Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1886 — Manual Training in Philadelphia. [ARTICLE]

Manual Training in Philadelphia.

A revolution in educational methods has occurred in the city of Philadelphia. The Spring Garden Institute, established long ago by Mr. Charles G. Leland, showed the practicability cf liand-training; Mr. Edward T. Steel, President of the Board of Education, for years advocated manual training in a general way; and Mr. James Ma-Al-ister, who went from Milwaukee, Wis., in 18S3, to accept the superintendency of the schools of the city, writes that he found public opinion fully alive to the importance of manual training being added to the public education, but that nothing had been done to give it organized shape. It is easy to understand how, under his magnetic influence, the movement quickly crystallized. Moved by the persuasive force of his tongue and pen, the “Councils” appropriated money, and the Board of Education organized a manual training school as part of the educational system of the city, as free as any other of the public schools; and it went into operation in September last, with one hundred and thirty pupils—all that could then be accommodated. It 3 course of instruction is similar to that of the schools of Boston, St. Louis, and Chicago. The school is a high school, with manual exercise constituting a feature of equal important e with the mental exercises. The first observation in regard to this new school made by visitors is that the pupils take more interest in its exercises than is usually taken by pupils in the exercises of schools of that grade. The school meets with the most unqualified approval of the public, and the Board of Education designs to establish three or four more schools of similar character. It is the purpose of the Superintendent and the board to furnish the school with a reference library and a small museum, “illustrating the raw materials and manufactured products of the more important industries of the country, and, to some extent, drawings and models showing the evolution of the fundamental tools and machines.”

Another feature of the reorganized educational system of Philadelphia is the School of Industrial Art, which is open to the grammar-school pupils of both sexes, who are admitted once a week for two hours. The course of instruction comprises drawing and design, modeling, wood-carving, and certain exercises in carpentry and joinery, and metal-work. A third feature is sewing, which is made part of the regular course of instruction iu every girls’ school above the primary. The work is graded, and forms a system of sequential steps. Thirty-two special sewing instructors are now employed, but it is intended ultimately to have the instruction given by the regular class instructors. A fourth feature is the free kindergarten, which can not be made part, officially, of the public-school establishment, because the legal school age in Pennsylvania is six years. But an association called the Sub-Primary School Society has founded twenty-eight kindergartens, and supports them, with the aid of an appropriation from the School Board, as adjuncts to the regular schools. Philadelphia has thus the most complete course of manual instruction of any city in the country, consisting of the Kindergarten, the School of Industrial Art for the boys and girls of the grammar schools, and the “Manual Training School” for boys from fourteen to eighteen years of age. Superintendent Mac Alister writes that the conviction obtains among members of the Board of Education of Philadelphia, and is, in his opinion, growing in the public mind generally, that every child should receive manual training; that a complete education implies the training of the hand in connection with the training of the mind, and that this feature must ultimately be incorporated into the public education. He concludes : “I feel encouraged to go forward with' the work. The great principles which underlie the system are With me intense convictions, and they mean nothing less than a revolution in 'iducation. The new system is the realization of the dream of every great ffiinker and reformer in education, from Comenius, Locke,and Rousseau to Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Spencer. My conviction and action in connection with this movement are based upon what, in my judgment, should constitute an education designed to prepare a human being for the social conditions of to-day, and not merely for vhe industrial demands of our time. And this must be realized in the public schools, or they will fail in accomplishing the ends for which they were instituted and maintained.” —Charles H. Mam, in Harper's Magazine.

Education is often valued not for itself, but merely as a stepping stone to wealth. We give it to the young and they take it not so much that they may become through it better, nobler, happier, and more useful men and women, as that they may gain the power of rising from a lower to a higher station, from poverty to mediocrity, or from mediocrity to wealth. Thus the education that fits them only to adorn a humble position happily and contentedly, .instead of cultivating ambitious longings, that cherishes health and strength of body and fills the mind with resources for its own activity and power for it 3 own development, without any direct reference to amassing a fortune, is too often neglected for narrower and shallower instruction. Is not the mind more than the purse? Shall we sell the one to fill the other, or shall we rather spend freely of our gold to build up the intellect, to cultivate the taste, to fortify the principles ? The reason why egotists find the world so ugly is because they only see themselves ill it.