A fourth point is this. If hand-craft is of such worth, boys and girls must be trained in it. This, I am well aware is no new thought. Forty years ago schools of applied science were added to Harvard and Yale colleges; twenty years ago Congress gave enough land-scrip to aid in founding at least one such school in every state; men of wealth, like many whom you have known and whom you honor, have given large sums for like ends. Now the people at large are waking up. They see their needs; they have the means to supply what they want. Is there the will? Know they the way? Far and near the cry is heard for a different training from that now given in the public schools. Many are trying to find it. Almost every large town has its experiment--and many smaller places have theirs. Nobody seems to know just what is best. Even the words which express the want are vague. Bright and thoughtful people differ as to what might, can, and should be done. A society has been formed in New York to bring together the needed data. The Slater trustees, charged with the care of a large fund for the training of freedmen, have said that manual training must be given in all the schools they aid. The town of Toledo in Ohio opened, some time since, a school of practical training for boys, which worked so well that another has lately been opened for girls. St. Louis is doing famously. Philadelphia has several experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. In New York there are many noteworthy movements--half a dozen at least full of life and hope. Boston was never behindhand in knowledge, and in the new education is very alert, the efforts of a single lady deserving praise of high degree. These are but signs of the times.
Some things may be set down as fixed; for example, most of those who have thought on this theme will agree on the points I am about to name, though they may or may not like the names which I venture to propose:
1. Kindergarten work should be taught in the nurseries and infant schools of rich and poor.
2. Drawing should be taught in schools of every grade, till the hand uses the pencil as readily as the pen.
3. Every girl at school if not at home should learn to sew.
4. Every boy should learn the use of tools, the gardener's or the carpenter's, or both.
5. Well planned exercises, fitted to strengthen the various bodily organs, arms, fingers, wrists, lungs, etc., are good. Driving, swimming, rowing, and other manly sports should be favored.
What precedes is at the basis of good work.
In addition:
6. With good teachers, quite young children may learn the minor decorative arts, carving, leather stamping, brass beating and the like, as is shown in the Leland classes of Philadelphia.