Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/519

Rh three to six periods a week in the older schools are given to chemistry, a practical laboratory course in inorganic; and three periods to physics, to the special study of steam and electricity. The tendency at one time was to make the electrical work almost too practical. It grew to be weak from a lack of fundamental instruction. But this tendency is now being corrected, and the work put on a much sounder basis. There are, however, plenty of chances for practical work. The schools all have their own steam engines and dynamos, switchboards and installations of electric lights and bells. There is plenty to be done in running the engine and dynamo, and in repairing and renewing the several installations, as well as in the more strictly quantitative work of the laboratory proper. To an active boy the attractions of electricity are simply irresistible, and this department, which in the early days was known by the too ambitious name of the electrical engineering department, has not only been a source of lively interest, but in no small measure a determining factor in the future career of many of the manual training graduates.

The work in drawing in nearly all the manual training schools is admirable. It continues throughout the three years; five periods a week during the first and second years, and four periods during the third. A little more than half the time is given to mechanical drawing, or, as we prefer to call it, constructive drawing, and the work is in the closest possible relation with the manual departments. The practice is not uniform. In some schools the boys make the drawings for all the articles that they afterward construct in the workshops. This has the manifest advantage of giving reality to the work, and making it continuous and practical. On the other hand, one can draw much faster than one can construct in wood and metal, and many of the projects, being somewhat similar from the draughtsman point of view, do not offer sufficient range of experience to form an ideal course. In many of the schools, therefore, it is growing to be the custom to modify the drawing, giving only a few selected exercises of the manual departments and the special projects, and adding an independent course of drawings chosen because they involve useful problems in draughting, and require the original working out of details. The steam engine is naturally a prolific source of such problems. By giving an outline dimensioned drawing, and then assigning to different boys a specific position of the piston, it is possible to teach not a little mechanics along with the drawing. In the same way the development of curved surfaces in the drawings for the tinsmithing work involves a helpful amount of applied geometry. As a rule, the manual training schools turn out very good draughtsmen. I think this is because the work is so real. Few of the