States of 1,090 volumes and over in 1903—Continued. C, corporation; D, donations. 7: F, free; S, subscription; Fr, free for reference. 8: C, circulating; B, both.] CHAPTER XIX. MANUAL, INDUSTRIAL, AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. BY PROF. CALVIN M. WOODWARD, Director of the Manual Training School and Dean of the School of Engineering and Architecture, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. [Several pages of this paper, with the permission of the editor, are taken from the same author's article on "Manual training" in the Encyclopedia Americana.] MANUAL TRAINING. This term, according to the best usage, signifies the systematic study of the theory and use of common tools, the nature of common materials, elementary and typical processes of construction, and the execution and reading of working drawings. The materials referred to are wood, metals, alloys, and plastic minerals; the drawing includes both free-hand and instrumental, with pen, pencil, and brush. Some writers have endeavored to extend the meaning to cover every educational feature in which the hand is used and all materials which can be brought into the schoolroom. This servility to mere etymology is unnecessary and unwise. A definition always involves limits, and when all limits are removed there is no definition. The systematic study of tools, processes, and materials is the essential feature of manual training. Hence the incidental use of tools without system for some ulterior object is not manual training. There is, of course, a suggestion of manual training when the teacher shows a child how to handle a pitchfork; when a woodman teaches a novice how to swing an ax in cutting down a tree; when a foreman shows a green hand how to head a pin. Yet such cases are usually without system and continuity, and accordingly are excluded from the content of manual training. One does not give a boy manual training by turning him loose in a shop any more than he gives a literary education to a boy who can not read by locking him in a library. It follows that the manipulations of the kindergarten, the "busy work of the primary grades on the one hand, and the science laboratory and the commercial workshop on the other, are beyond the pale of manual training. The definition given at the beginning of this article had regard solely to the objective side. It did not state at all the effect upon the pupil, nor was the supreme purpose of manual training even hinted at. In point of fact, manual training proves to be a far better thing than was expected when the name was first used and when the first manual training school was opened, an1 the present purpose and object of manual training are stated so broadly and philosophically that the statement published for many years in the catalogue of the St. Louis Manual Training School seems very modest, to wit: 1. To furnish a broader and more appropriate foundation for higher technical education. 2. To serve as a developing school where pupils could discover their inborn capacities and aptitudes, whether in the direction of literature, science, engineering, or the practical arts. "3. To furnish to those who look forward to industrial life opportunity to become familiar with tools, materials, the methods of construction, and exact drawing, as Well as with mathematics, elementary science, and ordinary English branches.” Manual training is essentially a culture study. Its function is to develop the body by developing the brain and increasing its control over materials through the hand and eye. In early years the work of a child is qualitative rather than quantitative. Physiologists tell us that the areas of the brain develop gradually and unequally; that a normal child does not recognize accuracy, and that he is incapable of precision, either in ideas or deeds, until he is several grades along in school. Tool work should result in accuracy in thought and in deed, and hence should not be attempted before the sixth or seventh grade. Dr. C. H. Henderson defines manual training as "quantitative handicraft.” He adds: The brain grows by what it feeds upon. Given perfect health and a wealth of sense impression, especially a wealth of quantitative sense impression— that is to say, well-trained senses-and we have the physical basis for a full intellectual life. Without this large quantitative knowledge and developed brain we live in a world of illusion, a guess world of very imperfect rationality. To cultivate the hand and eye and ear, even the nose and the tongue, is to enlarge the material of thought and the tool of thought." In 1882, before the National Educational Association at Saratoga, the writer of this article defined manual training as "a new art of expression in the concrete, as contrasted with verbal description and graphical representations. This view of manual training has been much elaborated of late, with the result that "expres sion" is by many persons regarded as the very essence of manual training. This result is unfortunate, since it confuses "expression" with the "art of expression.” The former is a product of manual training. The logical study of the "art" constitutes the sum and substance of the educational feature known as "manual training." It is impossible to take notice of all the vagaries into which enthusiastic teachers have been led by the notion that manual training is but the natural expression of what is already in the mind of the pupil, but the reader should reflect that there is a science of education, actual or potential, and that the very essence of a science is logical systematic management. All arithmetical operations depend upon the "fundamental rules; the processes of algebra consist of repeated applications of the four fundamental processes; the scientific study of a language begins with declensions and conjugations; so tool work, drawing, needlework, cooking, etc., begin with fundamental processes with typical appliances upon typical materials. The articles constructed, the figures drawn, the garment sewed, or the dishes cooked are incidental, like blackboard work in long division or algebraic subtraction or manuscript Latin prose; and like them they are valuable because they involve effort and result in mastery and power. The real end and aim of all education, whether "manual" or "spiritual," is the developed, strengthened, disciplined executive person, regardless of the fate of the exercises or products which were the means of his development. Originally, when manual training first took definite form in school education, it was generally assumed that it was intended to supersede the old form of trade apprenticeship, and not a few people defended and supported it on this ground. Because a boy learned how to use tools, how to keep them in order, and how to treat the common materials of construction, it was claimed that he was learning a trade or several trades, and so the manual training school was regarded as a trade school. In spite of the fact that this assumption and this claim were both wrong, the practical value of the boy's knowledge of tools and skill in their use was for some years regarded as the chief evidence of the value of manual training. In all ages men have recognized the value of skill in the use of tools and the processes of construction. The mythical Vulcan, the Jewish Tubal Cain, the Greek Dædalus, Archimedes of Syracuse, the Miltonian Memnon are familiar examples. The greatest invention of the ages has been the generation, transmission, and utilization of mechanical power, and along with it has come the invention and use of tools. Rousseau advocated systematic instruction and practice in the details of a trade or occupation, and Carlyle, in words now familiar to us all, declared that man was a tool-using animal; that without tools he was nothing; with tools, he was all. In every land men advocated the learning of a trade for a livelihood or for culture. Witness Peter the Great of Russia, the King of Prussia, and the New England seer, Emerson; but in all cases it was taken for granted that the only avenue to mechanical skill and culture lay through an apprenticeship to a builder or manufacturer. Schools were for the study and mastery of books. The arts of the schoolroom were for masters and freemen; hence they were noble and were called the liberal arts. The arts of the mechanic were for serving men, and were acquired only by intimate association with mechanics; so the practical arts were held to be degrading because requiring a base companionship. The invention of machinery and the use of costly machine tools so far modified and limited apprenticeship as almost to ruin it. Trade schools sprang up all over Europe, and native American skilled mechanics ceased to exist. Numerous "manual-labor” or “half-time” schools came into being in America, but they involved no forward step, for the manual elements were unsystematic and unprogressive, since the purpose of the labor was to earn a living while gaining literary culture. Engineering schools in Germany, England, and America introduced some features of" shop work," with skilled mechanics engaged upon commercial work as foremen. Next arose a widespread demand for an opportunity for American boys to acquire the arts of the mechanic and at the same time avoid the narrowing, unscholarly atmosphere of the trade school. It was then that it was first proposed to put the whole boy to school (this maxim was first used in an after-dinner address at a complimentary banquet given the writer in Boston in 1885, "I state my educational theory in six words-put the whole boy to school"); to combine manual with mental training; to put the liberal arts and the mechanic arts into the same curriculum; to deal simultaneously with material forces and appliances and with spiritual forces and appliances. This consummation was helped on in a signal manner by an exhibit at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. In the educational exhibit of the Imperial School of Moscow, there was a full presentation of the method of tool instruction, devised by Victor Della-Vos in 1868. Della-Vos gave three years to tool instruction and then three more to actual construction with engineering students. His systematic analysis of tools and processes offered a practicable basis for such work in the programme of secondary schools. Prof. John D. Runkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performed a great service to education by publishing a report upon the Russian exhibit, by emphasizing the difference between "instruction" and "construction," and by insisting upon the former as the special province of the school. Instruction shops for students of college grade were opened in Boston and in St. Louis in 1877. The St. Louis Manual Training School was established June 6, 1879, and opened in September, 1880, as a school of secondary grade. This was the first of its kind and soon attracted wide attention from educators both at home and abroad. The Baltimore Manual Training School opened in 1883, the Chicago Manual Training School in 1854, the Toledo school the same year, the Central Manual Training School of Philadelphia in 1885, and then the movement became general all along the line. All these schools were of high |