Correlated courses in woodwork and mechanical drawing

by Ira Samuel Griffith

Mechanical drawing, even in the grades, has a right to a clean, quiet, well lighted room without unnecessary distractions either to the eye or ear. This, with a definite understanding on the pupil’s part that drawing technique is the major and the utility of the drawing the minor consideration, should put the pupil in the right attitude toward his drawing work and make it possible to secure the best drawings he is capable of producing. No one, not even a finished draftsman, could produce good drawings surrounded by the noise and dust of neighboring woodworkers. Under the alternating system there are always slow pupils who, if they finish their drawings before they make the application, must do it while the others are working in wood. Add to the noise and dust this pupil’s feeling that he too ought to be at his woodwork and the limit of unfavorable conditions for producing a drawing are reached. Making the year’s drawings the first twelve weeks of the year enables one to avoid these unfavorable conditions.

Fourth, this arrangement makes possible a graduated transition from the quietness and restrictedness of the academic class room to the noise and greater freedom of the woodshop.

When beginning pupils come to the grammar school manual training shop for the first time at the beginning of school in September, it is with an overplus of energy and noise. To reduce these sufficiently to permit of getting anything like satisfactory results in shopwork, the instructor is placed at once squarely before a large problem in discipline. This problem is very greatly simplified by introducing the pupil to ten or twelve weeks or lessons in mechanical drawing before beginning the woodwork.

Conditions surrounding a pupil in mechanical drawing classes are very similar to those he finds in his regular academic classes and he can readily be brought to understand that quietness, and orderliness with seriousness of purpose are as necessary a part of his manual training as of his academic work. After this attitude has been fixed in the pupil’s mind in connection with his manual training thru the mechanical drawing when the transition to woodwork is made, where more freedom must be allowed, the pupil will be better able to distinguish between legitimate noise and noise that is entirely unnecessary, and between freedom and license.

3. Informational and Related Matter Pertaining to Woodwork and Mechanical Drawing.

Closely related to any subject is a vast fund of informational matter. If the student is to have an intelligent understanding of the subject matter, he must be given opportunity to become acquainted with at least the most important of this related information.

In the seventh grade the necessary study of tools and processes occupies the pupil’s time fully. In the eighth grade opportunity offers itself for introducing such subjects as wood structure, tree growth, lumbering, and milling. In high school, the pupil should be made familiar with the most common woods, their classification, characteristics, and uses.

High school pupils should be assigned outside readings on forestry. They should secure and classify specimens of the more common woods and should be able to recognize the tree by leaf, fruit, bark, wood and tree form. See Figs. 4, 5, and 6.

In the grammar grades, mounted specimens should be prepared illustrative of tree structure, shrinkage, defects, etc. As in the high school, pupils should be encouraged to seek and prepare specimens illustrative of the subjects under consideration.

It is now possible to rent or purchase very excellent lantern slides on forestry, lumbering, milling, etc. Add the use of these to that of the mounted specimens if at all possible.