English meadows. To the same primitive taste, exerted in a slightly different direction, are due the gilded wings of Brazilian moths, and the exquisite tints of our own ruby or sapphire colored summer insects. The beauty and the glory of the world are not for the eyes of man alone; they appeal equally to the bee and the butterfly, to the bird and the child. To some people it strangely seems a nobler belief that one animal only out of all the earth enjoys and appreciates this perpetual pageant of natural loveliness; to me it appears, on the contrary, a prettier and more modest creed, as well as a truer one, that in those higher and purer delights we are but participants with the vast mass of our humbler dumb fellow-creatures.—Gentleman's Magazine.
| THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. |
By Professor C. M. WOODWARD, Ph.D.,
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS.
THE object of this paper is to consider directly the fruits of manual training. By manual training I do not mean merely the training of the hand and arm. If a school should attempt the very narrow task of teaching only the manual details of a particular trade or trades, it would, as Felix Adler says, violate the rights of the children. It would be doing the very thing I have always protested against. That, or very nearly that, is what is done in the great majority of European trade-schools. They have no place in our American system of education.
The word "manual" must, for the present, be the best word to distinguish that peculiar system of liberal education which recognizes the manual as well as the intellectual. I advocate manual training for all children as an element in general education. I care little what tools are used, or how they are used, so long as proper habits (morals) are formed, and provided the windows of the mind are kept open toward the world of things and forces, physical as well as spiritual.
We do not wish or propose to neglect or underrate literary and scientific culture; we strive to include all the elements in just proportion. When the manual elements which are essential to a liberal education are universally accepted and incorporated into American schools, the word "manual" may very properly be dropped.
I use the word "liberal" in its strict sense of "free." No education can be "free" which leaves the child no choice, or which gives a bias against any honorable occupation; which walls up the avenues of approach to any vocation requiring intelligence and skill, A truly liberal education educates equally for all spheres of usefulness; it furnishes the broad foundation on which to build the superstructure
