James Watt was an extremely fragile child, and hence unable to join in the rude sports of robust children. Thus confined within-doors he early amused himself by drawing “with a pencil upon paper, or with chalk upon the floor.” He was also supplied with a few tools from his father’s carpenter’s shop, “which he soon learned to handle with considerable expertness.” Mr. Smiles, in his biography of Watt, says, “The mechanical dexterity he acquired was the foundation upon which he built the speculations to which he owes his glory, nor without this manual training is there the least likelihood that he would have become the improver and almost the creator of the steam-engine.”[4] In the parrot-power of learning or memorizing Watt was a dull boy, and he left the grammar-school of his native town at an early age, never to return to the “halls of learning.” But while engaged in humble mechanical employments he perfected his education, studying after work-hours. He nearly starved his body, but constantly added to his intellectual stores. He mastered the principles of engineering, civil and military, studied natural history, criticism, art, and acquired several modern languages. In a word, without the aid of the schools, but under the stimulating influence of mechanical investigation and work, Watt became an accomplished and scientific man. When nearly eighty years of age he and Sir Walter Scott met. Referring to the occasion, and speaking of Watt, Sir Walter is reported to have said, “The alert, kind, benevolent old man had his attention alive to every one’s question, his information at every one’s command. His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist—he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a celebrated critic—you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life; of science it is unnecessary to speak—it was his distinguished walk.”
[4] “I believe that well-advised practice in any of the constructive arts involving not more than one-third of the student’s time will yield as much mental improvement as will result if the whole time be devoted to study from text-books.”—Prof. Wm. F. M. Goss, six years Director of the Department of Practical Mechanics of Purdue University.
“And reflect that he will learn more by one hour of manual labor than he will retain from a whole day’s verbal instructions.”—“The Emilius and Sophia” of J. J. Rousseau, Vol. II., p. 64. London: 1767.
“The things themselves are the best explanations. I can never enough repeat it, that we make words of too much consequence; with our prating modes of education we make nothing but praters.”—Ibid., p. 46.
These examples of remarkable intellectual development in connection with tool-practice are not phenomenal. From the annals of invention and discovery numerous instances might be cited in support of the proposition of this chapter, that tool-practice stimulates intellectual growth.
In the Artisan’s School at Rotterdam, Holland, an experience of seven years has demonstrated that “boys who are occupied one-half the day with books in the school, and the remaining half with tools in the laboratories, make about as rapid intellectual progress as those of equal ability who spend the whole day in study and recitation.” The testimony of Dr. Woodward, director of the St. Louis (Mo.) Manual Training School, is to the same effect. And in one of his reports he says, “Success in drawing or shop-work has often had the effect of arousing the ambition in mathematics and history, and vice versa.... The habit of working from drawings and to nice measurements has given the students a confidence in themselves altogether new. This is shown in the readiness with which they undertake the execution of small commissions in behalf of the school.... In fact, the increased usefulness of our students is making itself felt, and in several instances the result has been the offer of business positions too tempting to be rejected.”
Of the results achieved by the Imperial Technical School, Moscow, Russia, M. Victor Della-Vos, director, speaks with the utmost confidence. He says, “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.” The methods of instruction of the school at Moscow were introduced into all the technical schools of Russia in 1870.
A similar degree of success has attended the Royal Mechanic Art School at Komotau, Bohemia. The management says, “The school has shown the most brilliant proofs of usefulness, and the ends gained have been acknowledged at home and abroad. One proof is that in spite of the hard times all the pupils from Komotau have found occupation in different manufacturing establishments; and another that England, a country unsurpassed in the manufactures of iron and steel, has already sent some students to the school.”
If the pupil in the Manual Training School makes as rapid progress intellectually as the pupil in the public or private school of corresponding grade, it follows that whatever skill in the use of tools is acquired, and whatever knowledge of practical mechanics is gained—these stand for the net gain of the pupil of the new system of education. But much more follows by implication. For if the few pupils of the world’s few manual training schools are making equal intellectual progress with the many pupils of the many schools of the old régime, and making such progress in a little more than half the study-hours, the consideration of overwhelming import is the loss sustained by the millions of pupils being trained under the old system.