Emmerich Manual High School - Ivian Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

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VI MIND AND HAND. classes in the high school are thus disor- ganized and both schools suffer from the system. In the Indianapolis school, all under one root , no time is lost and the courses and classes are so arranged that a high school course, including industrial training, or without it, may he taken. The advantages of the arrangement here are manifest at once to a visitor. The cooking and sew- ing departments are real laboratories, where the practical results of each pupil ' s work are reached by scientific steps. The shops for wood working and iron working, rooms for mechanical and for free-hand drawing, are in charge of competent and experienced teachers, and the interest of the pupils and teachers is so great that outsiders catch the spirit at once. My own impression, after a visit of two days, is that here in the Industrial Training School of Indianapolis is established the proper relation between an industrial and a sec- ondary school. A visitor is apt to speak most of the things that lie can see, of laboratories and machines ami equipments, but one should not overlook the fact that this school has a corps of strong teachers in history, mathematics, languages and literatures, who conduct a complete high school course. The competence of the teachers in all departments is evident. Manual training here is not a fad, but is so com- bined with other training as to put in practice the best educational theories of the present day. Georue Emory Fellows, University of Chicago. FORGE ROOM

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MIND AND HAND. 11 FREEHAND DRAWING ROOM. A VISIT TO THE INDIANAPOLIS INDUS- TRIAL TRAINING SCHOOL. I II AD heard much of the Industrial Training School to be built at Indi- anapolis, but was totally unprepared to see so large, well equipped, and successful an institution. One is quite justified in being envious of the boy and girl of school age when he compares the advantages now offered in every good High School with those of the very best two or three decades ago. In the Industrial Training School of In- dianapolis there is found the combination of a regular High School with the oppor- tunity for training the hauds and eyes in a way commonly called practical. I be- lieve an intellectual education to be in every way as practical as any other educa- tion, but it is quite common to hear cook- ing, sewing, wood and iron working called practical as distinguished from the more exclusively intellectual studies. All who have interested themselves in studying the question know that industrial studies have perhaps as strong an influence on the intellectual life as studies which do not exercise the hand and eye. The laboratory and laboratory methods have revolutionized education. The useful- ness of the laboratory for students, first discovered and employed in physics, chem- istry, botany, etc., has been extended to history, language and literature and to the study of the affairs of every day life. Manual training has been tried in many places and in as many ways. In one town, not in Indiana, a number of pupils go away from the high school several times a week to the manual training school, which is several blocks distant. The

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SCIENTIFIC DEPARTMENT. PHYSICS A PRACTICAL SUBJECT. IN this practical day and age the question that arises when a person takes up some line of work, or considers it, is not so much concerniug the intrinsic merit of the work, but the real value that it will be to the person himself. The opinion is often expressed, especially among girls, that the study of Physics is of no practical value to them, that it will never do them any good. If there is one prac- tical subject in the sehool course, it is Phys- ics. First, the very knowledge that you gain, is that not of real use to you? You see the prineiple of the lever, the pendulum, the inclined plane, and many others every day. Is it not of real value to you to know the principles on which business and build- ing are carried on ; and the girls, particu- larly, to understand heat and ventilation, as every housekeeper should? The major- ity of pupils prefer literary to scientific subjects. Yet, how often during the study of the former one must have some knowl- edge of the latter before he can get the true thought of the writer. We have reached that period of development where one can not keep up with the times who has not some scientific knowledge. One must have a well-rounded education if he wishes to make his way in the world. After all, it is not so much for the knowl- edge that we get that our school-training is intended, it is the strength that we gain in acquiriug this information. Therefore, if Physics is distasteful to you, and you never care to give special attention to its study, you still have gained something in- estimable in its value What teaches closer observation than this subject? Almost un- consciously one begins to notice what is about him more carefully, after having had the experimental work of a laboratory. The training that the mind gets in quickly seeing and accounting for phenomena in Physics helps the person to see and grasp ideas in his other work without difficulty. In every occupation this quickness of per- ception is essential ; a good merchant must be alert in every line of his work and ready to grasp everything that would be to his advantage. This same subject also teaches systematic, accurate labor, both physical and mental, besides the ability to see the abstract in the concrete, to generalize, and to deduce truths from commonplace things ; then, perhaps above all, close concentration of the mind is cultivated. It is simply im- possible to understand and perform work in Physics without this concentration. The word education literally means a drawing out. A subject, then, that leads the mind to observe, to think quickly and accurately, to perform that most difficult and yet most essential thing, concentration of thoughts, is it not pre- eminently practical. Hettie Bosley. AN EXERCISE IN GEOMETRY. FROVE that if FR and F ' S are the two perpendiculars dropped from the foci upon any tangent to an ellipse, that FR X F ' S = b 2 ; b representing the semi- minor axis. Let be the center of the ellipse, A ' A the major axis, and O B the semi-minor axis.