Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/512

496 this way the material to be manipulated should be made the center of a series of scientific object-lessons.

Concurrently with the practice in the use of any tool, the pupil should learn its construction, the reason of its shape, and the history of its development from other simpler forms. The saw, the plane, the chisel, and the calipers should each be made the subject of an object-lesson to the pupils. In the same way, the teacher should explain the purposes of the different parts of constructive work, and should have models of tenon, mortise, dovetailing, and other joints to illustrate his explanations. Fifteen or twenty minutes thus spent might be made the means of stimulating the intelligence and of exercising the observing and reasoning faculties of the children, and of enabling them to fully understand the work they are doing and the instruments they are using.

Further, the children should be taught, from the very first, to work from correct scale-drawings, made by themselves from their own rough sketches. How simple soever the object may be which the pupil is to construct, it should exactly correspond with his own drawings. In this way, the workshop instruction supplements and gives a meaning to the drawing-lesson, and the school-teaching is made to have a direct bearing upon the subsequent work of the artisan. Dr. Woodward, the instructor of the St. Louis Manual Training-School, who has had considerable experience in organizing and superintending workshop instruction, tells us that "the habit of working from drawings and to nice measurements gives to students confidence in themselves altogether new"; and he justly claims that "it is the birthright of every child to be taught the three methods of expression: 1. By the written, printed, or spoken word. 2. By the pencil and brush, using the various kinds of graphic art. 3. Through the instrumentality of tools and materials, which enable one to express thought in the concrete." The Committee of Council on Education, in their recent report, speaking of the teaching of cooking to girls, say: "After the three elementary subjects and sewing, no subject is of such importance for the class of girls who attend public elementary schools, and lessons in it, if properly given, will be found to be not only of practical use, but to have the effect of awakening the interest and intelligence of the children." Surely, what is true of sewing and cooking in the case of girls, is true to a greater extent of drawing and handicrafts in the case of boys.

In many parts of the Continent manual training has now for some years been associated with elementary instruction. In France, Belgium, Austria, Holland, and Sweden the workshop is a part of the school-building; and in the United States the number of manual training-schools of higher grade, somewhat similar to the well-known