Transcriber’s Notes
Texts printed in italics in the source document have been transcribed
_between underscores_, bold face text =between equal signs=. Small
capitals have been changed to ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes (also on the use of footnotes and endnotes)
may be found at the end of this text.
[Illustration: Yours faithfully
Charles Henry Ham]
MIND AND HAND
_MANUAL TRAINING
THE CHIEF FACTOR IN EDUCATION_
BY CHARLES H. HAM
BEING THE THIRD EDITION OF
“MANUAL TRAINING, THE SOLUTION
OF SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS”
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK ⁛ CINCINNATI ⁛ CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
Copyright, 1886, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
Copyright, 1900, by CHARLES H. HAM.
_All rights reserved._
W. P. 5
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
The work of which this is the third edition has been before the public
of this country, England, and all English-speaking countries since
1886--thirteen years. As it proposes a revolution in educational
methods, it was not to be presumed that it would escape criticism. But,
while the reviews of it have been numerous, they have, on the whole,
been very generous. My most radical postulates have, however, been
received by educators of the old régime with expressions of emphatic
dissent. In presenting the third edition of the work I have, therefore,
thought it wise to support the text with many high authorities in the
form of foot-notes. As was to be expected, my analysis of Greek history
and character provoked the severest criticism. It is regarded, indeed,
as conclusive evidence of gross ignorance of the entire subject. To meet
the charge of ignorance, I have made a large number of citations from
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others--authors
consulted, originally, in the preparation of this part of the work. I
may venture to observe, with due deference to those schoolmen who regard
the ancient Greeks as an ideal people, that I have searched
contemporaneous history in vain for evidence of the verity of this
claim; and I am hence constrained to adhere firmly to the extreme views
expressed in the text. And if these views are correct, it follows that
the passion for Greek models in education is not only a mental
dissipation, but a moral crime.
The other new notes are commended to the careful consideration of the
reader, as the fruit of my added years of research and reflection.
The Appendix contains a compilation, in tabular form, of all the facts
obtainable from original sources, through the aid of a skilled
statistician, showing the physical progress of Manual Training in this
country, and the chief countries of Europe, during the last fifteen
years.
In this edition the disguise of the first edition is dropped. In that
edition a certain school was referred to as “the Chicago school,”
whereas it was, in fact, purely an ideal school, which had no existence
except in the mind of the author. But it embodied educational theories
and ideas of Comenius and other great men which the author desired to
see adopted. That desire not having been realized, I content myself here
by quoting the observation of Oscar Browning as to the proneness of the
school-master to neglect opportunities: “The more we reflect on the
method of Comenius, the more shall we see that it is replete with
suggestiveness, and we shall feel surprised that so much wisdom can have
lain in the path of school-masters for two hundred and fifty years, and
that they never stooped to avail themselves of its treasures.”
It is proper to state that the terms “Kindergarten,” “Manual Training,”
and “The New Education,” are used throughout the work as equivalents.
The change of title to “Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor
in Education”--is made in response to the common and just criticism of
the original title as too narrow for the broad treatment of the subject
which characterized the text.
The notes prepared especially for this edition will be found at the ends
of the chapters to which they respectively belong.
Wherever in this work apparent discrimination in favor of the male sex
is indulged through the employment of the pronoun “he,” “his,” or “him,”
rather than the corresponding feminine parts of speech, it is merely
apparent, not real; for I urge the co-education of the sexes as I urge
the co-education of Mind and Hand, because the woman is the complement
of the man as the hand is the complement of the mind. For I believe,
with John Stuart Mill, that “The true virtue of human beings is fitness
to live together as equals; and to enable them to live together as
equals, they must be associated in education”; and with Mary
Wollstonecraft, that “Virtue will never prevail in society till the
morals of both sexes are founded on reason, and till the affections
common to both are allowed their due strength by the discharge of mutual
duties.”
THE AUTHOR.
NEW YORK CITY, _March, 1900_.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
In 1879 I read a paper before the Chicago Philosophical Society on the
subject of “The Inventive Genius; or, an Epitome of Human Progress.” The
suggestion of the subject came from Mr. Charles J. Barnes, to whom I
desire in this public way to express my obligation for an introduction
to a profoundly interesting study, and one which has given a new
direction to all my thoughts.
At the conclusion of my labors in the preparation of the paper, I
realized the force of Bacon’s remark, that “the real and legitimate goal
of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and
riches.”
In tracing the course of invention and discovery, I found that I was
moving in the line of the progress of civilization. I found that the
great gulf between the savage and the civilized man is spanned by the
seven hand-tools--the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square,
the chisel, and the file--and that the modern machine-shop is an
aggregation of these tools driven by steam. I hence came to regard tools
as the great civilizing agency of the world. With Carlyle I said, “Man
without tools is nothing; with tools he is all.” From this point it was
only a step to the proposition that, It is through the arts alone that
all branches of learning find expression, and touch human life. Then I
said, The true definition of education is the development of all the
powers of man to the culminating point of action; and this power in the
concrete, the power to do some useful thing for man--this must be the
last analysis of educational truth.
These ideas are not new. They pervade Lord Bacon’s writings, are
admirably formulated in Rousseau’s “Emile,” and were restated by Mr.
Herbert Spencer twenty-five years ago. More than this, Comenius,
Pestalozzi, and Froebel attempted to carry them into practical operation
in the school-room, but with only a small measure of success. It remains
for the age of steel to show how powerless mere words are in the
presence of things, and so to emphasize the demand for a radical reform
in educational methods.
In 1880 my attention was drawn to the Manual Training Department of the
Washington University of St. Louis, Mo. In that school I found the
realization of Bacon’s aphorism, “Education is the cultivation of a just
and legitimate familiarity betwixt the mind and things.” I made an
exhaustive study of the methods of the St. Louis school, and reached the
conclusion that the philosopher’s stone in education had been
discovered. The columns of the _Chicago Tribune_ were opened to me, and
I wrote constantly on the subject for the ensuing three years. Meantime
the Chicago Manual-Training School (the first independent institution of
the kind in the world) was founded and opened, and the agitation spread
over the whole country, and indeed over the whole civilized world.
This work was commenced two years ago. I found the labor much more
arduous than I anticipated, and its completion has hence been delayed
far beyond the time originally contemplated for placing it in the hands
of a publisher. It may be summarized briefly as consisting of four
divisions: 1. A detailed description of the various laboratory class
processes, from the first lesson to the last, in the course of three
years. 2. An exhaustive argument _a posteriori_ and _a fortiori_ in
support of the proposition that tool practice is highly promotive of
intellectual growth, and in a still greater degree of the upbuilding of
character. 3. A sketch of the historical period, showing that the decay
of civilization and the destruction of social organisms have resulted
directly from defects in methods of education. 4. A brief sketch of the
history of manual training as an educational force.
To Dr. John D. Runkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the
founder of manual training as an educational institution in this
country, I cannot express too strongly my deep obligation for valuable
suggestions and constant encouragement. To him also am I indebted for
nearly all my illustrations, as also particularly for the excellent
portrait of M. Victor Della Vos, the founder of the new system of
education in Russia. I am also under obligations to Col. Augustus
Jacobson, a leading advocate of the new education, for constant counsel
and support, as also to Dr. Henry H. Belfield, Director of the Chicago
Manual Training School, and Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston.
Of the authors consulted, I cannot forbear mention of Lord Bacon,
Rousseau, and Herbert Spencer, whose great works constitute the
foundation of the new system of education according to nature. Nor can I
omit to acknowledge, with all the emphasis of which words are
susceptible, my obligations to Mr. Samuel Smiles. His works, from the
lives of the engineers to the shortest of his biographies, constitute an
inexhaustible treasure-house of facts from which I have drawn without
stint. Mr. Smiles has traced the springs of English greatness to their
true source, the workshop. I have attempted to continue his office by
showing that the workshop is a great educational force, and hence that
its educational element ought to be incorporated in the system of public
instruction.
The propositions of the following pages involve an educational
revolution destined to enlighten, and so ultimately to redeem manual
labor from the scorn of the ages of slavery, and, in the end, to render
the skilled laborer worthy of high social distinction, thus presenting
at once a solution not only of the industrial question but of the social
question.
CHARLES H. HAM.
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
BY COL. FRANCIS W. PARKER, Principal of the Chicago Normal School.
The last twenty-five years have brought much of intrinsic value into
American education. Rapid increase in population and ever-changing
conditions have made imperative demands for schools adequate to
self-government.
The Kindergarten led the way to other substantial reforms in education,
and called attention to the actual needs of childhood. It proved
conclusively that hand-work is one of the dominant interests of the
child, and demonstrated the absolute dependence of brain-growth upon
Manual Training.
Manual Training is thus a direct outcome and sequence of the
Kindergarten. It supplies a need for which there is no substitute. The
belief that that which is begun in the Kindergarten should be continued
and expanded in all upper grades, forces itself more and more upon
thoughtful minds. Modern psychology brings its potent evidence as to the
tremendous value of the work of the hand in the building of the brain.
The trend of educational thought will always be in the direction of hand
training as a fundamental element in education.
Twenty-five years ago Manual Training was little known in this country
as a factor in education. Charles H. Ham, imbued with a fervid
patriotism, saw clearly that one of the intrinsic needs of education--an
absolute necessity in the evolution of a democracy--is the training of
the whole being, hand, brain, and soul, through educative work. He was,
indeed, a pioneer, beginning his work when there was very little
attention given to this important subject, and at a time, too, when it
was opposed by nearly all leading educators.
Mr. Ham, together with Colonel Jacobson, brought a strong influence to
bear upon the Commercial Club of Chicago, to found a Manual-Training
school. This school is now a department of the Chicago University and
has been in successful operation for thirteen years. There are in
Chicago to-day the Armour Institute, the Lewis Institute, and the Jewish
Manual-Training School, all prominent and well established. There is
also a high school for Manual Training in connection with the public
schools, and, best of all, there are indications which show that
hand-work is making its way throughout the grades.
Mr. Ham, without doubt, had a strong influence upon the late George M.
Pullman, which led him to provide, through his will, for a
Manual-Training school for the children of the city which he built.
Manual-Training schools are now maintained in almost every city in the
Union. Much remains to be done before Manual Training takes its true
place in education. The majority of these schools now in existence are
for boys who have graduated from the grammar school, which leaves the
years between six and fourteen with little or no hand-work. Thus the
most important period for brain-growth through hand activity is
neglected.
The future of Manual Training is to introduce hand-work as the principal
factor in the first four years’ work, to be continued in the four years
of the grammar grades, and correlated with all other subjects. Indeed,
the ideal is to introduce Manual Training in all courses of study, from
the Kindergarten to the University, inclusive.
The patrons of Cook County Normal School owe to Mr. Ham the
establishment of Manual Training in connection with the primary grades
of the school, nearly fifteen years ago; for without the practical aid
he gave it, it could not have been accomplished at that time. The
children--indeed, all the people of this country--owe him an immense
debt of gratitude for his heroic championship of hand-work.
Manual Training gives a true dignity to labor; it calls attention to the
place of hand-work in human progress, and as civilization goes on it
will have a higher and still higher place in the hearts of the people.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE IDEAL SCHOOL.
Its Situation. -- Its Tall Chimney. -- The Whir of Machinery and Sound
of the Sledge-hammer. -- The School that is to dignify Labor. -- The
Realization of the Dream of Bacon, Rousseau, Comenius, Pestalozzi, and
Froebel. -- The School that fitly represents the Age of Steel. Page 1
CHAPTER II.
THE MAJESTY OF TOOLS.
Tools the highest Text-books. -- How to Use them the Test of
Scholarship. -- They are the Gauge of Civilization. -- Carlyle’s
Apostrophe to them. -- The Typical Hand-tools. -- The Automata of the
Machine-shop. -- Through Tools Science and Art are United. -- The
Power of Tools. -- Their Educational Value. -- Without Tools Man is
Nothing; with Tools he is All. -- It is through the Arts alone that
Education touches Human Life. 7
CHAPTER III.
THE ENGINE ROOM.
The Corliss Engine. -- A Thing of Grace and Power. -- The Growth of
Two Thousand Years. -- From Hero to Watt. -- Its Duty as a
School-master. -- The Interdependence of the Ages. -- The School in
Epitome. 14
CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAWING-ROOM.
Twenty-four Boys bending over the Drawing-board. -- Analysis and
Synthesis in Drawing. -- Geometric Drawing. -- Pictorial Drawing. --
The Principles of Design. -- The Æsthetic in Art. -- The Fundamentals.
-- Object and Constructive Drawing. -- Drawing for the Exercises in
the Laboratories. -- The Educational Value of Drawing. -- The Language
of Drawing. -- Every Student an expert Draughtsman at the end of the
Course. 16
CHAPTER V.
THE CARPENTER’S LABORATORY.
The Natural History of the Pine-tree. -- How it is Converted into
Lumber, what it is Worth, and how it is Consumed. -- Where the
Students get Information. -- Working Drawings of the Lesson. -- Asking
Questions. -- The Instructor Executes the Lesson. -- Instruction in
the Use and Care of Tools. -- Twenty-four Boys Making Things. -- As
Busy as Bees. -- The Music of the Laboratory. -- The Self-reliance of
the Students. 21
CHAPTER VI.
THE WOOD-TURNING LABORATORY.
A Radical Change. -- From the Square to the Circle; from Angles to
Spherical, Cylindrical, and Eccentric Forms. -- The Rhythm of
Mechanics. -- The Potter’s Wheel of the Ancients and the Turning-
lathe. -- The Speculation of Holtzapffels on its Origin. -- The Greeks
as Turners. -- The Turners of the Middle Ages. -- George III. at the
Lathe. -- Maudsley’s Slide-rest, and the Revolution it wrought. -- The
Natural History of Black-walnut. -- The Practical Value of
Imagination. -- Disraeli’s Tribute to it; Sir Robert Peel’s Want of
it. -- The Laboratory animated by Steam. -- The Boys at the Lathes. --
Their Manly Bearing. -- The Lesson. 30
CHAPTER VII.
THE FOUNDING LABORATORY.
The Iron Age. -- Iron the King of Metals. -- Locke’s Apothegm. -- The
Moulder’s Art is Fundamental. -- History of Founding. -- Remains of
Bronze Castings in Egypt, Greece, and Assyria. -- Layard’s
Discoveries. -- The Greek Sculptors. -- The Colossal Statue of Apollo
at Rhodes. -- The Great Bells of History. -- Moulding and Casting a
Pulley. -- Description of the Process, Step by Step. -- The Furnace
Fire. -- Pouring the Hot Metal into the Moulds. -- A Pen Picture of
the Laboratory. -- Thus were the Hundred Gates of Babylon cast. --
Neglect of the Practical Arts by Herodotus. -- How Slavery has
degraded Labor. -- How Manual Training is to dignify it. 45
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FORGING LABORATORY.
Twenty-four manly-looking Boys with Sledge-hammer in Hand -- their
Muscle and Brawn. -- The Pride of Conscious Strength. -- The Story of
the Origin of an Empire. -- The Greater Empire of Mechanics. -- The
Smelter and the Smith the Bulwark of the British Government. -- Coal
-- its Modern Aspects; its Early History; Superstition regarding its
Use. -- Dud. Dudley utilizes “Pit-coal” for Smelting -- the Story of
his Struggles; his Imprisonment and Death. -- The English People
import their Pots and Kettles. -- “The Blast is on and the Forge Fire
sings.” -- The Lesson, first on the Black-board, then in Red-hot Iron
on the Anvil. -- Striking out the Anvil Chorus -- the Sparks fly
whizzing through the Air. -- The Mythological History of Iron. -- The
Smith in Feudal Times. -- His Versatility. -- History of Damascus
Steel. -- We should reverence the early Inventors. -- The Useful Arts
finer than the Fine Arts. -- The Ancient Smelter and Smith, and the
Students in the Manual-training School. 58
CHAPTER IX.
THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY.
The Foundery and Smithy are Ancient, the Machine-tool Shop is Modern.
-- The Giant, Steam, reduced to Servitude. -- The Iron Lines of
Progress. -- They converge in the Shop; its triumphs from the
Watchspring to the Locomotive. -- The Applications of Iron in Art is
the Subject of Subjects. -- The Story of Invention is the History of
Civilization. -- The Machine-maker and the Tool-maker are the best
Friends of Man. -- Watt’s Great Conception waited for Automatic Tools;
their Accuracy. -- The Hand-made and the Machine-made Watch. -- The
Elgin (Illinois) Watch Factory. -- The Interdependence of the Arts. --
The making of a Suit of Clothes. -- The Anteroom of the Machine-tool
Laboratory. -- Chipping and Filing. -- The File-cutter. -- The Poverty
of Words as compared with Things. -- The Graduating Project. -- The
Vision of the Instructor. 78
CHAPTER X.
MANUAL AND MENTAL TRAINING COMBINED.
The new Education is all-sided -- its Effect. -- A Harmonious
Development of the Whole Being. -- Examination for Admission to the
Chicago School. -- List of Questions in Arithmetic, Geography, and
Language. -- The Curriculum. -- The Alternation of Manual and Mental
Exercises. -- The Demand for Scientific Education -- its Effect. --
Ambition to be useful. 105
CHAPTER XI.
THE INTELLECTUAL EFFECT OF MANUAL TRAINING.
Intelligence is the Basis of Character. -- The more Practical the
Intelligence the Higher the Development of Character. -- The use of
Tools quickens the Intellect. -- Making Things rouses the Attention,
sharpens the Observation, and steadies the Judgment. -- History of
Inventions in England, 1740-1840. -- Poor, Ignorant Apprentices become
learned Men. -- Cort, Huntsman, Mushet, Neilson, Stephenson, and Watt.
-- The Union of Books and Tools. -- Results at Rotterdam, Holland; at
Moscow, Russia; at Komotau, Bohemia; and at St. Louis, Mo. -- The
Consideration of Overwhelming Import. 113
CHAPTER XII.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN A NECESSITY.
The Difference between Ancient and Modern Systems of Education. --
Plato Blinded by Half-truths. -- No place in the present order of
things for Dogmatisms. -- Education begins at Birth. -- The Influence
of Women extends from the Cradle to the Grave. -- The Crime of Crimes.
-- Neglect to educate Woman. -- The Superiority of Women over Men as
Teachers. -- Froebel discovered it. -- Nature designed Woman to Teach;
hence the Importance of Fitting her for her Highest Destiny. 123
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MORAL EFFECT OF MANUAL TRAINING.
Mental Impulses are often Vicious; but the Exertion of Physical Power
in the Arts is always Beneficent -- hence Manual Training tends to
correct vicious mental Impulses. -- Every mental Impression produces a
moral Effect. -- All Training is Moral as well as Mental. --
Selfishness is total Depravity; but Selfishness has been Deified under
the name of Prudence. -- Napoleon an Example of Selfishness. -- The
End of Selfishness is Disaster; but Prevailing Systems of Education
promote Selfishness. -- The Modern City an Illustration of
Selfishness. -- The Ancient City. -- Existing Systems of Education
Negatively Wrong. -- Manual Training supplies the lacking Element. --
The Objective must take the Place of the Subjective in Education. --
Words without Acts are as dead as Faith without Works. 130
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MIND AND THE HAND.
The Mind and the Hand are Allies; the Mind speculates, the Hand tests
its Speculations in Things. -- The Hand explodes the Errors of the
Mind -- it searches after Truth and finds it in Things. -- Mental
Errors are subtile; they elude us, but the False in Things stands
self-exposed. -- The Hand is the Mind’s Moral Rudder. -- The Organ of
Touch the most Wonderful of the Senses; all the Others are Passive;
it alone is Active. -- Sir Charles Bell’s Discovery of a “Muscular
Sense.” -- Dr. Henry Maudsley on the Muscular Sense. -- The Hand
influences the Brain. -- Connected Thought impossible without
Language, and Language dependent upon Objects; and all Artificial
Objects are the Work of the Hand. -- Progress is therefore the Imprint
of the Hand upon Matter in Art. -- The Hand is nearer the Brain than
are the Eye and the Ear. -- The Marvellous Works of the Hand. 144
CHAPTER XV.
THE POWER OF THE TRAINED HAND.
The Legend of Adam and the Stick with which he subdued the Animals. --
The Stick is the Symbol of Power, and only the Hand can wield it. --
The Hand imprisons Steam and Electricity, and keeps them at hard
Labor. -- The Destitution of England Two Hundred and Fifty Years ago:
a Pen Picture. -- The Transformation wrought by the Hand: a Pen
Picture. -- It is due, not to Men who make Laws, but to Men who make
Things. -- The Scientist and the Inventor are the World’s Benefactors.
-- A Parallel between the Right Honorable William E. Gladstone and Sir
Henry Bessemer. -- Mr. Gladstone a Man of Ideas, Mr. Bessemer a Man of
Deeds. -- The Value of the latter’s Inventions. -- Mr. Gladstone
represents the Old Education, Mr. Bessemer the New. 157
CHAPTER XVI.
THE INVENTORS, CIVIL ENGINEERS, AND MECHANICS OF ENGLAND, AND ENGLISH
PROGRESS.
A Trade is better than a Profession. -- The Railway, Telegraph, and
Steamship are more Potent than the Lawyer, Doctor, and Priest. --
Book-makers writing the Lives of the Inventors of last Century. -- The
Workshop to be the Scene of the Greatest Triumphs of Man. -- The Civil
Engineers of England the Heroes of English Progress. -- The Life of
James Brindley, the Canal-maker; his Struggles and Poverty. -- The
Roll of Honor. -- Mr. Gladstone’s Significant Admission that English
Triumphs in Science and Art were won without Government Aid. --
Disregarding the Common-sense of the Savage, Legislators have chosen
to learn of Plato, who declared that “The Useful Arts are Degrading.”
-- How Improvements in the Arts have been met by Ignorant Opposition.
-- The Power wielded by the Mechanic. 170
CHAPTER XVII.
POWER OF STEAM AND CONTEMPT OF ARTISANS.
A few Million People now wield twice as much Industrial Power as all
the People on the Globe exerted a Hundred Years ago. -- A Revolution
wrought, not by the Schools and Colleges, but by the Mechanic. -- The
Union between Science and Art prevented by the Speculative Philosophy
of the Middle Ages. -- Statesmen, Lawyers, Littérateurs, Poets, and
Artists more highly esteemed than Civil Engineers, Mechanics, and
Artisans. -- The Refugee Artisan a Power in England, the Refugee
Politician worthless. -- Prejudice against the Artisan Class shown by
Mr. Galton in his Work on “Hereditary Genius.” -- The Influence of
Slavery: it has lasted Thousands of Years, and still Survives. 184
CHAPTER XVIII.
AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION.
The Past tyrannizes over the Present by Interposing the Stolid
Resistance of Habit. -- Habits of Thought like Habits of the Body
become Automatic. -- There is much Freedom of Speech but very little
Freedom of Thought: Habit, Tradition, and Reverence for Antiquity
forbid it. -- The Schools educate Automatically. -- A glaring Defect
of the Schools shown by Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston. -- The Automatic
Character of the Popular System of Education shown by the Quincy
(Mass.) Experiment. -- Several Intelligent Opinions to the same
Effect. -- The Public Schools as an Industrial Agency a Failure. -- A
Conclusive Evidence of the Automatic and Superficial Character of
prevailing Methods of Education in the Schools of a large City. -- The
Views of Colonel Francis W. Parker. -- Scientific Education is found
in the Kindergarten and the Manual-training School. -- “The
Cultivation of Familiarity betwixt the Mind and Things.” 191
CHAPTER XIX.
AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION -- _Continued._
The Failure of Education in America shown by Statistics of Railway and
Mercantile Disasters. -- Shrinkage of Railway Values and Failures of
Merchants. -- Only Three per Cent. of those entering Mercantile Life
achieve Success. -- Business Enterprises conducted by Guess: Cause,
Unscientific Education. -- Savage Training is better because
Objective. -- Mr. Foley, late of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, on the Scientific Character of Manual Education -- Prof.
Goss, of Purdue University, to the same Effect -- also Dr. Belfield,
of the Chicago Manual-training School. -- Students love the Laboratory
Exercises. -- Demoralizing Effect of Unscientific Training. -- The
Failure of Justice and Legislation as contrasted with the Success of
Civil Engineering and Architecture. 210
CHAPTER XX.
AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION -- _Continued._
The Training of the Merchant, the Lawyer, the Judge, and the
Legislator contrasted with that of the Artisan. -- The Training of the
Merchant makes him Selfish, and Selfishness breeds Dishonesty. --
Professional Men become Speculative Philosophers, and test their
Speculations by Consciousness. -- The Artisan forgets Self in the
Study of Things. -- The Search after Truth. -- The Story of Palissy.
-- The Hero is the Normal Man; those who Marvel at his Acts are
abnormally Developed. -- Savonarola and John Brown. -- The New England
System of Education contrasted with that of the South. -- American
Statesmanship -- its Failure in an Educational Point of View. -- Why
the State Provides for Education; to protect Property. -- The British
Government and the Land Question. -- The Thoroughness of the Training
given by Schools of Mechanic Art and Institutes of Technology as shown
in Things. -- Story of the Emperor of Germany and the Needle-maker. --
The Iron Bridge lasts a Century, the Act of the Legislator wears out
in a Year. -- The Cause of the Failures of Justice and Legislation. --
The best Act is the Act that Repeals a Law; but the Act of the
Inventor is never Repealed. -- Things the Source and Issue of Ideas;
hence the Necessity of Training in the Arts. 229
CHAPTER XXI.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM -- HISTORIC.
_EGYPT AND GREECE._
Fundamental Propositions. -- Selfishness the Source of Social Evil;
Subjective Education the Source of Selfishness and the Cause of
Contempt of Labor; and Social Disintegration the Result of Contempt of
Labor and the Useful Arts. -- The First Class-distinction -- the
Strongest Man ruled; his First Rival, the Ingenious Man. --
Superstition. -- The Castes of India and Egypt -- how came they about?
-- Egyptian Education based on Selfishness. -- Rise of Egypt -- her
Career; her Fall; Analysis thereof. -- She Typifies all the Early
Nations: Force and Rapacity above, Chains and Slavery below. -- Their
Education consisted of Selfish Maxims for the Government of the Many
by the Few, and Government meant the Appropriation of the Products of
Labor. -- Analysis of Greek Character -- its Savage Characteristics.
-- Greek Treachery and Cruelty. -- Greek Venality. -- Her Orators
accepted Bribes. -- Responsibility of Greek Education and Philosophy
for the Ruin of Greek Civilization. -- Rectitude wholly left out of
her Scheme of Education. -- Plato’s Contempt of Matter: it led to
Contempt of Man and all his Works. -- Greek Education consisted of
Rhetoric and Logic; all Useful Things were hence held in Contempt. 247
CHAPTER XXII.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM -- HISTORIC.
_ROME._
Vigor of the Early Romans -- their Virtues and Vices; their Rigorous
Laws; their Defective Education; their Contempt of Labor. -- Slavery:
its Horrors and Brutalizing Influence. -- Education Confined to the
Arts of Politics and War; it transformed Courage into Cruelty, and
Fortitude into Stoicism. -- Robbery and Bribery. -- The Vices of
Greece and Carthage imported into Rome. -- Slaves construct all the
great Public Works; they Revolt, and the Legions Slaughter them. --
The Gothic Invasion. -- Rome Falls. -- False Philosophy and
Superficial Education promoted Selfishness. -- Deification of
Abstractions, and Scorn of Men and Things. -- Universal Moral
Degradation. -- Neglect of Honest Men and Promotion of Demagogues. --
The Decline of Morals and Growth of Literature. -- Darwin’s Law of
Reversion, through Selfishness to Savagery. -- Contest between the
Rich and the Poor. -- Logic, Rhetoric, and Ruin. 263
CHAPTER XXIII.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM -- HISTORIC.
_THE MIDDLE AGES._
The Trinity upon which Civilization Rests: Justice, the Arts, and
Labor; and these Depend upon Scientific Education. -- Reason of the
Failure of Theodoric and Charlemagne to Reconstruct the Pagan
Civilization. -- Contempt of Man. -- Serfdom. -- The Vices of the
Time: False Philosophy, an Odious Social Caste, and Ignorance. -- The
Splendid Career of the Moors in Spain, in Contrast. -- Effect upon
Spain of the Expulsion of the Moors. -- The Repressive Force of
Authority and the Atrocious Philosophy of Contempt of Man. -- The
Rule of Italy -- a Menace and a Sneer. -- The work of Regeneration. --
The Crusades. -- The Destruction of Feudalism. -- The Invention of
Printing. -- The Discovery of America. -- Investigation. --
Discoveries in Science and Art. 278
CHAPTER XXIV.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM -- HISTORIC.
_EUROPE._
The Standing Army a Legacy of Evil from the Middle Ages. -- It is the
Controlling Feature of the European Situation. -- Its Collateral
Evils: Wars and Debts. -- The Debts of Europe Represent a Series of
Colossal Crimes against the People; with the Armies and Navies they
Absorb the Bulk of the Annual Revenue. -- The People Fleeing from
them. -- They Threaten Bankruptcy; they Prevent Education. -- Germany,
the best-educated Nation in Europe, losing most by Emigration. -- Her
People will not Endure the Standing Army. -- The Folly of the European
International Policy of Hate. -- It is Possible for Europe to Restore
to Productive Employments 3,000,000 of men, to place at the Disposal
of her Educators $700,000,000, instead of $70,000,000 per annum, and
to pay her National Debts in Fifty-four Years, simply by the
Disbandment of her Armies and Navies. -- The Armament of Europe Stands
in the Way of Universal Education and of Universal Industrial
Prosperity. -- Standing Armies the Last Analysis of Selfishness; they
are Coeval with the Revival during the Middle Ages of the Greco-Roman
Subjective Methods of Education. -- They must go out when the New
Education comes in. 289
CHAPTER XXV.
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM -- HISTORIC.
_AMERICA._
An Old Civilization in a New Country. -- Old Methods in a New System
of Schools. -- Sordid Views of Education. -- The highest Aim
Money-getting. -- Herbert Spencer on the English Schools. -- Same
Defects in the American Schools. -- Maxims of Selfishness. -- The
Cultivation of Avarice. -- Political Incongruities. -- Negroes
escaping from Slavery called Fugitives from Justice. -- The Results of
Subjective Educational Processes. -- Climatic Influences alone saved
America from becoming a Slave Empire. -- Illiteracy. -- Abnormal
Growth of Cities. -- Failure of Justice. -- Defects of Education shown
in Reckless and Corrupt Legislation. -- Waste of an Empire of Public
Land. -- Henry D. Lloyd’s History of Congressional Land Grants. -- The
Growth and Power of Corporations. -- The Origin of large Fortunes,
Speculations. -- Old Social Forces producing old Social Evils. --
Still America is the Hope of the World. -- The Right of Suffrage in
the United States justifies the Sentiment of Patriotism. -- Let
Suffrage be made Intelligent and Virtuous, and all Social Evils will
yield to it; and all the Wealth of the Country is subject to the Draft
of the Ballot for Education. -- The Hope of Social Reform depends upon
a complete Educational Revolution. 307
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE MANUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION IN 1884.
The Kindergarten and the Manual-training School one in Principle. --
Russia solved the Problem of Tool Instruction by Laboratory Processes.
-- The Initiatory Step by M. Victor Della-Vos, Director of the
Imperial Technical School of Moscow in 1868. -- Statement of Director
Della-Vos as to the Origin, Progress, and Results of the New System of
Training. -- Its Introduction into all the Technical Schools of
Russia. -- Dr. John D. Runkle, President of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, recommends the Russian System in 1876, and it
is adopted. -- Statement of Dr. Runkle as to how he was led to the
adoption of the Russian System. -- Dr. Woodward, of Washington
University, St. Louis, Mo., establishes the second School in this
Country. -- His Historical Note in the Prospectus of 1882-83. -- First
Class graduated 1883. -- Manual Training in the Agricultural Colleges.
-- In Boston, in New Haven, in Baltimore, in San Francisco, and other
places. -- Manual Training at the Meeting of the National Educational
Association, 1884. -- Kindergarten and Manual-training Exhibits. --
Prof. Felix Adler’s School in New York City -- the most Comprehensive
School in the World. -- The Chicago Manual-training School the first
Independent Institution of the Kind -- its Inception; its
Incorporation; its Opening. Its Director, Dr. Belfield. -- His
Inaugural Address. -- Manual Training in the Public Schools of
Philadelphia. -- Manual Training in twenty-four States. --
Revolutionizing a Texas College. -- Local Option Law in Massachusetts.
-- Department of Domestic Economy in the Iowa Agricultural College. --
Manual Training in Tennessee, in the University of Michigan, in the
National Educational Association, in Ohio. -- The Toledo School for
both Sexes. -- The Importance of the Education of Woman. -- The Slöjd
Schools of Europe. 328
CHAPTER XXVII.
PROGRESS OF THE NEW EDUCATION -- 1883-1899.
Educational Revolution in 1883-4. -- Urgent Demand for Reform. --
Existing Schools denounced as Superficial, their Methods as Automatic,
their System as a Mixture of Cram and Smatter. -- The Controversy
between the School-master of the Old Régime and the Reformer. -- The
Leaders of the Movement, Col. Parker, Dr. MacAlister, and others --
followers of Rousseau, Bacon, and Spencer. -- “The End of Man is an
Action, not a Thought.” -- The Conservative Teachers fall into Line.
-- The New Education becomes an Aggressive Force pushing on to
Victory. -- The Physical Progress of Manual Training -- its Quality
not equal to its Extent. -- The New System of Training confided to
Teachers of the Old Régime. -- Ideal Teachers hard to find. --
Teachers willing to Learn should be Encouraged. -- The effects of
Manual Training long antedate its Introduction to the Schools. --
Bacon’s Definition of Education. -- Stephenson and the Value of
Hand-work. -- Manual Training is the union of Thought and Action. --
It is the antithesis of the Greek methods, which exalted Abstractions
and debased Things. -- The Rule of Comenius and the Injunction of
Rousseau -- few Teachers comprehend them. -- The Employment of the
Hands in the Arts is more highly Educative than the acquisition of the
rules of Reading and Arithmetic. -- What the Locomotive has
accomplished for Man. -- Education must be equal, and Social and
Political Equality will follow. -- The foundation of the New Education
is the Baconian Philosophy as stated by Macaulay. -- Use and Service
are the Twin-ministers of Human Progress. -- Definitions of Genius. --
Attention. -- Sir Henry Maine. -- Manual Training relates to all the
Arts of Life. -- Mind and Hand. -- Newton and the Apple. -- The Sense
of Touch resides in the Hand. -- Robert Seidel on Familiarity with
Objects. -- Material Progress the basis of Spiritual Growth. -- Plato
and the Divine Dialogues. -- Poverty, Society, and the Useful Arts. --
Selfishness must give way to Altruism. -- The Struggle of Life. -- The
Progress of the Arts and the final Regeneration of the Race. -- The
Arts that make Life sweet and beautiful. -- The final Fundamental
Educational Ideal is Universality. -- Comenius’s definition of Schools
-- the Workshops of Humanity. -- That one Man should die ignorant, who
had capacity for Knowledge, is a Tragedy. -- Mental and Manual
Exercises to be rendered homogeneous in the School of the Future. --
The hero of the Ideal School. 370
APPENDIX 387
INDEX 427
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece_
THE LABORATORY OF CARPENTRY 23
COURSE IN THE LABORATORY OF CARPENTRY 27
THE WOOD-TURNING LABORATORY 31
COURSE IN THE WOOD-TURNING AND PATTERN LABORATORY 41
THE FOUNDING LABORATORY 49
COURSE IN THE FOUNDING LABORATORY 53
THE FORGING LABORATORY 59
COURSE IN THE FORGING LABORATORY 67
THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY 79
THE CHIPPING, FILING, AND FITTING LABORATORY 89
COURSE IN THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY 95
THE STUDENTS WITH THEIR BOOKS 107
M. VICTOR DELLA-VOS, THE FOUNDER OF MANUAL TRAINING IN RUSSIA 329
DR. JOHN D. RUNKLE, THE FOUNDER OF MANUAL TRAINING IN THE UNITED
STATES 335
POWER.
“_His tongue was framed to music,
And his hand was armed with skill;
His face was the mould of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will._”
--EMERSON.
MIND AND HAND:
MANUAL TRAINING THE CHIEF FACTOR IN EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE IDEAL SCHOOL.
Its Situation. -- Its Tall Chimney. -- The Whir of Machinery and Sound
of the Sledge-hammer. -- The School that is to dignify Labor. -- The
Realization of the Dream of Bacon, Rousseau, Comenius, Pestalozzi, and
Froebel. -- The School that fitly represents the Age of Steel.
The Ideal School is an institution which develops and trains to
usefulness the moral, physical, and intellectual powers of man. It is
what Comenius called Humanity’s workshop, and in America it is becoming
the natural center of the Public School system. The building,
well-designed for its occupancy, is large, airy, open to the light on
every side, amply provided with all appliances requisite for instruction
in the arts and sciences, and finished interiorly and exteriorly in the
highest style of useful and beautiful architectural effects. The
distinguishing characteristic of the Ideal School building is its
chimney, which rises far above the roof, from whose tall stack a column
of smoke issues, and the hum and whir of machinery is heard, and the
heavy thud of the sledge-hammer resounding on the anvil, smites the ear.
It is, then, a factory rather than a school?
No. It is a school; the school of the future; the school that is to
dignify labor; the school that is to generate power; the school where
every sound contributes to the harmony of development, where the brain
informs the muscle, where thought directs every blow, where the mind,
the eye, and the hand constitute an invincible triple alliance. This is
the school that Locke dreamed of, that Bacon wished for, that Rousseau
described, and that Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Froebel struggled in vain
to establish.
It is, then, science and the arts in apotheosis. For if it be, as
claimed, the Ideal school, it is destined to lift the veil from the face
of Nature, to reveal her most precious secrets, and to divert to man’s
use all her treasures.
Yes; it is to other schools what the diamond is to other precious
stones--the last analysis of educational thought. It is the
philosopher’s stone in education; the incarnated dream of the alchemist,
which dissolved earth, air, and water into their original elements, and
recombined them to compass man’s immortality. Through it that which has
hitherto been impossible is to become a potential reality.
In this building which resembles a factory or machine-shop an
educational revolution is to be wrought. Education is to be rescued from
the domination of mediæval ideas, relieved of the enervating influence
of Grecian æstheticism, and confided to the scientific direction of the
followers of Bacon, whose philosophy is common sense and its law,
progress. The philosophy of Plato left in its wake a long line of
abstract propositions, decayed civilizations, and ruined cities, while
the philosophy of Bacon, in the language of Macaulay, “has lengthened
life; mitigated pain; extinguished diseases; increased the fertility of
the soil; given new securities to the mariner; spanned great rivers and
estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; guided the
thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; lighted up the night with
the splendor of the day; extended the range of the human vision;
multiplied the power of the human muscles; accelerated motion;
annihilated distance; facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all
friendly offices, all dispatch of business; enabled man to descend to
the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into
the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in cars which
whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots
an hour against the wind.”
It is this beneficent work of Bacon that the Ideal school is to
continue--the work of demonstrating to the world that the most useful
thing is the most beautiful thing--discarding Plato, the apostle of idle
speculation, and exalting Bacon, the minister of use.
In laying the foundations of education in labor it is dignified and
education is ennobled. In such a union there is honor and strength, and
long life to our institutions. For the permanence of the civil compact
in this country, as in other countries, depends less upon a wide
diffusion of unassimilated and undigested intelligence than upon such a
thorough, practical education of the masses in the arts and sciences as
shall enable them to secure, and qualify them to store up, a fair share
of the aggregate produce of labor.
If this school shall appear like a hive of industry, let the reader not
be deceived. Its main purpose, intellectual development, is never lost
sight of fora moment. It is founded on labor, which, being the most
sacred of human functions, is the most useful of educational methods.
It is a system of object-teaching--teaching through things instead of
through signs of things. It is the embodiment of Bacon’s
aphorism--“Education is the cultivation of a just and legitimate
familiarity betwixt the mind and things.” The students draw pictures of
things, and then fashion them into things at the forge, the bench, and
the turning-lathe; not mainly that they may enter machine-shops, and
with greater facility make similar things, but that they may become
stronger intellectually and morally; that they may attain a wider range
of mental vision, a more varied power of expression, and so be better
able to solve the problems of life when they shall enter upon the stage
of practical activity.
It is a theory of this school that in the processes of education the
idea should never be isolated from the object it represents;[E1] (1)
because the idea, being the reflex perception or shadow of the object,
is less clearly defined than the object itself, and (2) because joining
the object and the idea intensifies the impression. Separated from its
object the idea is unreal, a phantasm. The object is the flesh, blood,
bones, and nerves of the idea. Without its body the idea is as impotent
as the jet of steam that rises from the surface of boiling water and
loses itself in the air. But unite it to its object and it becomes the
vital spark, the animating force, the Promethean fire. Thus steam
converts the Corliss engine--a huge mass of lifeless iron--into a thing
of grace, of beauty, and of resistless power. Suppose the teacher, for
example, desires to convey to the mind of a child having no knowledge of
form an impression of the shape of the earth; he says, “It is globular.”
The child’s face expresses nothing because there is in its mind no
conception of the object represented by the word globular. The teacher
says, “It is a sphere,” with no better success. He adds, “A sphere is a
body bounded by a surface, every point of which is equally distant from
a point within called the centre.” The child’s face is still
expressionless. The teacher takes a handful of moist clay and moulds it
into the form of a sphere, and exhibiting it, says, “The earth is like
this.” The child claps its hands, utters a cry of delight, and exclaims,
“It is round like a ball!”
This is an illustration of the triumph of object-teaching, the method
alike of the kindergarten and the manual training school. As the child
is father of the man, so the kindergarten is father of the manual
training school. The kindergarten comes first in the order of
development, and leads logically to the manual training school. The same
principle underlies both. In both it is sought to generate power by
dealing with things in connection with ideas. Both have common methods
of instruction, and they should be adapted to the whole period of school
life, and applied to all schools.
The Ideal school, most precisely representative of the present age--the
age of science--is dedicated to a homogeneous system of mental and
manual training, to the generation of power, to the development of true
manhood. And above all, this school is destined to unite in indissoluble
bonds science and art, and so to confer upon labor the highest and
justest dignity--that of doing and responsibility. The reason of the
degradation of labor was admirably stated by America’s most
distinguished educational reformer, the late Mr. Horace Mann, who said,
“The labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men, by classes
doomed to ignorance from sire to son; by the bondmen and bondwomen of
the Jews, by the helots of Sparta, by the captives who passed under the
Roman yoke, and by the villeins and serfs and slaves of more modern
times.”
When it shall have been demonstrated that the highest degree of
education results from combining manual with intellectual training, the
laborer will feel the pride of a genuine triumph; for the consciousness
that every thought-impelled blow educates him, and so raises him in the
scale of manhood, will nerve his arm, and fire his brain with hope and
courage.
[E1] “And the attempt to convey scientific conceptions without the
appeal to observation, which can alone give such conceptions firmness
and reality, appears to me to be in direct antagonism to the
fundamental principles of scientific education.”--“Physiography,”
[Preface], p. vii. By T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. New York: D. Appleton &
Co., 1878.
This theory is the antithesis of that of Plato, namely; “that the
simplest and purest way of examining things, is to pursue every
particular by thought alone, without offering to support our
meditation by seeing or backing our reasonings by any other corporal
sense.”--Plato’s “Divine Dialogues,” p. 180. London: S. Cornish & Co.,
1839.