Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/552

534 and aim of the schools being to induce observation and comparison as a basis of thinking and doing.

Calisthenics and military drill induce physical development and muscular co-ordination, quick observation, and prompt subordination. These vital principles of physiological education have practical and intellectual application in the exercises in freehand drawing, modeling in clay and wood, in sloyd, in basket and straw braiding, and in the phonetic and articulatonarticulation [sic] drills and musical exercises of the classroom, each being the initial of a lifelong occupation. Believing as we do that "the working hand makes strong the working brain," there is always something for the child to do, some object to be made; not an abstract thing to be put out of sight when finished, but something of use to himself, or to one for whom he cares. Work constantly stimulated through the emotions is his, all along the line from kindergarten, classroom, and sloyd, to shoe shop, printing office, and other useful trades. Should his limit of application be soon reached, and the avenue of happiness and safe living be for him reduced to one single groove, the more active pursuits of the farm, the garden, laundry, or household service will interest and provide vent for superfluous energy or by constant stimulus keep him from retrograding or lapsing into apathy. For these varied occupations he is all the better fitted by the previous training of the senses received early in the schools, and if happily he should have there learned to read or draw, to color, to carve, or has acquired any skill in music, he will have many avenues of recreation closed to his less fortunate brother, to whose comfort and pleasure he himself will be the better able to minister.

All this we can do and are doing in our training schools, both here and abroad, in spite of being handicapped by the burden of the idiot, the care of the moral imbecile, without adequate accommodation, and by frequent loss, from one cause or another, of trained workers just as they become useful members of the community.

The possibilities for the trained imbecile have not, therefore, yet been made clear on account of this diffusion of energy, nor his true sphere recognized, mainly because of the false idea of cure which is continually being presented to the mind of the public.

Worse than foolish is the idea that training can prepare even those of high grade to battle with the world or fit them for any life outside of institution walls.

Animal propensities, weak wills, sluggish or excitable temperaments, characters utterly abnormal, will inevitably drift in large numbers to swell the insane or the criminal ranks; and it may not be out of place for me to say that from the standpoint of the alienist,