Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/352

336 projects accurate and fully dimensioned, and yet largely free-hand. To fulfill all these requirements—to have the work proceed strictly as a result of the self-activity of the child, to invest it with an emotional interest, to make it sound physiologically and æsthetically—is not easy, and much ingenuity is required and will be required to work out a satisfactory set of models. It is just as important to have them carefully graded. It will never do to discourage the child by too great initial difficulties, nor to waste time by adding difficulties too slowly. There must be constant progress. When a bean stalk gets to be ten inches high, the next thing for it to do is to get to be eleven inches. And not only do the projects vary, but the materials as well. Wood and metal and clay, even leather and fabrics, all lend themselves to the purpose and are all utilized. If this work is to create that many-sided interest in life of which we have been speaking, it must have many sides to it. The projects, then, ought to have diversified social functions. The first interests of the child are all domestic, and it is entirely fitting that the first articles he makes should be borrowed from that aspect of life. But these interests want to broaden. With increased constructive skill, they may well take in more ambitious projects in both arts and science—steam engines, dynamos, cameras, scientific apparatus of all kinds, architectural units, and all the diversified objects of a rich and varied social life. This is in part the practice in the present manual training schools, as far as the third year's work is concerned. The graduating class makes one or more finished projects of a practical kind, sometimes in miniature, often of full size, so that the article may take its place in the equipment of the school. And I am glad to say that more and more the tendency is to substitute these projects for the less fruitful abstractions, and so to realize the educational ideal. Mr. Sayre, the principal of the Central School in Philadelphia, told me the other day that such was the tendency there. It was also the tendency at the Northeast School. Mr. Richards, of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, writes me that not only are they substituting simple finished pieces for the abstract exercises, but also that they are giving the preference to small individual projects over larger ones requiring group work, and that they are making these changes because they believe that in this way they develop greater individuality and arouse a keener interest. Dr. Belfield, the director of the Chicago Manual Training School, writes practically the same thing, and adds that they will probably make no more large pieces, except where they are needed in the equipment of the school, work quite justified by the altruism which it fosters. It would be easy to multiply testimony, but I think we should gain nothing by it. The point I want to make is that manual training in America, in spite of our