INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, AND INDUSTRIAL DRAWING AS ONE OF ITS ELEMENTS.

BY S. EDWARD WARREN, C. E.

As the term Industrial Education has been criticised, we will begin by saying, to avoid misunderstanding, that by this term we mean just such preparation for industrial pursuits as schools usually give for "business or college," and not an actual teaching of trades.

There is experience to show that the introduction of a new subject of study, and still more the creation of a new department of education, is a difficult task. It is not unnatural that it should be so. Thousands and tens of thousands of teachers have learned a certain group or line of subjects. Though it would be most unjust to imply that they do not continue to learn in after-life, yet it may generally be true that their additional mental growth and acquisitions are mostly, if not wholly, in the line of their previous studies in the years of their own school-life. So far as this is untrue, it is so in the case of those who are correctly described as marked by versatility of character and talents; that is, by the disposition and the ability to turn their hand to anything, or at least to more than one thing. These versatile people are the hope of the world, so far as new things of any kind are to be brought into use through the agency of the generation which for the time has possession of the stage. Beyond them this hope is in the generations following. We say generations, for if there were none having the versatility just mentioned, any existing order of things would be almost indefinitely perpetuated. But the few now on the stage who take kindly to new ideas, studies, and enterprises, in the world of learning, can and will train up a certain number of pupils in their new-found paths. These, in turn, will train others in the second generation; and so the new subjects or methods will finally be made as early and generally accessible as any others ever were, and will be brought within easy reach of all who want them. This natural process of dissemination is like the expanding circles formed by throwing a stone into a pond; or, more exactly, like eome of those rapid multiplications in the lower members of the animal creation in which one becomes the center of a circle of successors, each one of which detaches himself after a while from its parent, and in turn becomes a new center in a like manner.

The only alternative to this seems to be to create what we will venture to call a conservative furore; the conservatism acting as a great storage reservoir of experience and reflection to prevent the strong current of popular thought from swelling into a damaging torrent, literally, to prevent the furore from degenerating into a "craze." But we prefer to this the natural method of expansion already mentioned, and suggested by the operations alluded to in the kingdom of nature.

Absence of versatility, and consequent liability to make and follow ruts, though no one knows, until he rouses himself by a vigorous effort, how much of very useful versatility he possesses, is not, however, the only hindrance to the clearing, breaking up, and cultivation of new and hitherto neglected, though fertile, educational fields. There is probably something of the craft-jealousy which made Demetrius and his crowd cry out for the space of two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; the hidden stimulus to their "too thin" because too vociferous devotion, being the unwelcome suspicion that "our craft is in danger." In former times of benumbing ignorance, when multitudes could not see beyond the passing day, and had not the power to reflect, any improvement was superstitiously dreaded as sure to bring ruin in its train. But experience has taught us that every improvement is a new ally to the existing forces of good, and that it makes the demand which it is to supply. It does this, moreover, not by robbing other supplies of the demands which they exist to meet, but by appealing to a new constituency hitherto unsupplied. The most extensive possible American production of tea, raisins, and silk would not diminish, but increase, the cultivation of wheat and corn. So a large increase of industrial education of all grades would, in all human probability, never dislodge any living teachers of language, literature, history, and philosophy, nor diminish the future demand for them; but rather would increase it in a certain way, since all these subjects should be included in a certain degree and manner in all education whatsoever.

The Mississippi River is necessarily different, below its junction with the Missouri, from what it was above, by reason of the character of the latter, without laborious and anxious efforts by man to create such a difference by transporting and dumping quantities of the Missouri's banks into the Mississippi. So the current of life, since the existence of Greece and Rome, has inevitably been varied by new constituents, not before possessed, yet without anxious labor by man to make it so. Classical learning will always have its natural and willing devotees, through whom it will surely and sufficiently perpetuate

itself. But surely it is most needlessly and abjectly uncomplimentary to any other age or nation to say that it is constitutionally incapable of a total life, body of thought, and language as a vehicle of thought, equivalent to those of Greece and Rome, though not identical with them; and that no finished thinking can be done, or even the capacity for such thinking be acquired, otherwise than through familiarity with Greek and Latin forms of speech.

This much may be enough, by way of amplification of the major premise, that the introduction of a comparatively new and unfamiliar branch or department into courses of study, of whatever grade, is a difficult task. Industrial education, in all its elements and grades, whether as to its principles or practice, is such a comparatively new and unfamiliar branch. Therefore its introduction into courses of study is, etc. So says logic in minor premise and conclusion, and we answer, Good for logic, so far as it goes. But life is more than logic, as much more as a warm and vigorous living body is more than its dried and wired skeleton hung in a closet. Hence, as living beings, we wish to know something of what industrial education is, in its roots and branches, ideas and manipulations, scope and use. We shall thus be better able to judge of its worthiness of admission among the subjects of study which are to be generally or widely pursued. A favorable judgment on this question will then act as a stimulus to overcome the difficulties in the way of such admission.

But there is a preliminary question as to time; for, if no time can be found for a new department of work, it is no matter either what it is, or how good it is. First in order, then, is the question, How is time to be found for industrial education, especially in view of the frequent complaints about the over-crowding of school-courses with too much work, and the confusing of them with too many studies? For, if time cannot be found, and advantageously found, it would, as just said, be useless to dwell on the beauties or utilities of the subject as an admirable mental discipline in neatness, order, and precision, in thinking in things as others think in words; and so in inventive combination. Now, first, in general, and for the larger future, any observer of life must have noticed the tendency of fashions. in everything to move in cycles, and so to return, after awhile, to some former customs. Thus we have had Grecian domestic architecture marked by two-story hollow columns of inch-board, as the far-off Yankee successors of the snowy marble solids of the Parthenon. Then we had equally frivolous gothic. Better was the Italian, with its broad openings and flat, overhanging roofs. Then followed the roomy French roof; and just now the "Queen Anne" style is

generally popular. But at some time there will be a revived and modified Grecian, or Gothic, or some other former style. So, again, in education, where forty-two weeks study and August commencements were once the rule, thirty-six weeks study (in an extreme case only thirty-four) and June commencements are now usual. Also the "three R's" that once formed, with something of geography, the staple of common education, are now reinforced or smothered, as we happen to feel about it, by all the 'ologies,-backed, perhaps, by all the 'isms.

We are of those who believe that in both of these particulars, -as well as in the far more important one of the education of the moral nature, under a higher sanction than that of expediency, or merely shifting human custom and opinion, there will some day be a reaction. We believe it will be found that regular and moderate work, nearly or quite the year round, with daily hours, weekly days, and numerous other short intervals for rest, will be found more beneficial to mind and body than long stretches of uninterrupted activity, aggravated by occasional spurts, alternating with wastefully long periods of entire inanition. The sudden rise and rapid increase, both in number and variety of "summer schools,"-even including one in Hebrew, is already a strong testimony to the natural thirst of healthy minds for a continuous combination of labor, recreation, and rest. By this plan much time could be gained.

With respect to the other point, the multiplication of studies, we think it will be one day realized that, as Hugh Miller and other equally celebrated and successful self-instructors have said, reading is the pass-key to all other knowledge; is in very deed a putting into the hands of the earnest and reasonably capable seeker the key to the door of every treasure-chamber of the vast temple of knowledge. We believe, therefore, that the time will come when schools will be graded far more largely according to subjects, and classed far more largely according to the chosen pursuits of the pupils, than according to the non-essential matter of the age of the pupil; and that far fewer subjects will be taught in any one grade or class of schools than are so taught at present. We believe that there will come to be a foundation grade of schools, in which no more than reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic will be taught to all comers, regardless of age; and so that by more or less variation of rooms, of hours, and of books, persons of any age, whom misfortune has left uneducated in bocks, can come and receive the kind of instruction they need, in the way they need, without exposure to the mortification of being put on the same level with little children, in books, discipline,

and methods; and we believe that in such schools, histories, biographies, and travels will be the reading-books for the grown-up pupils, with maps and globes, and occasional oral lessons, by which to learn. geography and grammar incidentally through the reading-lessons. Such schools would, except as replenished by ignorant immigrants, soon cause illiteracy to become as nearly extinct as in Norway and Sweden, where, according to various authorities, it is nearly unknown. One states that, in round numbers, 975,000 out of 1,000,000 children of school age were under compulsory instruction.

With the entire Nation thus initiated in learning, and adult illiteracy practically extinct, subsequent schools would well be classed according to the six generally recognized grand divisions of human activity, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, or the industrial or material group; and literature, science, and art, or the scholarly or intellectual group. The existing state of things indicates a struggle to realize this classification by providing public or private special schools to supplement the deficiencies of the general school system. Thus we have agricultural colleges, commercial colleges, schools of industrial drawing and design, and evening schools suited to business or to artisan life; also, we have colleges of music,-sometimes, also, including the elements of a general education.

A powerful impulse toward a fuller realization would come from a broadening of our ideas of language and of a school. It will have to be recognized that man can think in things as well as in words, and that some can think better in things than in words. It will be more generally seen that a complete Bessemer steel establishment, a modern steam printing-press, or steamship, are as truly intellectual compositions, written with fire and hammer in words of brass and iron, as the Iliad, or Scott's novels are compositions written with ink in words of letters; that there are diversities of gifts, but that all have not the same gifts; and finally, that the substantial equality of the gifts, in many cases, is shown by the equal impossibility of either of two possessors of different gifts doing what the other can do. Watt could no more be Milton than Milton could be Watt, and neither of them could be Washington any more than Washington could be either of them.

It will also have to be recognized that any place in which mind and hand are called into joint activity, under competent guidance, in learning what to do and how to do it, is truly and properly a school, and that if to the what and the how a knowledge of the why is added, it is truly a school for the mind. Thus the farm, supplemented by a good agricultural newspaper, agricultural books, and an active farmers'