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a Civil government is taught with history in the seventh and eighth year.

b This includes physical culture.

Physiology.

d Morals and manners receive attention at all times; no set lessons.

CHAPTER XVI.

MANUAL AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.1

I.

A name, says Hobbes, is a word taken at random to serve as a mark, which, being spoken to another, will cause the hearer to know what thought the speaker had in his mind when he spoke. From time to time attempts have been made to define the meaning of the term manual training, but it is not improbable that the definitions proposed are more calculated to provoke than to remove doubt as to what is meant by that term.

The New Jersey Council of Education would define "manual training as training in thought expression by other means than gesture and verbal language in such a carefully graded course of study as shall also provide adequate training for the judgment and the executive faculty."

But this definition would seem to claim that manual training, being a method of expression by other means than gesture and verbal language, is a means of expressing ideas by something analogous to the ancient picture writing of primeval times, from which the discovery of the phonetic alphabet by the Phæricians has long freed the civilizations of Europe. 2

On the other hand, if manual training be merely drawing disguised under another name, it is difficult to understand either why it should be called new3 or why such a strong protest should be made against it; certainly drawing has no enemies in pedagogical circles. Drawing, or representation, as it is sometimes called, and "construction," which is merely representation in three dimensions-have wonderful power as a means of communicating the ideas of an originator or inventor to his fellow men. It is in this way that the real artist, the architect, or the discoverer of a mechanical device declares his ideas to the world; and it may not be too bold to say that the application to industry of the generalizations of the practice of the artist is what is known as industrial drawing so much in vogue now, which is quite distinct, however, from mechanical drawing or drawings for the guidance of the makers of machinery. But painting, architecture, industrial and mechanical drawing are very generally recognized as valuable, which does not happen to be the case with manual training.

In the last annual report of this Bureau considerable attention was given to the subject of manual training. The Office found itself in the singular position of having collected quite an array of statistics of a movement the philosophy of which as far as pedagogical features were involved it did not understand. The publications of superintendents of systems by whom statistics had been furnished were examined for light, but in vain, for there seemed no body of pedagogical principles that was common to all or even a majority. There remained no way out of the dilemma but to study the question and to lay the results and the statistics before the public, contenting ourselves with stating and comparing rather than discussing what had been said upon the subject. The results of that study, had we ventured to express a personal view on the subject, would have been conceived in the following terms: "Manual training is (claimed to be) training of the judgment and executive faculty in a course of study in which drawing and the essential common school studies have also been very carefully provided for."

In a very luminous description of drawing as an art of expression, in which the

This paper has been prepared by Mr. Wellford Addis, specialist of the Bureau. A more particular treatment of the subject was made by him in last year's Report.

2 See History of Ancient Art, by Perrot and Chipiez, vol. 2, p. 375 of English edition, for a highly in. teresting commentary on the ideographic characters of Egypt, China, and Chaldea. The best summary of the results of modern research is Lenormant's "Introduction" to his "Essai sur la propaga tion de l'alphabet phénicien dans l'ancien monde."

*See note A at end of this chapter.

peculiar conditions under which drawing is an indispensable aid to verbal language is shown, Professor Woodward, of the St. Louis Manual Training School, observes: "Next to the ability to think deeply and clearly is the power of giving clear and full expression to our thoughts."

It is, indeed, necessary to have thought before you can clearly and fully express it. But the way, the modus vivendi of thinking deeply, considered purely as a method or abstract quality, is that teachable?" The University of Oxford seems to think so; for we are told by the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh,í that the English university during the present century "has made a renewed study of Aristotle one of its chief instruments of education, and with success, as was testified to by the late Dr. Arnold, of Rugby." But why Aristotle? Because, as Sir A. Grant says, "Aristotle's great knowledge of human nature, exhaustive classification, and clear methods of disentangling a question and dealing with what is essential in it, render many of his works an excellent curriculum for training young men, and fitting them for all the superior business of life." And then our author goes on to account for this by saying that there is "a certain dynamical impulse to be derived from Aristotle independent of all his results and conclusions" and finally defines the Aristotelian element in thought and knowledge as "analytic insight," which "arises out of concentration of the mind upon the subject in hand, marshaling together all the facts and opinions upon it and dwelling on these, and scrutinizing and comparing them till a light flashes on the whole subject. Such is the procedure which may be learned from Aristotle."

Is such the procedure that is learned by attendance on a course of manual training↑

TRAINING OF THE EXECUTIVE FACULTY.

Two terms that have been used to characterize the object of manual training challenge attention; these are, "the training of the executive faculty," and the giving of capacities for useful action." How to distinguish between these objects and how to distinguish both from the object of the course in humanities-the literae humaniores of the Jesuits, -is at once such an intricate, invidious, and important task that it must be left to those who are conscious that they have thoroughly mastered the question in its several features.

But as we have not had the fortune to find an exposition of manual training principles which, being made by an opponent, has commanded the respect of the advocates of those principles, nor a statement of those principles which, being made by a friend, has not been thought weak and visionary, if not worse, by the opposite party, it may be permitted us to step a little beyond our sphere of analysis and narrative and to offer tentatively a few ideas as to what the expressions training of "executive faculty" and training in "capacities for useful action" really mean. In doing this we shall endeavor to keep constantly before us, not the inquiry "How does this new theory compare with other and established theories?" but "Is the work, judged by itself and with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, good or bad?" If we shall avoid any serious errors in pursuing such an undertaking, the happy fact is to be imputed to the simplicity of our mode of conducting it; if we are palpably wrong, our errors may serve as a starting point for the many distinguished friends of manual training to leave somewhat vague generalities and to expound their principles by telling less what the public schools do not do and more what their principles are good for. It is known that the manual training camp is not made up of homogeneous elements, and that the Hannibal that is holding them together is the widespread dissatisfaction with the curriculum of the public schools in whole or in part. But, first, what is the executive faculty?

In his much-lauded and quoted description of Coleridge, Carlyle says: "His talk, alas! was distinguished like himself by irresolution, it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite fulfilments; loved to wander at its own sweet will, and you were bitterly reminded of Hazlitt's account of it. 'Excellent talker, very, if you let him start from no premises and come to no conclusion.""

*

This certainly is not what is meant by "executive power," nor is it in any true sense a capacity for useful action." Indeed, the extract is used by Dr. Carpenter in his Mental Psychology as an illustration of the difference between "automatic activity and mental direction," and Monsieur Ribot, in his monograph on the "Diseases of the Will," introduces it in the chapter on the "Impairment of voluntary attention," to illustrate the condition even of a great mind when it "lacks the power of direc tion." "Thus we shall see," he continues, "a perfect contrast between thought and will."

Not only has Monsieur Ribot devoted a chapter to the impairment of the attention

Essay in last edition of Encyclopedia Britannica on Aristotle, by Sir Alexander Grant, author of 'The Ethics of Aristotle, illustrated with notes and essays."