Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education

by Charles H. Ham

This act of the school authorities of the city of Philadelphia is the strongest popular endorsement the theory of manual training as an element of education has received. It commits a great city to a fair trial of the new education under the most favorable auspices—under the conduct of Mr. James MacAlister, one of the most accomplished, as well as most sternly practical educators in the United States.

But this is only part of a general system of manual training introduced throughout the whole course of instruction given in the public schools of Philadelphia. There are kindergartens (sub-primaries) for children from three to six years of age, and an industrial art department for all the students (of both sexes) of the grammar schools. In this latter department the course of training comprises “drawing and design,” “modelling,” “wood-carving,” “carpentry and joinery,” and “metal work.” These courses, including manual training proper, “at the top,” form a comprehensive system of head and hand training known as the new education. Mr. MacAlister says, “The conviction is gradually obtaining among the members of the Board of Education [of Philadelphia], and in the public mind, that every child should receive manual training; that a complete education implies the training of the hand in connection with the training of the mind; and that this feature must ultimately be incorporated into the public education. What is this but the realization of the principles which every great thinker and reformer in education has insisted upon, from Comenius, Locke, and Rousseau, to Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Spencer!”[106]

[106] In a letter to the author, Mr. MacAlister re-enforces the observations quoted in the text. He says,

“I wish you to understand that all my own convictions and action in connection with this movement are based upon what in my judgment should constitute an education fitted to prepare a human being for the social conditions of to-day, and not merely upon the industrial demands of our time.... I believe there is a great future for the manual training movement in Philadelphia. I feel encouraged to go forward with the work. The great principles which underlie the system are with me intense convictions; they mean nothing less than a revolution in education. The great ideas of the reformers of school training must be realized in the public schools, or they will fail in accomplishing the ends for which they were instituted and have been maintained.”

The rapid progress of the revolution in education is shown by the fact that manual training in some form has been adopted in certain of the schools of at least twenty-four of the States of the American Union.

In some of the higher educational institutions the new education is warmly welcomed, while in others public sentiment alone compels its adoption. The State Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas has been revolutionized in this way. A member of the Faculty[107] writes as follows:

“This institution was opened on the 4th of October, 1876. In spite of its name, the conditions of its endowment, and its avowed object, it was founded on the plan of the old classical and mathematical college, and had no industrial features whatever till the beginning of the year 1880. At that time the public sentiment of the State had condemned so decidedly and repeatedly the misappropriation of the funds, and perversion of the energies of the college under its administration as a literary school, that the directors found it necessary to reorganize it by accepting the resignation of the members of the faculty without exception, and calling in a new corps of instructors. In 1880-81 a large dormitory building was converted into a shop [laboratory]. This was fitted with tools for elementary instruction in wood-working for the accommodation of about fifty students. A small metal-working plant was also erected, the whole being furnished with power from a twelve-horse-power engine. Since that time a brick shop [laboratory] has been provided for the accommodation of the metal-working machinery, which now includes the principal machines used in ordinary iron-working, all driven by a twenty-horsepower engine.”

[107] H. H. Dinwiddie, Professor of Chemistry, Chairman of the Faculty.

Massachusetts, the cradle of the American common-school system, is the first State to legalize by statute the new education, placing manual training on an equal footing with mental training, by the following act:

“Section I. of Chapter XLIV. of the Public Statutes, relating to the branches of instruction to be taught in public schools, is amended by striking out in the eighth line the words ‘and hygiene,’ and inserting instead the words ‘hygiene and the elementary use of hand-tools;’ and in any city or town where such tools shall be introduced they shall be purchased by the school committee at the expense of such city or town, and loaned to such pupils as may be allowed to use them free of charge, subject to such rules and regulations, as to care and custody, as the school committee may prescribe.”[108]