have to be urged to this work. Although the object is simply technical skill, and does not concern itself primarily with human motives, still the work is so thoroughly in line with boyish activity that it does quite unconsciously enlist those desires to a very large extent. You can see this if you will watch the little workers. They are for the most part absolutely absorbed, and quite unconscious of your own presence. There is in all of us a strong desire to excel, a delight in overcoming obstacles. We like to do battle, and especially when we are young. A cross-grained piece of wood, a stubborn bit of metal, are so many challenges, and an alert boy is eager to accept the gauntlet. Some of the boys, furthermore, have conceived the idea that they would like to be carpenters, or pattern makers, or wood carvers, or machinists, and work under the spur of an ulterior purpose. At fourteen they have already begun to live in the future, and have accepted the ideals of industrialism. The organic reactions that follow upon this manual activity, though not so good as would follow from a more psychological course, make, nevertheless, for increase of brain power. There is a notable enlargement of judgment, of accuracy, and of self-reliance. There is an actual increase of physical health, there is a usable skill. And all of this is very good. But these results, splendid as they are, can be made still better, and are being made still better by the humanizing of the whole scheme in the hands of educational workers. The spirit of the kindergarten, the spirit of Herbart, the spirit of sloyd—a spirit which finds no scheme of education tolerable which has not for its object the full and complete life, the life of body, of intellect, and of heart—this spirit, I say, has been permeating our thought and making its way into the high school. And this is precisely what the formal, technical manual training most needs. It needs to be humanized. It wants to be touched with morality, with beauty, with sentiment, in order to be the ideal education; for the end of education, as Herbart has well said, is to create in the child a moral and æsthetic revelation of the universe. I have confidence that this humanizing spirit will conquer, and that manual training will ultimately mean in all our schools what it means to-day in a few of them, and is coming to mean in many more—a complete, human, educational process and not simply an artisan training.
The methods of this educational manual training concern themselves very much with the principle of interest. They seek not only to satisfy existing desires, but to create new ones. Theirs, you see, is far from being a doctrine of parsimony. It is rather a doctrine of ungrudgingness. In place, therefore, of abstract exercises, poor in present human interest, finished articles are offered. They are very simple, of course, but they are as carefully arranged and graded
