The important fact which underlies any sound scheme for school shops is that machinery is to have a constantly increasing share in the conversion of matter into useful form. The educated mechanic must understand the practical limits of mechanical production and all the possible ways in which those limits can be extended. He must know by practice how to design, construct, and assemble the parts of a machine, as well as how to finish its product by skillful handicraft, and he should also know how to make his tools. The power of an engineer to decide upon general grounds the best form and material for a machine, and to calculate its parts, is vastly increased by blending with it the skill of the craftsman in manipulating the material. And the graduate from such a course is practically secure of employment, even in dull times; for experience in a school1 which has been conducted on this plan for sixteen years shows that such young men, in addition to securing the advantage of a good education, are as skillful mechanics as those who have served three years as apprentices.

The same idea was carried out by President Thompson in the training at the Worcester Free Institute, as expressed in the catalogue for 1884:

Special prominence is given to the element of practice which is required in every department. In favor of this feature of the training adopted at the Institute, there may be assigned the following reasons:

1. The fact that some of the most useful and sagacious manufacturers and business men, as well as many able educators, continually recur to the idea of combining manual labor with school instruction, shows the increasing demand for a closer union of theory and practice in technological training.

2. Those who are actively engaged in the practice of engineering, are generally agreed that every young man training for an engineer should acquire familiarity with the practical side of his profession. The acquirement of the manual dexterity, conceded by all to be desirable, may precede, accompany, or follow the technological training.

3. Most of the young men who have graduated from the school have readily found employment in situations for which their technical education particularly prepared them, and have proved themselves well fitted for their work.

But while practice is made thus prominent, it is insisted that it should spring from a clear comprehension of principles. Practice is not an end, but a means and help to the best instruction. With this view of its relation to theoretical work in the school training, the student's entrance on the pursuit he has chosen becomes an expansion of his course of study, rather than an abrupt transition to a new sphere of life.

In acquiring knowledge of any form of handicraft, or of the practical industries by which society is supported and carried on, it is essential that the student should practice under conditions as like as possible to those which he will meet in life. The more his work is subjected to the inexorable tests of trade, and the more he feels just the same responsibility that is inevitable in actual business, the better.

For the acquisition of practical familiarity with different branches of applied science, the same facilities are offered as in the best schools of technology elsewhere; in mechanical engineering, shop practice is added to the course and incorporated

in it.

Practice in the school is subjected to three conditions: First, it shall be a necessary part of each week's work; secondly, it shall be judiciously distributed and constantly supervised; and, thirdly, the students shall not expect or receive any immediate pecuniary return for it.

At the middle of the first year every student who has not already done so (under the advice of the instructors) chooses some department, and, until his graduation, devotes ten hours a week, and an additional month of each year, to practice in that department. Students who select chemistry, work in the laboratory; the civil engineers, at field work or problems in construction; those who select drawing, in the drawing room; and physics, in the physical laboratory. The mechanical engineers practice in the machine-shop from the beginning of the apprentice half-year, and their practice extends over the whole course of three and a half years.

The Worcester Free Institute.

Classification of scientific students in a number of institutions.

b Thirteen only for the time being; others in chemical laboratory during the year. Three in type-writing.

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The question of providing for manual or industrial training by other instrumentalities and under conditions different from those pertaining to the institutions which are classified under Table X of this Report, has become one of deep and wide-spread interest.

MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION, "INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION."

In the general discussions of the subject two lines of thought are noticeable, which were distinctly defined by Professor Felix Adler in an article in the Princeton Review of March, 1883. Professor Adler says:

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The phrase "industrial education" may have, and has acquired two entirely distinct meanings. As understood by one party it means the kind of education that is intended to foster industrial skill, and to fit the pupil, while at school, for the industrial pursuits of later life. Perhaps the majority of those who insist on the importance of industrial education in public schools, and who are urging its adoption, use the phrase in this sense. But there is a totally different sense in which the phrase "industrial education" may be understood; not that education shall be made subservient to industrial success, but that the acquisition of industrial skill shall be a means for promoting the general education of the pupil; that the education of the hand shall be a means of more completely and more efficaciously educating the brain. It is in the latter sense, in which labor is regarded as a means of mental development, that industrial education is understood by the most enlightened of its advocates. They are well aware that to introduce a trade into the school is to degrade the school; that to take away from the young the time that should be dedicated to the elements of general culture and devote it to training them in a special aptitude, however useful later on, is to impair the humanity of the child. They desire nothing of this sort, and they ask that a workshop be connected with every school for no other reason than that a chemical laboratory is connected with every college.

There are thus two antagonistic parties whose watchword "industrial education" has alike become. The one seeks to make the mass of mankind more machine like than they already are, though with the proviso that they shall be made more perfect machines, more skillful to increase wealth and to feed the channels of the manufacturer's profits. The other party, standing at the opposite pole of thought, seeks rather to elevate the masses, to more completely develop the humanity of the young, and looks upon technical and art education in the school as a novel and admirable means for achieving this result. Since, then, the phrase "industrial education" is susceptible of interpretations so diverse and so incompatible with each other, it is in the interest at least of those who have the higher educational aim in view to make use of a less equivocal designation; and the phrase "the creative method" will henceforth be adopted by us.

THE WORKINGMAN'S SCHOOL.

Various efforts have been made to develop a system of training in accordance with the latter conception. The most notable of these is the Workingman's School of New York city, conducted by Prof. Felix Adler, under the auspices of the United

Relief Works of the Society for Ethical Culture. As the name of the school indicates, its benefits are intended especially to accrue to the children of the working people, although the methods employed are believed by those engaged in the enterprise to be desirable for all children. The Workingman's School receives children from the Free Kindergarten (maintained by the same society) at six years of age, and retains them until their fourteenth year. The school aims at an "all-sided development" of the child, and to this end takes into account in all its processes the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral nature.

As is the case in many public and private schools, the importance of a sympathetic co-operation between parents and teachers in the work of training the young is fully recognized.

In the Workingman's School such co-operation is promoted by teachers' meetings, and meetings of parents and teachers, held at regular stated times. With reference to these conferences Professor Adler says in the article above referred to:

A close connection between the parents and the teachers of the school has been established. Every month a so-called parents' meeting takes place, at which the progress or deficiencies of the pupils are brought to the notice of their parents. At these meetings, moreover, some special features of the method of the school are always discussed, so that the parents may gain an insight into our plans and give us their assistance in carrying them out. The result has thus far been most satisfactory. The parents have, of their own accord, organized a committee to support the managers of the school, and a feeling of mutual confidence and good-will prevails.

The branches pursued in the school are reading, penmanship, composition, grammar, history, geography, natural science, ethics, drawing, modeling, manual training, and calisthenics.

The distinctive feature of the school is the system of manual training, which has been elaborated by experiment combined with the careful study of principles, methods, and results. This feature is described as follows:

The chief practical difficulty in carrying out the plan of the school was found to consist in formulating a series of workshop lessons whose value should be educational.

Numerous attempts at so-called industrial education have been made, both in this country and abroad, but to our knowledge they are for the most part aimless, incoherent, and lacking in system. There are thousands of manual occupations from which a selection must be made, and of these now one kind, then another, has been chosen for introduction into the school (printing, carpentry, basket-making, and the like), without much rhyme or reason in the choice. What is needed is a principle of selection which shall organically connect the work-instruction with the remaining branches. It seemed to the writer that such a principle of selection might be found in the drawing course in both its departments: mechanical drawing to be the basis of instruction in the workshop, and free-hand drawing the basis of work in the atelier. In the department of art-instruction the realization of this idea seems comparatively easy; in the department of technical instruction the difficulty is much greater. An attempt to solve it has, however, been made, and the following outline would afford a survey of the scheme of workshop lessons projected for and partly carried out in the school. The board of managers of the school are not committed to all the details of the plan, which will continue to be modified as the experiment proceeds. But the scheme will show at least the lines along which we hope to advance toward our goal.

This plan consists of a series of exercises so arranged that the different tools and materials of construction employed are successively introduced according to the ages and abilities of the pupils, so that the actual practice necessary for the skillful manipulation of the tools may be given simultaneously with an education of the mind. The exercises planned for the five lowest classes involve the rudiments and most important principles of geometry and most useful laws of mechanics and physics. Throughout the scheme the exercises in the work-instruction course will be constructed from the pupils' own drawings. By this means the work of both the drawing and the work-instruction departments will be pursued at a greater advantage than they would be if entirely independent of each other; but besides this, the pupil will be taught to appreciate the true relation between the plan and the construction. The habit of working from a definite plan will be inculcated, which will be of great

value and an important factor to the pupil's success in whatever he may undertake later in life.

To illustrate definitely the connection that exists between the drawing and the work-instruction courses, an example of an exercise designed for the fourth class is taken. In the drawing-room the pupil will be given a model of a cone, from which he will take measurements and then make a complete working drawing. In the workshop, with the drawing, proper material, and tools, the pupil will turn in his lathe a cone according to his drawing, which when completed will be a copy of the original model used in the drawing-room.

The following is a very brief summary of the plan for each class:

The exercises planned for the eighth and seventh classes introduce the use of paper, pencils, triangles, compasses, and rules in the drawing-room. In the work-room small toy squares and chisels are employed for carving geometrical forms from pieces of clay. Only plane figures are involved in the exercise for the eighth and seventh classes, from which the pupils will acquire a knowledge of the names and properties of lines, angles, polygons, circles, parts of the circle, and also the methods of construction of many geometrical forms.

In order that the exercises may have greater interest to the pupil than could be elicited from the study of abstract geometrical figures, the pupil will first be shown a model of some familiar object composed of pieces representing different geometrical forms. For example, a model of a house will be taken at first, and then the different geometrical figures, as the square, the rectangle, and the triangle, which enter into the structure of the model will be taken as the subjects of different exercises.

The pupils of the schools are arranged in eight classes, and a day's session, excluding recess, is 5 hours, which gives, for 5 school days, 284 hours; there is also a short Saturday session for three of the classes, devoted entirely to work instruction. Each class, or rather each division of a class, spends a certain portion of the school time in drawing, modeling, and work exercises, the time so devoted varying from 4 hours a week in the third class to 14 hours in the eighth class.

Work instruction for the girls comprises cutting and sewing, cooking and design. ing.

According to the report for 1883-'85 the total number of pupils in the school was 217, and the number of teachers 12, assisted by 9 volunteers.

The annual expenses of the school are about $20,000.

EXPERIMENTS IN CONNECTION WITH CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

The experiment of combining tool work with the ordinary course of school instruction is now going on in several cities. So much interest attaches to the subject that it seems desirable to give a somewhat extended account of these experiments in this place.

The operation of the Boston Manual Training School is thus described by Superintendent Seaver in his report dated March, 1885:

The experiment in manual training for boys has made interesting progress. Two hundred boys from ten different grammar schools have been under instruction in carpentry two hours a week since September. Most of them were beginners at that time, but a few were members of the classes formed last April.

The boys were selected by the masters of the grammar schools, no boy being taken who was not fourteen years old, and who had not the express permission of his parents to take the instruction. This limit as to age is well suited to the usual size and strength of boys, and has the additional advantage of avoiding some possible legal difficulties.

The interest in their work shown by the boys is very lively, such as I have seldom seen surpassed in any kind of school work. Many boys come to the shop afternoons an hour before the appointed time, and get the teacher's permission to work three hours instead of two. Some, seeing the gas-fixtures provided for use on dark days, and fancying that instruction was going to be given in the evening, begged to be allowed to come and work then, as well as in the daytime. But there were others, of course, whose ardor cooled as the novelty wore off, and the truth began to dawn upon them that manual training was, after all, work and not play. Still, the number of these last was not large enough to disturb the generally favorable impression the classes produce.

The experiment has already gone far enough to prove that work of this kind can be joined to the ordinary grammar-school work with good effect. It enlisted the sym