Superintendent Jasper continues fixed in liis determination not to approve a course
of manual training adapted to a select few with special aptitude, or a course in which
any of the branches are taught chiefly as ends in themselves. If it is good for the
few to develop and round out their lives, he claims that it is good for the many; if
cooking is to be taught merely as cooking, he is opposed to it; but if instruction in
the philosophy of cooking, the chemistry of food, and its hygienic application is
such as to make more thoughtful and intelligent pupils, the dishes being mere inci-
dents, he favors it. It is on this broad sense of manual training that the work in
the New York public schools is based, and the distinct claim is put forth that New
York City is the first city in the United States that has made general manual train-
ing a part of the regular course.
The main reflex advantage of this movement is that the people are inclined to keep
their children at school longer, because the children themselves are more inclined to
stay.
If manual training were admissible on no higher ground than this, it would be a
proper expedient to serve as a magnet for holding the child while his development
proceeds on those lines of the curriculum which are acknowledged by all to lead to
mental and moral power.
Whatever interpretation or restriction others may put upon the term, it is plain
that in Xew York public schools manual training is taken to be the development of
mind in the training of thought acquisition and thought expression by other than
merely verbal means — by operations performed with the aid of the hands, by the
manipulations of materials, by appealing to the sense of touch and to muscular sen-
sibility, or the sixth sense, as well as to the senses of sight and sound. Indeed, wise
provisions have been made for the training even of the lowest senses of smell and
taste, so that on the whole the manual-training idea comprehensively viewed is a
more complete scientific and systematic sense training than has been in vogue; a
fuller presentation to the mind of sensations, the simple factors or elements of men-
tal life, out of which by the elaborative powers of the conscious self the complicated
phenomena of a higher mental life are evolved.
Dr. Shimer says further :
It would be a work of supererogation to enter upon any argument to show, by
a priori principles, why the facts reported by the practical workers in manual
training in New York City should be just what they are. Expression of thought in
any form gives the best assurance of its acquisition. This working principle has
been acted on under all theories of education time out of mind. In measuring,
matching, marking, the child is not only systematically furnished with a store of
concepts through its primary perceptions, but these are at the same time riveted.
The work furnishes, too, an admirable outlet for the surplus store of nervous energy
found in childhood. It exercises, why should it not therefore develop, the attention,
judgment, and especially the will ? It calls for exactness and promotes habits of
persistence, industry, fidelity, thoroughness, honesty, and self-reliance.
Page 10
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Superintendent Jasper continues fixed in liis determination not to approve a course
of manual training adapted to a select few with special aptitude, or a course in which
any of the branches are taught chiefly as ends in themselves. If it is good for the
few to develop and round out their lives, he claims that it is good for the many; if
cooking is to be taught merely as cooking, he is opposed to it; but if instruction in
the philosophy of cooking, the chemistry of food, and its hygienic application is
such as to make more thoughtful and intelligent pupils, the dishes being mere inci-
dents, he favors it. It is on this broad sense of manual training that the work in
the New York public schools is based, and the distinct claim is put forth that New
York City is the first city in the United States that has made general manual train-
ing a part of the regular course.
The main reflex advantage of this movement is that the people are inclined to keep
their children at school longer, because the children themselves are more inclined to
stay.
If manual training were admissible on no higher ground than this, it would be a
proper expedient to serve as a magnet for holding the child while his development
proceeds on those lines of the curriculum which are acknowledged by all to lead to
mental and moral power.
Whatever interpretation or restriction others may put upon the term, it is plain
that in Xew York public schools manual training is taken to be the development of
mind in the training of thought acquisition and thought expression by other than
merely verbal means — by operations performed with the aid of the hands, by the
manipulations of materials, by appealing to the sense of touch and to muscular sen-
sibility, or the sixth sense, as well as to the senses of sight and sound. Indeed, wise
provisions have been made for the training even of the lowest senses of smell and
taste, so that on the whole the manual-training idea comprehensively viewed is a
more complete scientific and systematic sense training than has been in vogue; a
fuller presentation to the mind of sensations, the simple factors or elements of men-
tal life, out of which by the elaborative powers of the conscious self the complicated
phenomena of a higher mental life are evolved.
Dr. Shimer says further :
It would be a work of supererogation to enter upon any argument to show, by
a priori principles, why the facts reported by the practical workers in manual
training in New York City should be just what they are. Expression of thought in
any form gives the best assurance of its acquisition. This working principle has
been acted on under all theories of education time out of mind. In measuring,
matching, marking, the child is not only systematically furnished with a store of
concepts through its primary perceptions, but these are at the same time riveted.
The work furnishes, too, an admirable outlet for the surplus store of nervous energy
found in childhood. It exercises, why should it not therefore develop, the attention,
judgment, and especially the will ? It calls for exactness and promotes habits of
persistence, industry, fidelity, thoroughness, honesty, and self-reliance.