“If I have several different tools for doing work of the same character, I frequently give a student first one and then another, until he has tried them all. Then I ask him which he likes best, and why. Suppose we are to make a drawing-board. The class having already been made familiar with the principles governing the shrinkage and warping of woods, is asked in what way the cleats, to prevent warping, may best be fastened to the ends. The question is left open for a day or two, and sketches are submitted and views exchanged on the subject.
“I frequently ask my students to pass to me, in writing, as many facts (not in the form of a composition) as they can think of regarding certain stated features of their work—not facts to be obtained from books, but from things they have seen and with which they are familiar. The replies are often remarkable for accuracy and force of statement....
“The manual training school that does not by its work inspire thought and encourage investigation is poor indeed; the school that assumes its work to be mind training by hand practice is the ideal school, and the school that will succeed....
“My answer to your second and third questions is already evident. I consider an hour in the shop as valuable for its intellectual training as an hour of book-study, and two hours in the shop as valuable as two hours of study. I do not think that a student can take two hours of shop-work in addition to a full course of outside study; but I am convinced that two hours in the shop can be made to take the place of one hour of study without extra burden to the student. Therefore, this being done, the student will get as much again intellectual benefit from the shop as he would get if the shop-work equivalent in time were given to book-study.”
This description of the mental operations which accompany the laboratory exercises of the manual training school shows the intimacy of the relations existing between the brain and the hand. It shows how they act and react upon each other, and affords an explanation of the remark of Dr. Belfield,[58] that the laboratory exercises are in fact a great strain upon the mental constitution of the student. This observation of Dr. Belfield, one of the most distinguished teachers of the old régime in the United States, entirely justifies the claim made in behalf of the scientific character of manual training as an educational agency, for it shows that such training is in no sense automatic. If manual training is a great strain upon the mental faculties, it must be because the use of tools stimulates such faculties to great activity. And if this is true, the mental discipline derived from manual training must be proportionally great. This is a pivotal point; for if the observation of Dr. Belfield is well founded in fact and reason, it proves to a demonstration the high educational value of manual training—proves its superiority over all the methods of the old régime.
[58] Henry H. Belfield, A.M., Ph.D., Director of the Chicago Manual Training School.
Prof. Goss says, “The manual training school student is an investigator—as much so as a student in chemistry. His mind must always guide his hand, his reasoning opens new fields of thought with every stroke of the chisel. He sees on all sides of his work.”[59] And Dr. Belfield says that these varied operations of the mind cause a severe mental strain. It would be difficult to find a better exemplification of scientific education than a course of training which exercises simultaneously the powers of both body and mind, a course which with every fresh burden put upon the mind puts new vitality into the body. This is, indeed, the very opposite of automatic education, and we may well call it scientific education.
[59] “No extent of acquaintance with the meanings of words can give the power of forming correct inferences respecting causes and effects. The constant habit of drawing conclusions from data, and then of verifying those conclusions by observation and experiment, can alone give the power of judging correctly.”—“Education,” p. 88. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883.
Another leaf from the experience of Dr. Belfield is worthy of reproduction here. On the 20th of February, 1884, he took the sense of the students in his school on the question whether or not they should indulge in a vacation on Washington’s birthday anniversary. Somewhat to his surprise the vote was almost unanimous in the affirmative. He acceded to the wishes of the students, but no sooner was the announcement made, than he was besieged with applications from nearly all of them for permission to convert the holiday into a work-day in the laboratories! Dr. Belfield has been compelled to post a peremptory order against the occupancy of the school laboratories by the students on Saturdays, which are regular vacation days.
Natural training is scientific training. The fondness of the student for the manual training school is evidence of its scientific character. He is fond of it because it is natural. Miss Blow says of the child: “Only what he himself has perceived of the visible and tangible properties of things can serve as the basis of thought, and upon the vividness and completeness of the impressions made upon him by external objects will depend the clearness of his inferences and the correctness of his judgments.” This is the education both of the kindergarten and the manual training school, and it brightens, stimulates, and develops, while automatic education stupefies.