Correlated courses in woodwork and mechanical drawing

By Ira S. Griffith, A. B.
Assistant Professor of Manual Arts, Bradley Polytechnic Institute, Peoria, Illinois. Author of “Essentials of Woodworking,” “Woodwork for Amateur Craftsmen,” “Projects for Beginning Woodwork and Mechanical Drawing,” and “Advanced Projects in Woodwork.”
The Manual Arts Press Peoria, Illinois
Copyright Ira S. Griffith 1912
The author wishes to state that the basis of the following courses rests more upon the art or practice of teaching manual training than upon the theory. It is the result of carefully prepared plans executed under public school conditions by the author himself, covering a period of some nine years of experimentation. Wherever plans, or theory, were found producing results which common sense indicated plainly were not for the pupils’ highest good, practical expediency supplanted theory.
If manual training practice in the two upper grammar grades has merited criticism it has been because school men have not taken its subject matter seriously enough.
It is too much to hope that results can be achieved that are truly educative, when a shop, however well equipped, is turned over to a teacher but slightly experienced in, and appreciative of, the “finer points” of the subject matter to be dealt with. Loose and unorganized efforts in any line of work cannot become educative, it matters not what fine spun theories may be offered as proof to the contrary. Indeed, much positive injury may be done.
If the present demand for vocational training teaches manual training anything, it is that the subject matter of manual training must receive more serious attention. The aims of manual training and vocational training, in one sense, are not so very different; both seek, or should, to assist the boy to become a “thinking doer.” The distinction is mainly a matter of “direction” and of allotment of time, with possibly a slight difference in the placing of the emphasis on one or the other of the words “thinking doer.”