13

In preparing its form of inquiry the Office included the query as to the date of introducing industrial drawing as giving information by implication and, in addition, as a means of comparison with the date of the introduction of construction work. It cannot see that there is any inference to be drawn from the comparison. The dates are, as a rule, very far apart or quite close together. In two or three cases drawing followed manual training.

But it is surprising to find how near the beginning we are of the adoption of manual training. Two-thirds of the systems have only been practicing manual training since 1886; not quite half have been established within a twelve-month, and Jamestown, N. Y., where the system has gradually been introduced since 1877, is quite old in this respect. This is called to the reader's attention, since it entails incomplete statistics.

The statistics for drawing, teachers and pupils, were not asked for, although several superintendents in their efforts to oblige the Office have included them. In New York City and in Meadville and Tidioute, Pa., every teacher is a drawing master or mistress, and it is presumed to be the same in many places.

As to the statistics of the teaching body, it may be said that wood-working requires a special teacher; and cooking and sewing, in all likelihood, may be placed in the same category. Jamestown, N. Y., and Knoxville, Tenn., have both an abnormally large corps of instructors, due to the wider range of the training, both having introduced printing. At Eau Claire, Wis., Minneapolis, Minn., and Tidioute, Pa., where the work is well organized, the instructing corps is large in proportion to the other statistics.

The column giving the grades in which instruction is given is intended merely to show where the training as a whole occurs, and not in what particular grades each subject of the course is taught, although in two or three instances something of the kind has been attmpted. A full synopsis of each return is given in the text' to obviate constantly saying a thing and then modifying it in the table. Wood-working is only for boys of the upper grammar and high school grades; that is plainly shown.

Sewing has no particular place. In one place it is given during the "second to fourth years," in another during the "fourth to sixth years;" in another in the "fourth to sixth grades;" in another in the "seventh and eighth grades." Grades or years do not mean much, however, until it is known that the "first grade" is not the last one.

Cooking is a grammar school study, though the table does not show it. Construction is the connecting of the kindergarten with the subjects of tool work, cooking, and sewing; this also the table does not show; nevertheless it is a fact, as shown by the programmes, pp. 852-856. Any changes in curriculum that the introduction of this study has caused, that is, in the way of forcing out the older and established studies, are noticed under city systems.

Considering columns 7-10 we find that all manual training work above the kindergarten may be grouped under the four heads of those columns. Wood-working is the work for boys, while sewing and cooking are for girls and construction work is taught to both boys and girls. The introduction of wood-working is not always accompanied with sewing much less with cooking, but it is very evident that where sewing and woodworking are both present, the sewing pupils are frequently far more numerous than the wood-working. Take Newburg, for instance, where the disparity is as 4 is to 1, or New York, where it is almost 5 to 1. This is natural, for sewing is, like drawing, perfectly consistent with work of the school-room. In an age when sewing machines are constantly becoming cheaper as patents expire and "the condition of a sewing girl" is synonymous with poverty, the commercial value of sewing must be small, and even its domestic value, except in certain forms, not what it was thirty years ago; but the habits of attention which it engenders, facilitated by having something tangible to attend to and its peculiar character as a feminine occupation, eminently fit it for the manual training of girls, although it is said to be not so effective as other forms (page 872).

As far as the table goes Washington, Boston, New Haven, New York, Pittsburg, and Knoxville are great centres of cooking. At Washington, Boston, New Haven, and Pittsburg the central school plan has been adopted, as described in the report preceding this. At New York and Knoxville this objectionable feature does not obtain. New Haven has just introduced the work; at Pittsburg it is likely to be extended, although the New York Committee on Manual Training, reporting June 29, 1887, say that as to the introduction of cooking into this city it had not yet even been dreamed of. It appears that the introduction has been facilitated by private means, a citizen, Mr. Phipps, jr., having employed a teacher.

It is difficult to see how construction work, as a matter of training of the sense of form and of developing constructive faculty, can be objected to. None of the disagreeable elements of shop-work, so strenuously urged by the opponents of manual training, are present; no central shop, no shop in garret or cellar is necessary; the work is done at the pupils' desks. "Modelling," says Mr. Chas. G. Leland, "is drawing in clay. Any

'Page 880 et seqq.

• Circular No. 4, 1882, of this Office.

child who can copy an old shoe with a pencil can make it from a plastic material. More than this, it is easier to model anything than to draw it." The geometrical conceptions implanted by construction (geometrical forms in paper and clay) cannot fail to commend the work to those who would sustain the study of geometry when it has become a matter of definitions, axioms, and logic. In fact, to attack it is to attack object-teaching, and thus reverse the usual order of present educational procedure. Drawing is intimately connected with construction, the two advancing hand in hand. If the reader will turn to p. 843 this fact will be shown as practiced in the schools of Moline, Ill.

At Washington undoubtedly is manual training the most extensively introduced; New Haven following, and Paterson, N. J., where "clay moulding, sewing, and kindergarten work" is "preliminary to all," comes next. In New York City the work has been introduced into several schools only and is an experiment. In Meadville, Pa., and Jamestown, N. Y., the work is thoroughly introduced, and those systems give the instruction only to twelve or fifteen hundred pupils because there are no more to give it to.

Of the 20 systems giving instruction in wood-working 7 have a shop in the building in which the manual training pupils pursue their literary studies. In New York City there is known to be more than one school thus provided with a shop. Beardstown and Minneapolis are known, and Mont Clair thought to have but one shop. Cooking, with the exception of New York City, also requires the pupils to attend a central school. The totals have been obtained, as they may be of some use to the reader, though inadequate for statistical manipulation.

TABLE 72.-Number and Duration of Lessons a Week for Manual Training Classes.

Considering Table 72 as a whole, it is a matter of some difficulty to arrive at any general conclusion. If the reader will turn to page 853 he will find the manner in which the several subjects have been woven into the public school curriculum of New York City, and can draw safer conclusions than can be conveyed by many words.

Considering the columns individually, lessons in wood-working consume about two hours of the week. Minneapolis and Stillwater, Minn., are decided exceptions to this, at each place a daily lesson being given; but in both instances wood-working is confined to the high school pupils. Had the superintendent of Minneapolis filled the blank for manual training schools (those contained in the second part of this section) the statistics

of the wood-working department would have been included with them; for it is contenplated to introduce metal-work (forging ?), and the school will probably follow the type set by the St. Louis Manual Training School.

The lessons last for one hour, or for two, according to their frequency during the week. In making these, as in making the following general statements, variations have not been noted, and the statements should be compared with the table itself. Sewing shows more uniformity; the time a week is two hours, the number of lessons two ass rule, the time an hour for each. Peru, Ill., is quite an exception.

One lesson is given in cooking a week. At New Haven, Washington, Boston, and Oskaloosa the time is two or three hours a week; at New York and Knoxville, one. As to construction work it seems that in several instances it has just got a finger into the glove, if the curriculum of the public schools may be compared to a glove, and in others has got the whole hand in, and has the usual thirty minutes consideration every day

or two.

TABLE 73.-Cost of Introducing and Maintaining Manual Training

15

15

99

301

18, 127 22, 373 6, 179 3,154 1,526

One of the great objections to introducing manual training is the cost. This is perfectly valid as applied to the shop adjunct in which wood-working is given, but it will not hold against construction work, which has lately taken a definite shape.

The New York committee on manual training gave the following estimates of the cost

.......... $300

To pay the teachers necessary to instruct 60 departments in wood-working, cooking, and sewing, respectively, and 240 departments in construction work, the committee estimate that $65,000 would be required and, in addition, $3,500 for an assistant superintendent. The committee does not say what each kind of teacher should be paid, or how the amount should be apportioned; but as it gives the cost of introducing manual training as construction work and sewing into all these schools, and as wood-working and cooking into one-third of the grammar schools (of which there are 60), some idea may at least be obtained of the relative cost of the force teaching these wood-working and cooking, it being understood that a teacher of cooking is not available as a master of a wood-working shop, and that both subjects are grammar school "departments."

The cost of teaching construction and sewing in all the schools and wood-working and cooking in 20 grammar schools will be, estimates the committee, $25,000; that is, for teachers' salaries. The estimate, as stated above, for salaries of a force to teach the several forms of manual training in all the city schools, including wood-work and cooking in 60 grammar schools, is $65,000. It follows then that the cost of the force for teaching wood-working and cooking in 40 grammar schools is $40,000, and as for 60 grammar schools it would be $60,000, the comparatively insignificant sum of $5,000 is lett for the teaching of sewing in 60 grammar schools and construction work in 240 "departments." Considering this and the fact that no outfit is required or workshop to be fitted up, objections to the costliness of construction work are not well founded, unless the word be used by the objectors in a figurative sense as applied to waste of time.

Returning to the inferred estimate of $40,000, and for the sake of the argument considering the teachers of wood-working and cooking to be on an equality as to pay, $20,000 may be assumed to be the cost for the teaching of 40 wood-working "departments" or shops; that is, $500 for teaching each department; not $500 a teacher, however. It is the same for cooking. Having obtained the cost of teaching we can now complete the committee's estimate. Using the figures given above and forming a table, the cost of starting and running a wood-working department for one year has been estimated to be:

The following year it will be about $580, the new tools and repairs about $30. If there be in Table 73 any systems having, so far, only introduced one subject, and which also give the number pursuing it, some averages could be made. Such, in point of fact, there are for wood-working and for cooking; sewing and construction are too inexpensive to call for comment. In our last report, however, it was remarked that the cost per capita of introducing wood-working "is a very difficult question to discuss. The word 'equipment' may include many things at one place not included by it at another, vitiating results as to per capita cost. Nor is this the only obstacle. In a public school the pupil or his fictitious representative 'in average attendance' occupies the same desk every day of the school year, in these schools for manual training only an hour or two every week, and then gives place to another." From this it will be understood what is meant by "Attendance Weekly” and “Size of Class" in the following table and why we use these terms:

Per capita cost of instruction in wood-working.

aThis has been inferred in this way: The total cost for the first year, outfit and maintenance, was $2,500 for 20 pupils; that is, $12.50 or $125. For the last year for maintenance alone it was $1,500; that is, $7.50, or $75. The expense for maintenance during the last from the expense for maintenance and outfit of the first year leaves the amounts we have given,

Not including a class of 38 teachers.