Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/67

Rh been conducted on the laboratory method, and the best schools count electrical and chemical laboratories a necessary part of their equipment. It is only very recently, however, that physics and natural history have been made laboratory courses, and the usage is still far from general. It has long been desired, but in most schools practical and financial difficulties have stood in the way. These are being gradually overcome and the science work is being put upon a sound foundation. It requires some little executive ability and considerable in the way of material resources to provide laboratory facilities for several hundred boys in so many different branches, and the schools which fail in this respect must not be criticised too severely. In our own school, for example, with a capacity for about three hundred and fifty boys, we have for the manual work of all sorts, seven laboratories or work rooms in addition to two large drawing rooms and the dynamo and engine rooms, and we find the accommodation quite insufficient. The character of the science work is in all cases elementary. So little is done in this line, in the lower schools that the high schools have to begin practically at the very foundation. The time devoted to science does, however, permit some material progress to be made. It will be noticed that the work proceeds with marked singleness of purpose. Except in the senior year only one branch is taken up in a term, and this concentration of effort leads to results. Even in the senior year, but two branches are taken up during the entire year, and these are too closely related to lead to a dissipation of thought.

Half the day is gone. The occupations are classed as academic, but they have all involved some form of manual work—writing, drawing, measuring, adjusting instruments, handling chemical apparatus, dissecting. The manual part has been apparently incidental, but its exercise of the senses and its reactions upon the brain have been no less certain. Let us keep this in mind, for no gulf is crossed in passing to the other half of the day, to the more obvious manual occupations of the drawing room and workshop.

A school of three hundred boys requires two teachers of drawing—one for the constructive drawing and one for the art work. They are kept very busy, too, for the classes must be as small as practicable and the, lesson comes every day. The work in constructive drawing is continuous, and is kept in close touch with the workshops. It begins with the simplest sort of mechanical drawing, such as a right-lined exercise for the wood shop done in pencil on manilla paper, and passes by easy stages to the more difficult and complicated mechanical drawings of the senior year—gear wheels, bridge trusses, valve movements, and the like. The work in constructive drawing is held to be a very important part of the manual training course. Its value is both for its