Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/68

58 bearing upon all mechanical problems and for the discipline it involves in intelligence and accuracy. It may properly be made a branch of applied mathematics, and as such has a very large thought content in addition to its manual requirements. The art work is more varied. It includes free-hand and perspective drawing, design, clay modeling, and the simpler forms of architectural draughting, as the drawing of floor plans, cross-sections, and front and side elevations. A manual training school can not be made an art school, or indeed the school of any specialty, for this would be fatal to its broader purpose of giving the faculties such general training that an intelligent choice of occupation may afterward be made. Nevertheless, the introduction to such work as it is possible to give has led in a number of cases to successful careers in architecture and kindred arts.

We have now arrived, by a somewhat circuitous path it is true, at the department which differentiates the manual training school from other high schools—at the manual training itself. This slow approach has been justified, I hope, by its success in placing the manual training work in proper relation to the rest of the curriculum, and this residue in proper relation to it. A manual training school is a unit, and as such every part of its curriculum is integral.

The boy just entering the school—he is commonly about fourteen or a little over—begins at once to work in wood and metal. He has five hours a week of each. It is found better to work in double periods, to save loss of time in putting on and off the aprons, washing hands, and so on, so that in reality he has six hours one week and four hours the next. It is a pleasant sight to see twenty-five bright little fellows at work in the wood shop. There is an air of serious earnestness about them and a sense of being all alive that promises a great deal for the future. Each has a workbench of his own and a full set of carpenter's tools at his hand. He begins by learning the use of the tools and the simpler operations of sawing and planing. When this is accomplished, the first exercise is taken up. It is a simple parallelopipedon; but each face must be smooth and true, each angle exactly a right angle, and each dimension accurate. There is more in the work than appears at first glance, and few of the little workmen escape spoiling one or two pieces before they fashion an exercise that will bear the rigid examination of the teacher. The next exercise involves chiseling and is a little more difficult. Then come joints of various sorts, framing and nailing exercises, boxes and drawers. About a dozen exercises are finished in the joinery department during the first year. The rest of the wood work is in pattern-making and starts with the opening of the second term at New Year. This requires greater nicety of touch,