Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/349

Rh form of self-activity that Froebel seized upon. But the desire to make things, the constructive faculty, is also there, and this is utilized in the weaving and other forms of paper work. In older children the play impulse weakens and the constructive impulse strengthens. It is this latter impulse that manual training appeals to. In doing this there is large choice of method. But the essential element is always the motive power, the desire. This bears the same relation to all that follows that the water or steam power does to the mill. It keeps it running.

The formal manual training does not concern itself specifically with the principle of interest. It lays out a series of abstract exercises, involving the primary tool operations in wood and metal. The exercises are as abstract as the propositions of geometry. They are carefully graded so as to be increasingly difficult, and are all dimensioned. Thus in wood, the first year's work may consist in a series of from seventeen to twenty-one exercises, beginning with a simple rectangular parallelopipedon, and ending with a somewhat elaborate dovetailed box. In the second year the joinery course gives place to pattern making, the creation of forms which are to be used as molding patterns in casting in lead and iron. Here, too, the exercises are carefully graded, beginning with simple forms and ending with quite difficult problems. The sequence differs in different schools, and no two schools use precisely the same exercises. But this is a detail which is not essential to the method. There are usually three terms a year—terms of about thirteen weeks each—and as the wood work runs for two years in the typical three-year manual training school, this gives six terms in all for the accomplishment of the instruction in wood. It is customary to devote one term to wood carving, and another term to wood turning. This latter is sometimes introduced during the first year, if there are enough turning lathes for all the boys to work at once, and sometimes it is given as a secondary course, running along with the joinery and pattern making.

The same principles hold in the metal working. It is all carefully graded. During the first two years it includes the primary operations of the machine shop and the blacksmith shop—chipping, filing, and fitting; molding and casting; forging and welding, ornamental ironwork and tinsmithing. During the third year the manual work, exclusive of the science laboratories and the drawing rooms, is usually confined to machine-tool practice, and here the time is divided between abstract exercises and finished projects.

The course is entirely logical. It was originally planned for the one purpose of imparting technical skill, and it does this in a large and surprising manner. It seems incredible that some of the work turned out could have been done by young boys.!Nor do the boys