Central Manual Training High School - Record Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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Svalutatnrg Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :- In behalf of the class of nineteen hundred and nine, I take pleasure in welcoming you to our Commencement Exercises, which, as a matter of fact, are really more in the nature of a stepping stone from the end of one phase of our lives to the beginning of another. To-day we assume a some- what different attitude toward life. Henceforth, with what diligence we can muster, it shall be our ambition to apply to the definite problems of life, the training the we have acquired in the course of our school career. Of late much has been written, and much has been expounded, in relation to the effect of manual training upon the ethical, the intellectual, and the so-called practical development of the stu- dent. The theory and the practice of the manual training idea is not, as the phrase is sometimes altogether erroneously taken to indicate, a training of the hand for the work of the artisan: it is fundamentally a cultivation of the mind through the instrumentality of the whole physical equip- ment, beginning specifically with the brain, and through the hand, getting back again to the brain. The hand is regarded simply as a medium of development for the intellect. It is the training of the hand that develops the mind of the studentg and the ensuing mental development is the net educa- tional result of the co-ordinate training of the hand. The observer will at once discover that the chief object contemplated is educational and not necessarily the acquisition of any sort of mere industrial expertness or skill. It has been said that one of the important results of our type of education is to make a worker of the thinker, and a thinker of the worker. The fundamental principle is to develop co-ordinately the mind and the hand until both are able to act in intellectual unison. An investigation of the subsequent work of that. as a rule, they are based specifically on any graduates of the schools based upon this purelypedagogic conception of manual training shows, purely academic principle. The graduate of the manual training high school has not infrequently 66

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demonstrated himself to be capable of occupying a position where executive ability is required. For this reason, as experience has shown, the manual training idea has created a favorable impression in the world of affairs. Consequently it has taken a firm root in the plans of educational experts throughout the country, and, as a corollary of this, its scope and field has greatly broadened. More- over, it is a further object of the manual training academic idea to enable the student of average capability to conjoin his hand and head in sympathetic co-operation with the industrial and civil insti- tutions of his city, state, and nation. The manual training system as it is here known and dehned is characteristic of the expansion and development of our national ideas. The trade and technical schools of Europe are devoted more es- pecially to instruction in some handicraftsmanship which does not necessarily involve the higher edu- cation and general culture. ' Considering the matter from a negative point of view. it is likewise plain that. as a result of having smothered whatever latent impulses of unity in the development of hand and eye and brain that they may possess, students of the obsolescent type of grammar and high school, such schools as are founded merely upon one-sided academic ideas, are necessarily not sufficiently developed or en- lightened in regard to their native bents to make a judicious choice of a profession. The pupils of such antiquated systems are familiar with neither their innate personal possibilities nor with the scope and limitations of the various types of industrial and professional activity. It is one of the ends of modern manual training schools, however, to instruct the student in the application of his book knowledge to the practical affairs of life. He takes a greater joy in his work. because he sees something concrete and original forming under his hands. If he enter the diverse field of mechanical arts, he is not compelled to learn the rudiments of a particular manufacturer. He has already acquired the general dexterity that is necessary before he could otherwise be advanced. Taking his place beside others of his own age, who have not had his training, he, in consequence of his superior initial equipment, naturally exhibits better handicraftsman- ship and secures more rapid promotion. Or, if he enter the business world, his general understand- 67 '