Smoking, and High-School Boys, S. R. POWERS, Social Factors in my Education, C. CHUN, 372 J. Societies and Meetings, 89, 150, 180, 209, 239, STEPANEK, B., Comenius in the Education of the STEVENSON, J. J., Education and Unrest, 421 Student, Cooperation in School Government, H. Studying, The Controlled Summary as a Method Courses for Superintendents and Principals at Superintendence, Department of, 239, 329; W. C. TATLOCK, J. S. P., The Poet in the University, 387 Teacher, Substitutes and Flying Squadrons, G. C. Teachers, Shortage of, in Iowa, 348; Should Teach- ers Unionize?, 533; Exodus of, 581; High-school, Thrift Education, 205 WESTFALL, W. D. A., Examples of Coefficients of WILLES, H. E., Standards of Legal Education, 9 WOELLNER, F. P., Teaching of History as a Factor Women in Technical and Scientific Positions, M. A. WORKS, G. A., Rural Schools in New York State, Yale, University, Presidency of, 261; Free Tuition Young Wage Earners in England, 23 Volume XIII SATURDAY, JANUARY 1, 1921 BEGINNINGS IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCA TION SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PLANS AND PRO- THE second period in the history of systematic industrial education is that in which the idea of school education in the industries begins to be treated as a practicable measure of educational and economic reform and not merely as a detail of life in Utopia. One of the earliest to treat the subject in this way was John Amos Comenius. His advocacy of industrial education in schools is one of the striking features of his Great Didactic, a work remarkable for the extent to which it anticipates in the seventeenth the more important educational reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He gives more or less attention to manual or industrial education in his plans for three of the four schools which constitute his complete system. His plan for the "Mother School" for children below seven years of age anticipates in some respects the manual education of the kindergarten. He suggests that children of this age "will receive a training in mechanics if they are permitted or are actually taught to employ their hands continually; for instance, to move something from one place to another, to arrange something . . ., to construct something or to pull something to pieces; to make knots or to undo them, and so forth; the very things that children of this age love to do. As these actions are nothing Number 314 but the efforts of an active mind to realize itself in mechanical production, they should not be hindered but rather encouraged and skilfully guided."" In another passage in which, like Plato,2 he recommends the utilization of play activities as a means of industrial education, his ideas closely resemble those which have been carried out in recent times in the "Kitchen Garden." Referring to the advantages which would accrue if useful activities should be employed for purposes of recreation, he suggests that young pupils "be given tools and allowed to imitate the different handicrafts, by playing at farming, at politics, at being soldiers or architects, etc. These suggested occupations foreshadow the manual and industrial training of the "Vernacular" school where the pupils are to "learn the most important principles of the mechanic arts, both that they may not be too ignorant of what goes on in the world about them, and that any special inclination towards things of this kind may assert itself with greater ease later on.' Another benefit to be derived from this study of the principles of the mechanic arts will be that for those who take up the manual occupations "the details of their trades-will be to them nothing but . . . the more particular application of the arts with which they are already acquainted." Something resembling industrial education is vaguely suggested in Comenius' description of the 1 Gt. Did., London, 1896. 2 Laws, 643. 3 Gt. Did., 19, 49. 4 Gt. Did., 29, 6 and 7. work of the next higher school, the Latin school. Under the head of physics are studied "a part of medicine, of agriculture and of other mechanical arts. 175 Manual if not industrial training seems to be provided for in Comenius' plan for a Pansophic school at Saros-Patak in Hungary. Here skill "in action is to be associated with knowledge of things. Without this skill even he who knows much about things will be awkward in dealing with them; . No one will be graduated from the institution who is not well trained in those occupations which demand care and circumspection. The considerations which led Comenius to propose manual and industrial training in the schools are not far to seek. The realistic and encyclopaedic motives he himself refers to explicitly; children are to study the industries in part "that they may not be too ignorant of what goes on in the world about them."" It is noteworthy that his proposal is based also in part on psychological grounds. The active mind of the child, he maintains, tends naturally to express its ideas in visible and tangible form. Its manual occupations "are but the efforts of an active mind to realize itself in mechanical production." The study of the industries is valued also as affording vocational guidance. The principles of the mechanical arts should be studied in order that "any special inclination towards things of this kind may assert itself with greater ease later on. Moreover, industrial occupations contribute to the maintenance of health.10 They also cultivate habits of industry and love of work,11 Comenius is an Gt. Did., 30, 2 (viii). 7 Gt. Did., 29 No. xii. 8 Ibid., 28, No. 12. Ibid., 29, 6, No. 12. 10 Ibid., 15, Nos. 11-13. 11 Ibid., 23, No. 11. advocate of industrial education in the schools in part, also, for economic reasons. It is partly in order to train for the business of life that instruction and training in the industries should be given in the school.12 In aiming at economic ends Comenius was quite in accord with the spirit of his times. During no period in history have men manifested a keener appreciation of the material goods of life or been actuated more exclusively by considerations of the practical and useful than during the latter half of the seventeenth century. In western Europe this seems to have been due in part to a reaction against the endless and fruitless discussion of theological problems which had denominated intellectual life since the beginning of the Reformation. In Germany it was due in part, also, to the necessity of relieving the misery and destitution consequent upon the devastations of the Thirty Years War.13 One of the most eminent promoters of economic reform of this period, Johann Joachim Becher, planned a system of state schools one of which, the Mechanical or Art School was designed to afford a training preparatory to any of the handicrafts.1 14 The encyclopedic movement of the seventeenth century, a reaction against the narrowness of the traditional school curriculum, was another factor contributing the growth of the movement for school instruction in the industries.15. Its representatives advocated the extension of the curriculum through the addition not only of history and the sciences but also of the industrial arts. Its influence in promoting the correlation of general with industrial 12 Gt. Did., 29, No. 7. 13 Heubaum, Geschichte d. d. Bildungswesens, 1905, pp. 3-8. training is illustrated in the work of Daniel George Morhof (1639-1691), one of the most eminent polyhistors of his time. He bases his advocacy of an encyclopedic curriculum upon the belief that it is impossible to master any one branch of science without a knowledge of all the others. He maintains, moreover, that it is only a curriculum of this sort which can satisfy man's inborn craving for all knowledge. To impart this knowledge he planned three classes of schools, one for each of the great realms of knowledge, namely nature, history and the arts or handicrafts. The art or industrial school is to have a collection of all tools and instruments used by craftsmen and artists.16 The rationalistic movement of the seventeenth century seems to have created an atmosphere favorable to such striking deviations from traditional educational practise as the introduction of the handicrafts into the general school curriculum or the introduction of school procedure into the training of the artisan.17 That the great leaders of this movement, Descartes (15961654), Leibnitz (1646-1716) and Locke (1632-1704) should also have been either friends or active promoters of systematic industrial education can scarcely be ascribed altogether to accident. Baillet, who published a biography of Descartes in 1691, states that the latter was the first to conceive the idea of opening public courses of instruction for workingmen. According to his plan large halls were to be erected for the different crafts. Each of these was to contain a museum and a consultation room. In the former were to be kept specimens of all the tools and instruments necessary or useful in the craft. For each of these institutions there was to be appointed a competent instructor, capable of answering the workingmen's questions and of giving them such 16 Ibid., pp. 27-29. 17 Cf. Ziegler, "Geschichte d. Pæd." (2d ed.), p. 219. Paulsen, "Gesch. d. g. Unt.,'' II., 190191. instruction as would enable them to give a reason for each of the operations which they were daily called upon to put into practise.18 Instruction was to be imparted only on holidays and Sundays when workingmen would have leisure to attend. One of the earliest and most eminent of the followers of Descartes in Germany, Erhard Weigel, was an influential advocate of the utilization of handwork as a means of educating the young. In language closely resembling Froebel's,19 he demanded that children should be so directed "that from work itself, from the deed they might learn the beginning of all wisdom, might acquire a knowledge of the actual activity and the working power of God and thus be led to knowledge not through hearing others speak but through manual activity. "'20 His influence as an advocate of industrial education is probably to be traced in the work of his pupils, Leibnitz and Semler. The former, Leibnitz (1646-1716), another leader in the rationalistic movement, planned to provide for the youth of his time a systematic course of technical instruction and training. In his "Projet de l'Education d'un Prince," 1693, he suggested the establishment of trade schools for that fairly large class of boys who are not fitted by nature for those intellectual pursuits to which the regular schools devoted exclusive attention. There was urgent need, he believed, for such institutions "in order that youths might not be kept back many years uselessly by the floggings of the schoolmaster and to the great injury of the state, which loses as 18 Baillet, A., "La Vie de M. Descartes,' quoted in Descartes, "Oeuvres de," Vol. XI., 659, Paris 1898. 19"Education of Man," New York, 1903, p. 31. 20 Quoted in Scherer, "Die Arbeitsschule,'' Leipzig, 1912, p. 19. |