Manual Training

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 13, 1910

SOME of us look at the question of manual training in a narrow way. We grudge the time taken from books, and argue that its place is not in the school, not realizing that the greater part of the value of study is mental training, and that, in many cases, this can be better accomplished by other means than books. We have to take into consideration that we forget nine tenths of what we learn from books, that only one tenth goes into our culture fund. What we have from the nine tenths is only the effect of the process of learning it on our minds. For this purpose manual training often serves equally well. The value of manual training as an aid to mental growth is now universally admitted by those who have studied the subject. Many children’s minds can be reached in this way when they are entirely closed to book learning. . . . The child almost never gets exact knowledge from his studies; but if he makes a box, he must make its edges exactly true. . . .

The whole school system should be changed, making it possible for a child to take the pace his deficiencies or superiorities demand. The lock-step now required of all is a hideous injustice. The stupid or physically unfit child is overtaxed and the clever child’s powers are stunted.

The writer once taught a small boy of five for ten months, one hour and a half, or less, four or five days in the week. He knew only the alphabet to begin with. At the end of that time he was reading easily in the third reader, and was beginning fractions,—work that takes several years in school. He was not an especially clever child, and was much more interested in life than in books. His brain was not in the slightest way overtaxed. Thus was brought home the terrible waste of a child’s strength and interest in the monotony and confinement of school.—Selected.