Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/72

 is done, and it is done, I believe, in a livelier and happier spirit. It is quite possible that the boy himself places a higher value upon the project than upon the process, but no harm is done. It does not change their relative values. I am disposed to believe, too, that the more unconscious the spirit in which a boy works the finer will be his results. It is not necessary to be forever suggesting to him that he is being educated. It is quite enough if we older people keep that in mind. The boy himself had much better be engaged with the activities through which we propose to educate him. When one has been teaching for some years—let us say for seven, so that I may speak from experience—one comes to value increasingly the quality of unconsciousness. The machinery of education ought to be kept strictly out of sight. The child nature is at its best when it is spontaneous. The post-graduate course is still tentative. The chief feature in the present plan is the elective character of the manual work. Three courses are offered in art, engineering, and chemistry. It is possible that, with the incorporation of the fourth year into the undergraduate curriculum, groups of parallel studies will be made elective.

I have been trying to tell, in a very plain and unvarnished way, just what we do at a manual training school. In the next paper I hope to tell why we do it, and, having done it, what it leads to.



NE need not be specially interested in watchmaking in order to be fascinated with what he will see of watches and watch work in Switzerland.

The great number of jewelers' shops in the cities, displaying watches in every conceivable form and setting—as eight-day watches, watches in pencils, studs, cane-heads, bracelets, rings, etc.—will be sure to make him loiter fascinated in front of each window he passes. For minute and ingenious work the Swiss outdo the world. Indeed, to what an extent the Swiss are furnishing the world with its pocket time may be guessed from the estimated exports in that line, which are now said to exceed twenty million dollars annually, and this figure can hardly include that unknown amount of such wares bought to some extent by almost every tourist as a present or a souvenir. In almost every European country the watches offered for sale are in large part Swiss. The only rival of the Swiss watch is the American, and even here, despite our development of the industry and high tariffs, the smaller patterns are chiefly Swiss.