Manual Labor in Schools.
By George Ide Butler
We give a short article below from the Springfield Republican of Dec. 28, 1883, on this subject, which shows the drift of public opinion, and what thoughtful educators are doing and saying about it. This question is assuming a great importance of late. One special reason for it is that the present system is unsatisfactory. Many graduate with a good degree of book knowledge, but badly fail when it comes to the practical application of knowledge. They are only half educated. Nine-tenths of the human family must always have to do with physical labor. Their hands need educating in some useful business as well as their brains in book knowledge. The following article shows that the subject is attracting considerable attention:— “Manual training has received a good deal of attention at Boston, and Superintendent Edwin P. Seaver of the public schools there, is out with a long argument for a public training-school to go side by side with the high schools, where boys shall be taught the use of tools. He recognizes the fact that most of the children that come out of the public schools have their own living to earn, and declares that the boys are only fit for store or office clerks or college students. The boys of thirty or fifty years ago were in school less than those of to-day, and were more on the farm and in the work-shop, both of which developed their faculties for doing things, and enabled them to make their way in the world. The city boy of to-day has no such training. The old system of apprenticeships has broken down, and Mr. Seaver argues that it is the business of society to establish something in its place. “The Winthrop School for girls has tried teaching girls to cut and make clothing with great success. The sewing hours did not interfere with the other work, and the girls who received this instruction were able to get good places as seamstresses, while the girls who had been through the full course of study and then graduated at the Normal School were not able to find work of any kind. Principal Swan is so enthusiastic over this experiment that he now wants to add a cooking school. There are no free schools for boys as yet where similar experiments have been tried; but the results in the school for mechanic arts at Boston and the manual training-school at St. Louis are such that the friends of the movement are sanguine of its success in free schools. Boston has been feeling its way toward that end with some experiments at the Dwight School, and is talking about repeating them on a larger scale.” It is well that we as a people are not only looking into this subject, but are trying in a humble way to carry it into effect in some of our schools already. If our people will act up to the resolutions passed at our last General Conference, and furnish the necessary means the coming season, we hope to see our College at Battle Creek make provision for connecting physical labor with the course of study. This is our leading institution of learning. Why should it not set the example? In this case, we shall not only be abreast of the times in matters of education, but ahead of the schools of any other denomination in the land. It is evident that thoughtful minds are coming to the conclusion that this is the true theory of education. It is no small satisfaction to us that the Lord has guided us to the best way in such important subjects as the proper methods of education. —G. I. Butler, in Review and Herald.