Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education
9781465667915
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The work of which this is the third edition has been before the public of this country, England, and all English-speaking countries since 1886—thirteen years. As it proposes a revolution in educational methods, it was not to be presumed that it would escape criticism. But, while the reviews of it have been numerous, they have, on the whole, been very generous. My most radical postulates have, however, been received by educators of the old régime with expressions of emphatic dissent. In presenting the third edition of the work I have, therefore, thought it wise to support the text with many high authorities in the form of foot-notes. As was to be expected, my analysis of Greek history and character provoked the severest criticism. It is regarded, indeed, as conclusive evidence of gross ignorance of the entire subject. To meet the charge of ignorance, I have made a large number of citations from Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others—authors consulted, originally, in the preparation of this part of the work. I may venture to observe, with due deference to those schoolmen who regard the ancient Greeks as an ideal people, that I have searched contemporaneous history in vain for evidence of the verity of this claim; and I am hence constrained to adhere firmly to the extreme views expressed in the text. And if these views are correct, it follows that the passion for Greek models in education is not only a mental dissipation, but a moral crime. The other new notes are commended to the careful consideration of the reader, as the fruit of my added years of research and reflection. The Appendix contains a compilation, in tabular form, of all the facts obtainable from original sources, through the aid of a skilled statistician, showing the physical progress of Manual Training in this country, and the chief countries of Europe, during the last fifteen years. In this edition the disguise of the first edition is dropped. In that edition a certain school was referred to as “the Chicago school,” whereas it was, in fact, purely an ideal school, which had no existence except in the mind of the author. But it embodied educational theories and ideas of Comenius and other great men which the author desired to see adopted. That desire not having been realized, I content myself here by quoting the observation of Oscar Browning as to the proneness of the school-master to neglect opportunities: “The more we reflect on the method of Comenius, the more shall we see that it is replete with suggestiveness, and we shall feel surprised that so much wisdom can have lain in the path of school-masters for two hundred and fifty years, and that they never stooped to avail themselves of its treasures.”
