Abstract
MR. WOODWARD has by no means a high opinion of the results of the efforts that have hitherto been made in European countries to promote technical education. In 1885 he spent five months in examining “trade schools” on this side of the Atlantic, and all the schools visited by him, with the exception of the French Government school at Châlons, disappointed him. He, admits that they have “many excellent features”; but their manual training is generally, he holds, “very narrow” and he condemns “their long daily sessions, their long terms, and the conventional nature of their curricula.” Manual training, according to Mr. Woodward, is in a much more flourishing condition in America. There it has been introduced “not for a trade or a profession, but for the healthy growth and vigour of all the faculties, for general robustness of life and character”; and he is of opinion that it has been developed in a way that places it “far in advance of any model in a foreign land”. Whether or not this comparative estimate is accurate, no one who reads Mr. Woodward's book will dispute that the Americans have begun to understand thoroughly the importance of technical instruction, and that the leaders of opinion on the subject have done much to diffuse enlightened ideas as to the true aims and methods of manual training. Unfortunately, Mr. Woodward has not the art of presenting facts and arguments in an attractive style. He has, however, brought together a great mass of useful information about a subject of pressing importance, and his work, although relating chiefly to institutions founded in his own country, ought to find readers in England as well as in the United States. He does not enter, in detail, into the theory and practice of manual training in primary and grammar schools. He limits himself to the training of pupils beyond the age of fourteen. The value of the work is increased by a number of good woodcuts illustrating shop exercises in woods and metals.
The Manual Training School.
By C. M. Woodward. (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1887.)
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 38, 5 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038005a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038005a0