The principle of the manual training school exists in the kindergarten, and for that principle we are indebted directly to Froebel, and indirectly to Pestalozzi, Comenius, Rousseau, and Bacon. But it was reserved for Russia to solve the problem of tool instruction by the laboratory process, and make it the foundation of a great reform in education. The initiatory step was taken in 1868 by M. Victor Della-Vos, Director of the Imperial Technical School of Moscow. The following statement is extracted from the account given by Director Della-Vos of the exhibit of the Moscow school at Philadelphia (Centennial of 1876), and at the Paris Exposition in 1878, as best showing the inception of the new education:
M. VICTOR DELLA-VOS, THE FOUNDER OF MANUAL TRAINING IN RUSSIA.
“In 1868 the school council considered it indispensable, in order to secure the systematical teaching of elementary practical work, as well as for the more convenient supervision of the pupils while practically employed, to separate entirely the school workshops from the mechanical works in which the orders from private individuals are executed, admitting pupils to the latter only when they have perfectly acquired the principles of practical labor.
“By the separation alone of the school workshops from the mechanical works, the principal aim was, however, far from being attained. It was found necessary to work out such a method of teaching the elementary principles of mechanical art as, firstly, should demand the least possible length of time for their acquirement; secondly, should increase the facility of the supervision of the graded employment of the pupils; thirdly, should impart to the study of practical work the character of a sound systematical acquirement of knowledge; and fourthly and lastly, should facilitate the demonstration of the progress of every pupil at every stated time. Everybody is well aware that the successful study of any art whatsoever, free-hand or linear drawing, music, singing, painting, etc., is only attainable when the first attempts at any of them are strictly subject to the laws of gradation and successiveness, when every student adheres to a definite method or school, surmounting little by little, and by certain degrees, the difficulties encountered.
“All those arts which we have just named possess a method of study which has been well worked out and defined, because, since they have long constituted a part of the education of the well-instructed classes of people, they could not but become subject to scientific analysis, could not but become the objects of investigation, with a view of defining those conditions which might render the study of them as easy and well regulated as possible.
“If we except the attempts made in France in the year 1867 by the celebrated and learned mechanical engineer, A. Cler, to form a collection of models for the practical study of the principal methods of forging and welding iron and steel, as well as the chief parts of joiners’ work, and this with a purely demonstrative aim, no one, as far as we are aware, has hitherto been actively engaged in the working out of this question in its application to the study of hand labor in workshops. To the Imperial Technical School belongs the initiative in the introduction of a systematical method of teaching the arts of turning, carpentering, fitting, and forging.
“To the knowledge and experience in these specialties, of the gentlemen intrusted with the management of the school workshops, and to their warm sympathy in the matter of practical education, we are indebted for the drawing up of the programme of systematical instruction in the mechanical arts, its introduction in the year 1868 into the workshops, and also for the preparation of the necessary auxiliaries to study. In the year 1870, at the exhibition of manufactures at St. Petersburg, the school exhibited its methods of teaching mechanical arts, and from that time they have been common to all the technical schools of Russia.
“And now (1878) we present our system of instruction, not as a project, but as an accomplished fact, confirmed by the long experience of ten years of success in its results.”