Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/403

Rh any particular number of lessons, appears too sanguine altogether if compared with actual reality. It is true that a given number of lessons of practical instruction in the tool-house may give quite a broad understanding of the elements of the trade to students conversant with its theoretical knowledge; but such is not granted, and hardly possible, in the case spoken of. Theoretical mechanics calls for its quota of higher mathematics, which is here outside of the question. Practically, then, we run the risk of turning out Jacks of all trades and masters of none. The pupil graduating from any of these departments will in the best of cases be an indifferent artisan. He will certainly have acquired an acquaintance with tools, and will possess considerable insight into the special arts, but empirical, detached, and uncorrelated as his knowledge would be about the processes, the habitual routine, a good portion of life's experience, will be still wanted to make him a desirable article in the industrial market. Besides, although it unmistakably would increase the efficiency of our workingmen, public schools can not be converted into special trade schools. Thus it is clear that the field is open as yet for a theory and practice in industrial training, which, taking hold of the necessities felt, and basing a system of instruction upon a rational method of analysis of the age of the pupil and his other educational requirements, would suggest a method that would finally bring the discipline within the ranks of serious educational measures.

The understanding of the cause of a given movement is almost equivalent to the mastery of the movement. Considering the increased interest in industrial training, one can perceive in it the reaction of two great demands for change and relief—to wit, the economical industrial, and the educational proper. In industry, the world, propelled by the advance in knowledge of natural sciences, has outgrown the old apprentice system. Sciences applied have made the old trade secrets a tradition of the past. The multiplicity of machinery has made the special skill of handwork, previously so important, only a secondary consideration; it has also occasioned a subdivision of labor so definite and minute, as apparently to make even the special knowledge of a whole trade not indispensable, so long as a workingman may simply be continually employed to attend to some special machine. The result of such industrial development, considered from that point of view, has only diminished the need of personal initiative, and gradually changed the "previous master of tools into the tool of a machine." New patents, improvements in process or machinery, introduction of new devices, so frequent in industry to-day, have diminished also the permanency of employment. A special worker or feeder on. x y patent machine becomes obsolete as soon as x' y' replace the previously used x y; and, one-sidedly