strong will is not necessarily a good will. It is true, there are
influences in manual training, as it has been described, which are
favorable to a virtuous disposition. Squareness in things is not without
relation to squareness in action and in thinking. A child that has
learned to be exact--that is, truthful--in his work will be predisposed
to be scrupulous and truthful in his speech, in his thought, in his
acts. The refining and elevating influence of artistic work I have
already mentioned. But, along with and over and above all these
influences, I need hardly say to you that, in the remarks which I have
offered this evening, I have all along taken for granted the continued
application of those tried and excellent methods which prevail in our
best reformatories. I have taken for granted that isolation from
society, which shuts out temptation; that routine of institutional life,
which induces regularity of habit; that strict surveillance of the whole
body of inmates and of every individual, which prevents excesses of the
passions, and therefore starves them into disuse. I have taken for
granted the cultivation of the emotions, the importance of which I am
the last to undervalue. I have taken for granted the influence of good
example, good literature, good music, poetry, and religion. All I have
intended to urge is that between good feeling and the realization of
good feeling there exists, in persons whose will-power is weak, a
hiatus, and that manual training is admirably adapted to fill that
hiatus.
There is another advantage to be noted in connection with manual
training--namely, that it develops the property sense. What, after all,
apart from artificial social convention, is the foundation of the right
of property? On what basis does it rest? I have a proprietary right in
my own thoughts. I have a right to follow my tastes in the adornment of
my person and my house. I have a right to the whole sphere of my
individuality, my selfhood; and I have a right in _things_ so far as I
use them to express my personality. The child that has made a wooden box
has put a part of himself into the making of that box--his thought, his
patience, his skill, his toil--and therefore the child feels that that
box is in a certain sense his own. And as only those who have the sense
of ownership are likely to respect the right of ownership in others, we
may by manual training cultivate the property sense of the child; and
this, in the case of the delinquent child, it will be admitted, is no
small advantage.
I have confined myself till now to speaking of the importance of manual
training in its influence on the character of delinquent children. I
wish to add a few words touching the influence of manual training on
character in general, and its importance for children of all classes of
society. I need not here speak of the value of manual training to the
artisan class. That has been amply demonstrated of late by the many
technical and art schools which the leading manufacturing nations of
Europe have established and are establishing. I need not speak of the
value of manual training to the future surgeon, dentist, scientist, and
to all those who require deftness of hand in the pursuit of their
vocations. But I do wish to speak of the value of manual training to the
future lawyer and clergyman, and to all those who will perhaps never be
called upon to labor with their hands. Precisely because they will not
labor with their hands is manual training so important for them--in the
interest of an all-round culture--in order that they may not be entirely
crippled on one side of their nature. The Greek legend says that the
giant Antaeus was invincible so long as his feet were planted on the
solid earth. We need to have a care that our civilization shall remain
planted on the solid earth. There is danger lest it may be developed too
much into the air--that we may become too much separated from those
primal sources of strength from which mankind has always drawn its
vitality. The English nobility have deliberately adopted hunting as
their favorite pastime. They follow as a matter of physical exercise, in
order to keep up their physical strength, a pursuit which the savage man
followed from necessity. The introduction of athletics in colleges is a
move in the same direction. But it is not sufficient to maintain our
physical strength, our brute strength, the strength of limb and muscle.
We must also preserve that spiritualized strength which we call
skill--the tool-using faculty, the power of impressing on matter the
stamp of mind. And the more machinery takes the place of human labor,
the more necessary will it be to resort to manual training as a means of
keeping up skill, precisely as we have resorted to athletics as a means
of keeping up strength.
There is one word more I have to say in closing. Twenty-five years ago,
as the recent memories of Gettysburg recall to us, we fought to keep
this people a united nation. Then was State arrayed against State.
To-day class is beginning to be arrayed against class. The danger is not
yet imminent, but it is sufficiently great to give us thought. The chief
source of the danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes of
society have become so widely separated by difference of interests and
pursuits that they no longer fully understand one another, and
misunderstanding is the fruitful source of hatred and dissension. This
must not continue. The manual laborer must have time and opportunity for
intellectual improvement. The intellectual classes, on the other hand,
must learn manual labor; and this they can best do in early youth, in
the school, before the differentiation of pursuits has yet begun. Our
common schools are rightly so named. The justification of their support
by the State is not, I think, as is sometimes argued, that the State
should give a sufficient education to each voter to enable him at least
to read the ballot which he deposits. This is but a poor equipment for
citizenship at best. The justification for the existence of our common
schools lies rather in the bond of common feeling which they create
between the different classes of society. And it is this bond of common
feeling woven in childhood that has kept and must keep us a united
people. Let manual training, therefore, be introduced into the common
schools; let the son of the rich man learn, side by side with the son of
the poor man, to labor with his hands; let him thus practically learn to
respect labor; let him learn to understand what the dignity of manual
labor really means, and the two classes of society, united at the root,
will never thereafter entirely grow asunder.
A short time ago I spent an afternoon with a poet whose fame is familiar
to all. There was present in the company a gentleman of large means,
who, in the course of conversation, descanted upon the merits of the
protective system, and spoke in glowing terms of the growth of the
industries of his State and of the immense wealth which is being
accumulated in its large cities. The aged poet turned to him, and said:
"That is all very well. I like your industries and your factories and
your wealth; but, tell me, do they turn out men down your way?" That is
the question which we are bound to consider. _Is this civilization of
ours turning out men_--manly men and womanly women? Now, it is a
cheering and encouraging thought that technical labor, which is the
source of our material aggrandizement, may also become, when employed in
the education of the young, the means of enlarging their manhood,
quickening their intellect, and strengthening their character.
THE END.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] An address delivered before the National Conference of Charities
and Correction, at Buffalo, July, 1888.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Moral Instruction of Children, by Felix Adler