Painting.There is an admirable paper by Mr. Cooke, “The A B C of Drawing,” in the volume of Reports just issued from the Education Office. All who have heard Mr. Cooke lecture, must recognise that he has a real genius for teaching. In schools we have to do chiefly with cultivating the power of seeing things as they are, and expressing what we see. The copying with the pencil of the Greek sculptures has been of much educational value, but enough importance has not been attached to modelling. I add an excellent [paper] on the subject.
Other technical arts.Technical schools are so much the fashion of the day, that I may perhaps add something more on the subject of manual training. All students of Pestalozzi and Fröbel knew the great educational value of manual work, but the general public, though they knew that mind acted on muscle, did not realise the fact that muscle reacted on mind; when this was recognised, many educational thinkers saw the importance of giving to hand arts a more prominent place in school work. A great reaction set in against mere book learning, and as I venture to think an exaggerated and indiscriminating value was by some attached to manual work. The enthusiasm of Herr Salomon brought to the front the use of Sloyd. Political circumstances and the need of competing with foreign countries have contributed to give a great impulse to education in art, and to develop and improve the training which had never been altogether neglected in girls’ schools.
I subjoin [papers] on various hand arts, including one on [Sloyd].
At a meeting held at Washington in 1889, the matter was brought before the department of Superintendence, and a volume was issued from the Bureau of Education which contains a very full account of the proceedings; it includes an admirable paper of about twenty pages by Dr. Harris, Chief Commissioner of Education, from which I make some extracts. The matter is considered in reference to “Educational Value”. He begins by defining what is the main purpose of school teaching, criticising the definitions which point to false or ill-comprehended or crude ideals, which turn our thoughts to the means rather than the ends of education, and which lead the educator away from the essential idea of education by fixing attention on the “puny individual” rather than on the “higher self” embodied in institutions; the ideal man, whom we can see only as a member of the great human family.
Education he defines as “the great preparation of the individual to help his fellow-men, and to receive in turn and appropriate their help”. Whilst conceding that manual training is educative, he shows why it is much inferior to the usual subjects of school instruction.
“Man elevates himself above the brute creation by his ability to withdraw his attention from the external world of the senses and give attention to energies, forces, producing causes, principles. He can look from the particular to the general; without losing the particular he grasps together the whole realm of the particular in the general—in mastering the cause of anything he grasps together and comprehends an indefinite series of effects.
“A false psychology tells us that we derive all our knowledge from sense-perception, but we do not by the senses learn the idea of causal process. By this idea all the data of sense are transformed radically. They are given us in sense-perception as independent realities. In thinking them by the aid of causality, we make all these matters of sense-perception into phenomena—or effects and manifestations of underlying causes which are not visible or tangible.”
Dr. Harris shows how school studies are calculated to give general principles, right ideals, and to exercise the powers in elaborating the data of sense. “That the ordinary branches of instruction in school relate to this function of elaboration of data into plans of action far more than they relate to the mere reception of sense-impressions or to the exercise of the motor nerves, is obvious. It is not desirable that children shall be taught that rough hand labour is in itself as honourable as the elaborative toil of thought, which gives rational direction to the hand. The general who plans the battle, and directs the movement of his troops so that they secure victory, is of course the executive man in a far higher sense than the private soldier who mechanically obeys what he is ordered to do. The general may use his motor nerves only in issuing the words of command, while the private soldier may exert to the utmost every muscle in his body—yet the real executive is the general.” And he concludes that only in so far as manual training is calculated to develop the higher faculties, ought it to be regarded as a valuable branch of school education. The pupils’ minds must not however be fixed on the acquisition of manual dexterity, so that they think more of the “execution” than the musical thought—more of mere copying than of interpreting nature or the artist’s ideal.
PIANOFORTE TEACHING.
By Domenico Barnett, of the Leipzig Conservatorium.