Manual Training Schools in Cities of Twenty Thousand Inhabitants and upward - Concluded.

Mr. Larsson's course.

Curwen Industrial School, .

Somerville,

Manual Training Depart

'95

1

The Manual Training School at Springfield is the oldest school of its kind in the State, and has long been famous, not only here but throughout the country, as a pioneer school of the best type. It is the only school in the State which at the present time has facilities for molding and casting. The new high school building when completed will afford opportunity for development along several lines, which the school authorities have long contemplated.

While it is evident that but few of the manual training schools in the State approach the standard presented in the foregoing reports of the special committees, it must be admitted that, considering the lack of available data of known value to guide in formulating plans for such schools, and the brief period of time which has elapsed since the enactment of the law requiring such schools, the cities of Massachusetts, taken collectively, have no reason to be ashamed of their record.*

In most of the cities that have not yet succeeded in responding to the law, a strong public sentiment, school committees. with the cities' best interests at heart, and efficient superintendents will soon perfect plans for establishing manual training schools of a high order.

That there will be rapid improvement in the existing schools in the near future must appear evident to all who are familiar with them. The spirit of the men who have charge of them is alone a sufficient guarantee. Many of these men admit that at the present time, aside from the low general average requirements, the most apparent defect in their schools is the lack of æsthetic elements in the distinctively manual work. The wooden models required in the various courses, while vastly superior to their Swedish and Russian prototypes, are still very far from what they might be. In many of them the most elementary rules of constructive design are disregarded. The beauty arising from good proportions (the most fundamental and obvious element in constructive design, applicable even to the making of a brick), from the right contrast of straight and curved lines, from the proper relation of adjacent curves, from refinement of outline, is conspicuously absent. In many

• For information upon this topic see the comprehensive report of the commission appointed to investigate the existing systems of manual training and industrial education, Boston, 1893.

cases the attempts at simple wood carving are barbaric and even hideous, for lack of a little knowledge of elementary design. The examples of wood turning, often excellent from a technical point of view, sometimes seem transcripts of the pre-centennial woodwork in this country, when they might exhibit the refined curves of the Greek, as reflected in the early colonial period.

Much of the iron work exhibits similar crudities. It all reveals the need of training in art.

No justice as yet has been done by the advocates of manual training to the claims of industrial drawing as a training for the hand and eye and the æsthetic sense. If the pupil pursues this study by the analysis of the historical forms of ornament, and acquires familiarity with graceful outlines and a genuine taste for the creation of beautiful and tasteful forms, he has done more towards satisfying the economic problem of industry than he could do by much mechanical skill.

But there are higher reasons yet for studying the beautiful. In the Symposium Plato says:

The true order of going . is from one to two and from two to all fair forms and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair thoughts, until from fair thoughts he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is, a beauty which if you once beheld you would see not to be after the measure of gold or garments, . . . but the divine beauty, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality; . . . thither looking and holding converse with the true beauty, divine and simple, and bringing into being and educating true creations of virtue.

HENRY T. BAILEY.

NORTH SCITUATE, Dec. 31, 1895.

* Wm. T. Harris and others, committee on pedagogics, National Council of Educa tion, 1889.

H.

AN OUTLINE

OF

LESSONS IN DRAWING

FOR

RURAL SCHOOLS.

BY

HENRY T. BAILEY AND L. WALTER SARGENT,

State Supervisors of Drawing, Massachusetts.