Correlated Courses in Woodwork and Mechanical Drawing
9781465672797
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The author wishes to state that the basis of the following courses rests more upon the art or practice of teaching manual training than upon the theory. It is the result of carefully prepared plans executed under public school conditions by the author himself, covering a period of some nine years of experimentation. Wherever plans, or theory, were found producing results which common sense indicated plainly were not for the pupils’ highest good, practical expediency supplanted theory. If manual training practice in the two upper grammar grades has merited criticism it has been because school men have not taken its subject matter seriously enough. It is too much to hope that results can be achieved that are truly educative, when a shop, however well equipped, is turned over to a teacher but slightly experienced in, and appreciative of, the “finer points” of the subject matter to be dealt with. Loose and unorganized efforts in any line of work cannot become educative, it matters not what fine spun theories may be offered as proof to the contrary. Indeed, much positive injury may be done. If the present demand for vocational training teaches manual training anything, it is that the subject matter of manual training must receive more serious attention. The aims of manual training and vocational training, in one sense, are not so very different; both seek, or should, to assist the boy to become a “thinking doer.” The distinction is mainly a matter of “direction” and of allotment of time, with possibly a slight difference in the placing of the emphasis on one or the other of the words “thinking doer.” We do not mean to imply that manual training and vocational training are the same, but we do mean to say that the educative value of any shop training, whether given from the point of view of general culture or of special preparation for life’s work, is evidenced in the attitude which pupils are allowed to assume toward their work. Incorrect and slovenly habits of thinking and doing have no more place in manual training than in vocational training. Organization of subject matter is as essential in manual training as in any other line of endeavor. Among other things, it is the author’s hope that the book may offer some suggestions that will help to bring about a better understanding of the relation of the high school and grade school manual training. The arrangement and division of the subject matter and the grouping of the problems represent one method of attack. The employment of skilled instructors in both grade and high school and the making of the work of the upper grammar grades serious mechanically rather than merely “expressional” will wait in many communities upon the initiative of the school authorities.
