Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education

by Charles H. Ham

Sacred to the majesty of tools might be appropriately inscribed over the entrance to this Ideal school; for its highest text-books are tools, and how to use them most intelligently is the test of scholarship. To realize the potency of tools it is only necessary to contrast the two states of man—the one without tools, the other with tools. See him in the first state, naked, shivering with cold, now hiding away from the beasts in caves, and now, famished and despairing, gaunt and hollow-eyed, creeping stealthily like a panther upon his prey. Then see him in the poetic, graphic apostrophe of Carlyle:—“Man is a tool-using animal. He can use tools, can devise tools; with these the granite mountains melt into light dust before him; he kneads iron as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all!”

What a picture of the influence of tools upon civilization! It is through the use of tools that man has reached the place of absolute supremacy among animals. As he increases his stock of tools he recedes from the state of savagery. The great gulf between the aboriginal savage and the civilized man is spanned by the seven hand-tools—the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the chisel, and the file. These are the universal tools of the arts, and the modern machine-shop is an aggregation of them rendered automatic and driven by steam.

The ancients constructed automata which were exceedingly ingenious. In the statues that could walk and talk, the Chinese puppets and the marionettes of the Greeks there was a hint of the modern automatic tools, which, driven by steam, fashion with equal accuracy the delicate parts of the watch and the huge segments of the marine engine. The ancients knew more of science than of art. They were familiar with the power of steam, but knew not how to apply it to the wants of man. They knew that steam would turn a spit, but they had not a sufficient knowledge of art to convert the power they had discovered into a monster of force, and train it to bear the burdens of commerce. They never thought to apply the jet of steam used to turn a spit to great automatic machines, and to fit into them saws and files, and needles and drills, and gimlets and planes, and compel them to do the work of thousands of men. But this is precisely what the modern mechanic has accomplished. In making a slave of steam, science and art have combined to free mankind.

We marvel at the dulness of the ancients as shown in their failure to utilize in the useful arts the discoveries of science. That they should have studied the stars over their heads to the neglect of the earth under their feet is incomprehensible to the modern mind. But will not future generations marvel at us? Is it not an astounding fact that, with a knowledge of the tremendous influence of tools upon the destiny of the human race so graphically depicted by Carlyle, the nations have been so slow in incorporating tool-practice into educational methods? The distinguishing features of modern civilization sprang as definitively from cunningly devised and skilfully handled tools as any effect from its cause. And yet the world’s statesmen have failed to discover the value of tool-practice as an educational agency. The face of the globe has been transformed by the union of art and science, but the world’s statesmen have not discerned the importance of uniting them in the curriculum of the schools. If the ancients could see us as we see them, they would doubtless laugh at us as we laugh at them.

We might take a lesson from the savage. He is taught to fight, to hunt, and to fish, and in these arts the brain, the hand, and the eye are trained simultaneously. He is first given object-lessons, as the pupil of the kindergarten is taught. Then the tomahawk, the spear, and the bow and arrow are placed in his hands, and he fights for his life, or fishes or hunts for his dinner. The young Indian is taught all that it is necessary for him to know, and he is educated, practically, in the savage’s three workshops—the battle-field, the forest and plain, the sea and lake. Thus the young savage enters upon the duties of his life with an exact practical knowledge of them. He has not been taught a theory of fighting, he has used the weapons of warfare; he has not studied the arts of fishing and hunting, he has handled the spear and the bow and arrow, and their use is as familiar to him as the multiplication table is to the boy in the public school.

We have more and better tools than the savage possesses. With the aid of science and art we harness steam to our chariot and compel it to draw us whither we will. We steal fire from the clouds and make it serve us as a messenger. We imprison the air, and with it stop the flying railway train; with the aid of science and art we reduce the most subtile forces of nature to servitude. But we neither teach our youth how to master their elements nor how to use them.

Tools represent the steps of human progress—in architecture, from the mud hut to the modern mansion; in agriculture, from the pointed stick used to tear the turf to a thousand and one ingenious instruments of husbandry; in ship-building, from the rudderless, sailless boat to the ocean steamer; in fabrics, from the matted fleece of the shepherd to the varied products of countless looms; in pottery, from the first rude Egyptian cup to the exquisite vase of the Sevres factory. And so of every art that contributes to the comfort and pleasure of man; the development of each has been accomplished by tools in the hands of the laborer.

Since, then, man owes so much to labor, he has doubtless educated the laborer and showered honors upon him (?). On the contrary, the labor of the world has been performed by the most ignorant classes, by bondmen, by helots and captives, by serfs and slaves. The laborer has been held in such contempt, and been so debased by ignorance, that he has often violently protested against improvements in the tools of the trades, and with vandal hands destroyed the mill, the factory, and the forge erected to ameliorate his condition. At the top of the social scale the sage has studied the stars and invented systems of abstract philosophy; at the bottom ignorance has deified itself and starved. This divorce of science from art has resulted in such incongruities as the Pyramids of Egypt and periodical famines; as the hanging gardens of Babylon and the horrors of Jewish captivity; as the Greek Parthenon and dwellings without chimneys; as the statues of Phidias and Praxiteles, and royal banquets without knives, forks, or spoons; as the Roman Forum and the Roman populace crying for bread and circuses; as Socrates, Plato, Seneca and Aurelius, and Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Domitian.

On the other hand the union of science with art tunnels the mountain, bridges the river, dams the torrent, and converts the wilderness into a fruitful field.

Science discovers and art appropriates and utilizes; and as science is helpless without the aid of art, so art is dead without the help of tools. Tools then constitute the great civilizing agency of the world; for civilization is the art of rendering life agreeable. The savage may own a continent, but if he possesses only the savage’s tools—the spear and the bow and arrow—he will be ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, and poorly protected both against cold and heat. He might be familiar with all the known sciences, but if he were ignorant of the arts his state, instead of being improved, would be rendered more deplorable; for with the thoughts, emotions, sensibilities, and aspirations of a sage he would still be powerless to steal from heaven a single spark of fire with which to warm his miserable hut.