Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/520

502 later drawings are mere copies. They have enough in them that is original to require that they shall be understood before they can be made. The free-hand work is no less important. From an evolutionary point of view it is even more important, for it requires greater power and greater concentration, and in developing the aesthetic faculty it makes an even more substantial contribution to life as a fine art. The work is similar to the elementary work of the art schools. It is in touch with the shops in supplying all the designs for the ornamental iron work and for the wood carving, and it includes, on the constructive side, an important part of manual training, and one that I hope to see still more developed in the future, the work in clay modeling.

I have purposely left the consideration of the strictly manual training part of the curriculum—that is, the tool work—to the last, and I have done this that I might make it very clear that the humanistic studies, and the mathematics, and the science, and the drawing are quite as essential a part of the school as the tool work; and also that I might make it very clear, beyond all peradventure and even perhaps at the expense of repetition, that manual training is a scheme of education, a deliberate attempt to shape evolution toward definite social and moral and æsthetic ends, and is very far from being a mere system of hand training. At its best, the school is a practical as well as a philosophic unit. It has one purpose and one method.

The instruction in tool work occupies about one third of the entire time—that is, ten periods a week. In the first year, at the older schools, this is equally divided between wood and metal. In the disposition of the time, the different schools are pretty much agreed. In the details of the work no two schools are alike. All the manual training work is still fluid and experimental; but, to hear some of us talk, you might think that there was something quite fixed and sacred about it all. You have perhaps remarked the very solemn and knowing air that the tailor takes on when he assures you that a certain coat or gown is or is not in style. I never quite believe him; but, nevertheless, I am always impressed that any one should even pretend to have such inscrutable knowledge. It is a little bit the same here.

The wood work during the first year may consist of two terms of joinery and one of turning. It is very attractive work. There is something fresh and sweet about the smell of the wood. It conjures up all sorts of pleasant pictures of sawmills and logging camps, and, though it is a passing pain to remember that the tree has been cut down, if you happen to be a lover of trees, still the wood never seems quite a dead thing. The feeling grows very strong, as you stand in the wood shop, that you would like to stop there and go to work