Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/345

Rh themselves solely to the outer event, and leave the motive, the idea back of it all, quite undisturbed. The real pivot upon which the manual training movement swings is in the idea. In presenting manual training to you as a scheme in which two opposite and antagonistic ideals are now contending for the mastery, I do but state the fact. But I have large faith that the educational ideal will ultimately prevail, and this in spite of the fact that the schools themselves—that is, the manual training schools proper—are largely in the hands of the industrialists, and avowedly represent the artisan point of view. I have tried to do full justice to that point of view, and I want to say again that as a substitute for the commercial training of the average high school, with its bookkeeping, and commercial arithmetic and commercial geography, and commercial ideas of life generally, even the artisan training is a marked advance. It is to be welcomed by all who value a more sturdy living and who esteem power. As a man, the decent artisan is infinitely ahead of the smug shopkeeper. Furthermore, the same artisan point of view, by cultivating self-reliance, by spreading self-supporting ideas of life, by imparting useful skill, by encouraging self-activity, does render a large social service, and does, quite unconsciously, possess a large educational power. I should be unwilling in any way to belittle this service. It is something to be socially grateful for, and to be appreciated at its full value. But the criticism remains true that what is not the best is bad, and the artisan point of view, not being the best, I must maintain is relatively bad.

Many of the training schools represent this artisan view, and one need never go far afield to find striking examples. In my own city of Philadelphia, which I believe is chiefly known in New England for the excellence of her butter and the whiteness of her doorsteps, there are two manual training schools, in which from the very start the educational purpose has been bravely upheld. The two ideals have been in conflict there as elsewhere, for we are a thrifty city with some talent for turning an honest penny, in spite of our love of comfort and grandfathers, but the fight has been a good one, and in the main a successful one.

It is always more effective to paint in black and white than it is in neutral tones, but in presenting these two views of manual training as so sharply distinct, I have not been bent, I think, by artistic motives. I believe the two views to be as sharply distinct as I have painted them.

Assuming, then, the educational point of view on the part of the teacher, we may turn to the second element, the psychology of the child, as our monistic philosophy sees it, and may inquire into the methods which that psychology suggests.