mathematics and natural science. It is the kind of work done at the Institute of Technology in Boston and at the Free Institute in Worcester, Mass. Until taxation ceases to be less burdensome, and private enterprise and munificence fail to provide adequate opportunities for it, the State need do nothing more than, in specially-deserving cases, extend an encouraging hand to individual effort. There is no proper place for it in the common schools.

The term "handwork schools" is a near equivalent to express the Swedish idea, "Slöjd schools," yet for our purpose it is somewhat misleading. It very naturally implies that handwork is the main feature of a school bearing this title. Such schools are not, I think, what our communities need. If handwork is, on the other hand, to be only a minor element in our educational system, some other mode of presenting the idea is preferable.

"The creative method in education" is a term recently suggested by Prof. Felix Adler in describing the central idea of the Workingman's School in New York city. The idea is excellent, and the phrase an attractive one, yet faulty in being too comprehensive to suggest handwork alone. It properly includes all educational processes which employ invention. Creation, in any sense in which it can be predicated of humanity, may be accomplished by the mind as well as by the hand. We use the creative method, I think, whenever we lead a pupil to invent a mathematical problem, present an original design, or even write an original composition. Let us hope that in most of the public schools creative methods have long been introduced.

To express my own conception of what in the premises is needed in school, I prefer the term Manual Training, and I mean by it systematic instruction and practice in the use of such tools and on such materials as will impart skill to the eye and to the hand. My present purpose is to consider, first, whether such training ought, of itself, to have a place in the public school; and, secondly, whether its introduction is practicable.

What reason, then, has this new applicant to urge why our already crowded school system should grant its appeal for admission? I answer, it appears to be a valuable means of accomplishing the ends for which that system has been established. And what are these ends? The following statement of them occurs in a recent report of a committee of the Mass. State Board of Education, and seems to be adequate: "The object of our public schools, as they now are and should be conducted, is to give a general preparation for the duties of life without reference to any particular avocation." Such general

preparation, I believe, should be harmonious, and comprehensive of all the activities of the child; that is, it should tend to prepare him physically, mentally, and morally for his position as an adult human being. The public school alone cannot be expected to do all such preparatory work. Its main province is to develop and train the intellect, yet it must not retard the body or the moral faculty in their growth. It is by the home chiefly that the body must be brought to its maturity of development; the church must coöperate with the home in teaching and enforcing morals and religion. Nevertheless the school can, without cessation of its distinctive line of operation, contribute much to bodily culture and very much to moral culture; and if it can, by the laws of responsibility it ought so to do. Nor will it lose at all by the effort, for so subtle and necessary is the mysterious bond between the body and the mind that cultivation of the one has a reflex action worthy of remark upon the other.

Manual training is, to be sure, a part of physical education. Its end is to make the hand an obedient and ready servant of the will. This wonderful combination of bones and sinews, which nature has furnished in perfection to no other of her creatures, is subject to the same laws of growth as all other parts of the human organism,physical and mental. It will do best what the will has caused it to do most frequently, at times when its possibilities were most available. It is capable of education, and there is a best time for that education to begin and to continue.

Training of the hand begins, of course, with the infant long before the home turns its possessor over to the school. It is carried on by the home and by the kindergarten, whenever the latter is available,— as may it speedily be all over our land,-until five or six years of practice have ensued. Then the public school begins its service, teaching the child the use of two or three implements, the pencil, the crayon, and the pen. In process of time he attains to a practical readiness in the use of them. Manual training has thus already obtained a foothold in our public schools, and to this limited extent is highly esteemed because of its practical value. No one thinks of dislodging writing, and rarely any one drawing, from the plan of education. Moreover, the advocates of the teaching of the latter claim, and many a teacher can testify to the truth of it,-that drawing aids the student otherwise than as recording his thought; for it renders distinct perceptions and conceptions which would, without it, be vague; it develops perception of form, size, and proportion; it corrects misapprehension as to position and shades. In short, it trains the sense of sight, and the faculties which use the deliverances

of that sense. This is only illustrating the larger idea that manual training is a means of mental training. I need not mention the æsthetic culture proceeding from drawing, save to suggest that this is another phase of mind-growth.

The reader may now be prepared to understand my meaning when I claim, as an important argument for manual training, that every step in hand-culture involves a corresponding increase of brain-culture,—the distinctive work of the public school. Being so with the pencil, how can it be otherwise when some cutting-tool is employed, and when wood succeeds paper as the material. The mental process is much the same, whatever the hand finds to work upon and with. Froebel understood this, and planned to train the little minds by directing the joyous activities of the hands. Nor does any educator deny that skillful kindergartners accomplish that result. Why should we not utilize the principle in the instruction of older pupils extending its field beyond the pen and pencil to other tools?

To be certain of our ground as to the reciprocal influence between hand and brain, let us call in the evidence of the physiologist. Dr. William B. Carpenter of London, in a conversation with Mr. James A. Page of Boston, last August, was very distinct and emphatic on the intellectual value of manual training. He thought that the cultivated hand had by reflex action great influence on the brain, its power, energy, development, and perhaps the very arrangement of its fibers. He further said that Sir Charles Bell, author of the Bridgewater Treatise on the hand, took the same ground. Mr. Page, in his report of the Dwight School experiment, adds that both these gentlemen believe that there can be no thoroughly clear, vigorous, and enlightened brain without the cultivated hand. If this strong statement is true, manual training cannot be neglected in any adequate system of education.

In what particular respects is hand-work thus helpful to the mind? Can ordinary thinkers discern the separate steps? Let us see. Take a simple course in carpentry, such as that pursued at the Dwight school in Boston a portion of last year. The chief tools are the hammer, the plane, the saw, the square, the chisel, the bit, and the auger. The uses of glue and sandpaper were also taught. The pupils are led to make accurately, neatly, and rapidly, common wooden articles. How will the work bear upon the mind?

Our perceptive powers are trained by causing any sense in a state of attention to be directed upon any object long enough to pass in review all its parts. Manipulation of wood with a tool certainly does this for the senses of sight and touch. If the act be frequent, as it

must be in hand-work, the sense-perception becomes familiar, and is readily recalled by the retentive faculty. Rapid interpretations of such perceptions are a natural result. Clear perceptions evidently aid distinct conceptions, and the memory becomes a storehouse for the kind of facts thus obtained. Again, by a course of judicious instruction in wood-working there would be formed a habit of orderly progress from one step to the next, for no good carpenter proceeds at hap-hazard; and such a habit can be used in other directions. We, as teachers, should like to see it applied in arithmetic, in grammar, and, indeed, in all studies. Just here I may say that Mr. Page instances geography and natural history as having been effectively taught in the Dwight School by means of hand-instruction, and thinks arithmetic, also, can thereby be more thoroughly taught. Imagination must be called into play, for the pupil must construct a mental picture of an object before his hand can give it a material existence. The preparation of a working-plan serves to give definiteness to the image. Then a habit of accurate comparison may be cultivated, a union of perception with discrimination. This faculty, when generally applied, we call judgment, and we say that its possessor has common sense. The cultivation of taste, especially in regard to form and proportion, is almost inevitable in such a course.

Thus we are informed on high authority, and can in some degree see for ourselves, that hand-culture may be made an effective means of mental discipline, even if we are not convinced that it is indispensable for that end.

In the next place I claim for manual training a positive advantage in the direction of health. While I firmly believe with Alexander Bain, that the school has not for its task the physical preparation of children for after-life, I am equally positive the school-room should not hinder their bodily development. Yet this hindrance cannot but result from the divorcement of bodily exercise and mental activity which the confinement of the school-room involves, unless some corrective be applied. A fair amount of intellectual exertion is a healthy process for a child of the school age, but there are grave reasons for thinking that in our common arrangement of large classes and small rooms, a stunting and shriveling of the body is occasioned. As an offset to this, gymnastics have a place; hence military drill is worthy of encouragement, and every wise teacher will foster athletic games on the playground and in the leisure hours of the scholars. Now comes manual training with a claim, which cannot be gainsaid, that as it trains the eye, the hand, and the brain, so it gives to the muscles firmness, and to the arms and back power, to the joints

flexibility, to the legs endurance, and to the whole system vigor. It is work, and work that expands the lungs, vivifies the blood and sends it coursing through the arteries on its health-giving errand. If that old Doctor of Divinity was wise who, when his thinking grew cloudy, would rise, grasp his chair and twirl it about his head till his arm became tired and his head clear, we surely shall be turning in the right direction when we send our pupils from the study-room to the workshop for a few hours each week. There is, moreover, testimony from those who have tried the experiment, that such manual work is so great a relief to the iteration of school work that it is a positive benefit to the course in intellectual studies. There is no reason, therefore, to dread the coming of manual training, as of some schoolpursuits, because of its deleterious effect upon the children; we can, instead, have a solid ground for prejudice in its favor.

There is still a third group of advantages attending the introduction of this branch into the public schools, It may be made a positive help in moral training. I fancy this statement seems extravagant, if not ridiculous; yet let us consider whether it is not true.

The domain of moral education is the culture of the principles that control the voluntary action of human beings. It should cultivate virtues and correct vices. Among the former are honesty, diligence, and fidelity to trust; among the latter, laziness and irresolution. In enforcing moral culture it is not enough to state the precept and to give examples; there must be an exercise on the part of the children of the traits commended, and such exercise must be continued until a habit of right action is formed. Then, and not till then, is the child prepared to withstand temptation. Now for the purpose of exercising in diligence an ordinary boy, what better means can be found than to supply him with material and tuition that he may gratify the innate constructive tendency that seems well-nigh universal among children? Honest work would, of course, be insisted upon, and promptness cultivated. Faithfulness in details would daily be illustrated. The rewards could by no accident come to the indolent or inefficient. The irresolute worker would see his comrades pass on to enjoy the products of their effort. Each lesson, too, would come in a concrete form and in kind; his eyes can see, his fingers touch, the reward or lack of reward of his conduct; nor is the judg ment delayed. Hence moral lessons would be afforded in just the form by which childhood is most certainly affected. Again, if our children shall be accustomed to systematic labor with the hand, never allowed to become excessive, we may reasonably hope to reduce whatever basis of truth there is in the remark that graduates of the