It will be seen that the school is a community unto itself, in which buildings can be erected, finished, and furnished, the table supplied the year round, and economic independence achieved in a large measure. But this work is for the benefit of the student, not to make the school self-supporting. Therefore, no one side of his education must be neglected in order that he may be for the time a more productive labourer in his department of industry. It would be wronging both him and the system to keep him at the work-bench all the working hours in order that he might turn out the greatest possible number of shoes, or window sashes, or fruit cans in a week.
BASKET-MAKING
Special effort is made to have the students use the natural products of the region as material
For example, if you should chance to visit the carpenter shop, you would find a score of young men turning out the finished material for some new building in process of erection, or at the lathes turning out the interior finishings. But in a small room in one corner, having a hard time to be heard above the din of the steam saws, is an instructor with a class of students, who are learning to draw up contracts for jobs in carpentry or building. They are not going out with the expectation of always being carpenters at day wages. They should know how to make contracts as "boss carpenters," to build houses, or repair them, or how to hire other men to build houses for them. Therefore, they learn to draw up specifications in both legal and practical form, so that when the occasion arises they will know how to work with intelligence.
Their class-room work in spelling, mathematics, grammar, and English composition comes effectively into play. They find out that a carpenter has small chance of getting ahead unless he can use his head intelligently. He writes out a contract, for example, to put up a four-room house, on a basis of three cash payments—when he takes the job; when the roof is on; and when the house is turned over to the owner. This contract is read aloud by the instructor, who asks the other members of the class to criticise it. One of them points out a flaw which would allow the owner to "crawl out" of his bargain on a technicality. Another is pleased to discover that the arithmetic is so faulty that the estimates of the cost of material would land the contractor in the poor-house. Then the student begins to see that his so-called academic teaching is as important in his calling as his skill with the plane, the saw and the miter-box, and that he cannot hope to become a good carpenter unless he is also a diligent scholar.
In the winter an instructor in the Agricultural Classes may teach his students to familiarise themselves, through books, with insect pests which infest the peach tree. They are asked to give their own ideas of the "borer," or the "scale," but this information is not allowed to be packed away in the attic of memory, to be forgotten like so much useless lumber. The real examination comes in the spring, not in written papers, but in the school orchard. The same instructor takes the class among the peach trees, and, with branches in their hands, they are required to identify the "borer," and apply to the trees the remedies laid down in their books and lectures.
When a new building is to be erected, the school industries join their activities in a common cause. The project sets in motion, first, the wagons to be used in removing the excavated material. The young men in the wheelwright, blacksmithing, and harness-making rooms see their work tested, for they have made and equipped all the heavy farm wagons needed for this hauling. Along with their daily work with the hands, the patterns and instructions had been given them on blackboards and in lectures. They have trained their minds, they have learned handicraft, and the combined results are applied. Their wagons and harness are not to be sent away or put on exhibition. They must stand the strain at home, and if they are faulty it cannot be hidden.
