Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/343

Rh and last of all from a more abstract source, from philosophy. Let us glance at these three elements.

Manual training permeates the whole Froebelian philosophy. Arnold has said that religion is morality touched with emotion. One might characterize the kindergarten as activity touched with sentiment. As far as may be, the activity is all self-directed, for that is the only sort that has any educational value. The hand comes in as the instrument of much of this activity. It is particularly to be noted, however, that the training is quite without industrial import. It has no ulterior purpose, but is simply and solely directed to the development of the child as an organism—an organism whose function is thinking and feeling and acting. The activities of the kindergarten are manifold, but the motif is always the same. It is canstantlyconstantly [sic] educational. Between the kindergarten and the manual training high school there is a gap of between seven and eight years, the dreary desert of the elementary school, where I sometimes think that children are taught with infinite patience things that they would have found out for themselves next year. But the spirit of the kindergarten has crossed this gap, and has made itself felt in the high school as the educational advocate of manual training. Froebel built true and firm in resting the foundations of the kindergarten upon the self-activity of children, and its motif, development, carried into the work of older children, must take some form of manual training. And so manual training came knocking at the doors of the high school, not alone from above, from the technical schools, but from below, from the kindergarten as well, but from this side it was a triple knock.

In the far north, in Sweden, there had been growing up a system of manual training for elementary schools based entirely upon the educational idea. It was not called manual training, but was known as "sloyd," which signifies handy or dexterous. It involves the idea both of planning and executing—that is to say, the idea of creative work—and is a direct and beautiful application of that principle of self-activity which Froebel made the corner stone of the kindergarten. It is permeated with the true Froebelian spirit, and is quite worthy to follow the kindergarten in a rational scheme of education. As the basis of sloyd we have the old peasant hand work, rich both in beauty and in sentiment. This has been systematized into a scheme of regular school work, and has been made purely educational. But it has not lost, I am happy to say, the sincerity and reality that characterized the old peasant handicraft, and I value it so highly, not alone for its true educational spirit, but quite as much for the warm human sentiment that is an essential part of it. Sloyd is very thoroughgoing in its methods. It strives