care, system, cleanliness, are all emphasized and enforced. What has hitherto seemed to the girls but mere drudgery is elevated and honest labor is ennobled. The fact that some mothers look with disfavor upon cooking, as a part of school work, only shows how clouded the public mind is regarding the nature of true education. It shows that too little thought is taken of the need of improving the social condition of the masses, of educating in the direction of thrift and domestic virtue. Time will not permit me to speak at length of Manual Training as an antidote to crime. The testimony given at the meeting of the National Prison Association the last year only confirms a mass of evidence that has been accumulating both in this country and in Europe. Habits of occupation and industry, formed in conjunction with moral and intellectual training, have produced, notable results in reclaiming youthful criminals to honorable manhood and womanhood. Thus it may be said that Manual Training has established its position as a true educational factor. First, it promotes physical health as it exercises the growing body and serves as a relief to other brain work. Second, it contributes in many ways to moral character as it establishes habits of order, thrift, exactness, self reliance, and self-control. Third, it supplies a much-needed factor in intellectual training as it brings mind and things into the most vital relation. Fourth, the social and industrial requirements of our time are best met by a generous provision for a training of hand and eye. Dr. Fitch, of England, has beautifully pointed out that, in the natural law known as variation in type we may find full justification for the broadening and deepening of our educational methods. Differentiation and the calling out of the greatest number of aptitudes, should be our aim in human development. III. Its place in the schools. How, then, can Manual Training be co-ordinated with other school work? It may be said in the first place that it is a part, and only a part, of a reform that is slowly working its way out from certain educational centers. This reform means a better understanding of the mind and the laws that regulate its growth. It means a more economical use of time, whereby practice in reading and language are to be obtained while pursuing true objects of thought. It means much less arithmetic, but that portion intensified and made more vital. It means more knowledge at first hand, more observation, more imagination, more independence in study, in short, a broader development. Such a movement as this in education, whose sole purpose is to check the vicious tendency to book-learning now so current and to bring the minds of children into direct contact with things, forces, and processes, will include in its scheme a carefully graded course in the manual and domestic arts extending from the Kindergarten through the grammar school. The High School, also, will provide a course in wood and metal work whereby the student will understand the elements of hand craft and machinery. Chemistry and Physics will have a larger place here than in the ordinary High School. They will receive the same practical application as in the arts and manufactures. The ideal school for little children is the Kindergarten. But few cities have accommodations sufficient to provide for children under five years of age. In that case the modern primary school, whose programme provides for manual occupation, physical exercise, songs and games, with language culture pursued along with observation and number lessons, seems to meet all requirements. But how far the primary schools of New England are from meeting this modern idea. It will never be reached as long as teachers are required to teach so many words, or so many pages, or to insist that every word should be spelled orally. The stream will not rise higher than its source. If those of us who make out courses of study try to run classes over them as railroad trains are run upon a time schedule, we shall make taskmasters of the teachers and effectually destroy all the germs of enthusiasm they may possess for doing a broader work. During the first three years the occupations of the Kindergar ten, the study of form and color with clay modeling, and possi bly painting, and such busy work as assists the other studies, will lay a good foundation for higher Manual Training. For the remaining years of the grammar school, girls may pursue drawing as applied both to industry and art, and may find constant cultivation of the hand and eye in designing, in decorating and sketching. During this period, as in the High School, objective drawing in all its phases should be considered. Cookery and domestic economy may be taught during the last part of the grammar school course and in the High School. If optional in the grammar school it should be a required study in the High School; and a thorough course should be given in Chemistry and Physics as applied to the preparation of food. Sewing should be begun as early as the fourth year. Thus, all girls who are in our schools are likely to be reached through this most important art. During the seventh and eighth years this training should be merged into taking of measurements, making of patterns, and the cutting and fitting of garments. Girls thus trained in the domestic arts during the grammar school stage will find ample home work of this character during the High School period, and diplomas will be given not merely to sweet girl graduates, but to young women full of promise for thrift and usefulness. At the beginning of the fourth year boys should enter upon a line of training which applies their knowledge of form, and which, at the same time, requires few tools, in other words, work that can be done at the ordinary desk. The Slojd in its simpler stages can be used here. After two years of this work it would do no harm to return to clay modeling, if a basement room in each grammar school could be devoted to such work. Boys of the seventh and eighth grades should have at least two hours per week in a shop well equipped with wood-working tools. Mechanical drawing here receives its application. Arithmetic and Geometry are vitally connected with the work. The aim should be care and exactness in the largest possible number of manipulations. Each grammar school should have its shop to which classes from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades could be taken for practice. If this is not feasible, shops may be provided outside. This course should include tool work and wood turning. Attention should be chiefly directed to fundamental processes, but after the pupil has good command of tools, articles useful in the school may be constructed. Nothing should be made for the market. The Manual Training Schools now in successful progress suggest courses that might wisely be pursued in the High School. I have touched briefly on the nature and value of Manual Training and its place in our schools. The difficulties to be met are great, but some of them have been overcome already. To be sure, the programme is full, but the insistance upon hand work will compel teachers to be more discriminating in the selection of topics and a better programme will be the result. REPORT OF STATE TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. The Forty Second Annual Meeting of the Connecticut State. Teachers' Association opened Thursday evening, October 18, 1888, at 7:30, at the High School, Hartford. After a couple of selections admirably sung by the school choir, under Professor Irving Emerson, and prayer by the Rev. J. A. Biddle, of this city, Mr. C. L. Ames, president of the association, announced the various committees as follows: ON NOMINATIONS. -J. D. Whitmore, New Haven; F. F. Barrows, Hartford; H. D. Beebe, Meriden; H. D. Simonds, Bridgeport; S. C. Minor, Norwich. ON RESOLUTIONS. J. H. Peck, New Britain; J. R. French, New Haven; H. M. Adams, Canaan; Dwight Holbrook, Clinton; C. B. Jennings, New London. ON ASSOCIATION.-M. S. Crosby, Waterbury; L. L. Camp, New Haven; H. M. Harrington, Bridgeport. ON MEMBERSHIP. — A. B. Fifield, New Haven; George N. Williams, Southington; E. S. Gordy, Ansonia; R. W. Hine, West Hartford; T. H. Patterson, Enfield; Frederick Mitchell, Thomaston; Dwight Bidwell, South Manchester. Mr. Ames then introduced the Hon. James W. Patterson, Superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction of New Hampshire, whose subject was, "A Trip Among the Glaciers." The speaker prefaced his talk with an apology for presenting so cool a topic during the heat of a presidential campaign. He began by pointing out what glacial action had done in the remote past. The whole northern continent was once covered with a mantle of snow, just as Greenland is to-day. Heap was added to heap until, overtopping the mountains, the whole mass moved toward the sea and toppled off. Why does not this force act to day? Experience shows that it is periodic and may return and again cover this continent. Among the hypotheses advanced by scientists are (1) the difference in the amount of heat from the sun;‹ (2) the difference in the relative amount of land and water on the face of the globe; (3) the change in the amount of moisture held. in suspension over the earth; (4) the varying distance of the sun from the earth. The last the speaker thought the most plausible. If, for instance, winter occurred during the sun's aphelion, or greatest distance from the earth, it would, of course, be much colder than if winter occurred during the sun's perihelion, or least distance from the earth. In the former case the mean temperature would be reduced to 13 degrees above zero, and snow, falling during the winter, would last throughout the summer, as the rising vapor would shut off the heat. The speaker then described a trip made in September, 1873, up Mt. Righi, and painted a glowing picture of the sunrise as seen from its lofty summit. It was here that he obtained his first view of a glacier. He next described visits to some of the neighboring glaciers, accompanying the description with a running commentary on Swiss customs, and indulging in personal reminiscences and anecdotes suggested by the trip, which, while they had little to do with the subject of glaciers, added to the interest of the talk and moved the audience to frequent laughter. He gave a graphic description of an avalanche which he witnessed, and then related, in an interesting way, the experience of a trip up Mt. Blanc. The desire to climb that mountain, he said, is infectious, and everybody does it. For himself, he gave it as his opinion that the man who attempted it was a fool. The motion of the glacier and the nature of the moraine were next described, this portion of the address being illustrated by means of a colored drawing placed on the platform. The various theories advanced to account for the motion were discussed, that advocated by Tyndall and Faraday being preferred by the speaker to any other. Incidentally, Mr. Patterson mentioned a theory advanced within a few days by a friend of his to account for the bubbling up of springs that the centrifugal force imparted to subterranean waters forces the waters up in springs. The exercises closed with a selection most acceptably rendered by the Girls' Glee Club. On Friday morning the several sections met in different rooms at 9 o'clock. |