimilate the knowledge they have acquired, with the result that they soon forget a great part of the little they have learned. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, when they begin to feel the want of technical instruction, they are wholly unprepared to avail themselves of the opportunities for obtaining it now brought within their reach. It is to remedy this state of things that continuation schools and recreative classes are much needed. But there can be little doubt, if elementary education were made more practical, that parents would be more willing, even at some sacrifice, to let their children benefit by it. They are often led to take their children away from school, because they do not see much use in the "schooling." Of course, the desire to secure the child's early earnings operates in very many cases; but I am convinced that it would be easier to persuade parents to forego these earnings, if the school-teaching had more direct reference to the work in which the children are likely to be subsequently occupied.

Now, in order that manual training may serve the purpose of an intellectual discipline, the methods of instruction must be carefully considered. That the training of the hand and eye, and the development of the mental faculties, are the true objects of the instruction should never be lost sight of. In many respects, the instruction should partake of the character of an ordinary object-lesson. Before the pupil commences to apply his tools to the material in hand, he should learn something of its nature and properties. The teacher, in a few words introductory to each lesson, should explain to his pupils the distinguishing characteristics of different kinds of wood, as met with in the shop and as found in Nature, and also the differences in the structure and properties of wood according to its sections, treatment, etc. And he should illustrate his lessons by reference to specimens and examples, a collection of which should be found in every school workshop. Something should be said of the countries from which timber is imported, and the conditions under which it is bought and sold, and in