Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1898 — POOR MANUAL TRAINING. [ARTICLE]

POOR MANUAL TRAINING.

No Systematic Instruction In Reformatory Institution*. During September 1 visited several off the reformatory institutions to see what was being done for the younger boys in regard to manual training, says a writer in the Altruist Interchange. I found very little systematic instruction. The principal occupations were caning chairs, knitting stockings by machinery and other purely mechanical work. In none of the schools was there systematic instruction in manual training as it is now carried on in educational institutions. In fact, there were so many young boys who could notlbe kept busy at machine work that a large part of the time which might have been usefully employed was spent in idleness. During these hours the boys found occupations on their own account for their hands to do to a limited extent. In one institution the boys had taken from their hat bands the broad steel wire which kept them in shape, broken it into pieces from three to six inches in length, ground these upon the doorsteps or walls-of the building and used them as knives to whittle such bits of wood as they could pick up about the yard or secure from the janitors when they made the fires. They made a handle by winding on the ravelings of stockings or binding two bits of wood on either side. Little boats, paper knives, household furniture, were rudely shaped by these crude instruments. Some of the boys were put there for wrecking trains, for burglary, etc., and their tendencies were sometimes expressed in the things they tried to make. For instance, pistols, small knives and weapons such as boys might use in Indian raids, etc.