In addition to the objective study of things, of which I have spoken, we have two exercises in the schools that are especially adapted to train the mind to a skilful use of the eye and the hand. I refer to drawing and to the practice by the pupils of constructing their own simple illustrative apparatus. Drawing is the language of form, and may take the place of written speech as a mode of expression. It implies a careful and prolonged observation of things to be described. It presents occasions for a free exercise of judgment, imagination, and invention. It is one of the best means of cultivating the taste by requiring that exercise of the faculties upon which the activity of taste depends and by directing attention to the beautiful in the works of nature and art.

In constructing the means of reproducing physical phenomena to be observed the mind is most thoroughly exercised in the study of the phenomena themselves. The exercise of making the apparatus is not now a simple imitation of a few mechanical motions; it is an invention of the means of illustrating ideas and of presenting the phenomena of nature in a convenient form for a prolonged and systematic observation.

Our schools are overcrowded with work already. In the elementary grades there seems to be no time for the systematic study of the qualities of objects, nor for the application of the knowledge thus gained to a systematic observation of natural objects, nor for such an exercise of the faculties as will add to their original state a facility in acting.

In most schools there is no opportunity given for acquiring, in a philosophical way, an orderly knowledge of the facts of any of the sciences. Even language itself is learned as a collection of words rather than as a means of expressing ideas.

As a result of these omissions there is a failure to train the powers of observation and analysis, upon whose culture and products all future scientific study, all true exercise of the reflective powers, and all high success in the operations of practical life will depend.

It is a common criticism that pupils pass from the elementary to the scientific schools with little or no preparation for the pursuit of scien tific knowledge; that the high schools, the technical schools, and the colleges are compelled to stop in their courses and teach the facts of science before scientific study is possible.

It is urged that sewing and cooking should take their places among the branches of learning and practice pursued in the public schools as a matter of plain necessity. If our civilization and the conditions of our social life render it necessary, then let these occupations be taken in the public schools as a burden upon them, but not as in harmony with the spirit or work peculiar to these institutions. It should be the aim of every wise educator to so train those under his care that when they come to take direction of home affairs they will perform with skill and fidelity all the duties of home life, especially the duties of prepar

ing, in a proper manner, food and clothing for the nourishment and protection of the body.

The object of public school life, then, is not to teach special professions nor occupations nor trades, nor to practice those exercises which produce mere manual dexterity, but to develop the child and bring him to his special work with trained faculties and an honest purpose.

After the powers are sufficienty unfolded, and good habits are formed and independent ability to acquire knowledge from the study of things and information from communication with other minds have been acquired; after the foundations for a true manhood have been established by the disciplinary exercises of the public schools, then let the technical and industrial schools offer to all who desire it the opportunity of preparing for special places in life.

The cities and large towns may establish industrial schools where the school population who cannot be trained at home may have the opportunity offered to them of acquiring manual skill. Technical schools may also be organized for those who, having passed through their disciplinary studies, desire to obtain the advantages of a technical education. But the public common schools of the State must not be confused and burdened with work of the home or of society or of the church. These schools will fail of accomplishing their purpose and will lose their hold on public confidence if they attempt to teach that knowledge which is not necessary for all to know or to produce that culti vation which is not necessary for all to acquire. The common schools are necessary for the State, special schools for the individual. The one should be made universal and the attendance upon them compulsory; the other should be offered to all who desire to enjoy their advantages. Let the work in the public schools, as they are now organized, be done in accordance with the true philosophy of teaching and study, and the children will graduate from them prepared to enter, with every prospect of success, upon the performance of the duties of either private or public life, or, if they choose, they can enter with disciplined minds into the professional schools for special instruction. In either case they will be likely to become honest and intelligent citizens of a free Commonwealth.

Upon the conclusion of the reading of Dr. Dickinson's paper Dr. M. A. Newell moved that it be referred to a special committee to consider it; which motion was agreed to. The Chair then appointed Dr. M. A. Newell, of Baltimore; Superintendent Aaron Gove, of Denver, Colo.; and Superintendent A. G. Lane, of Cook County, Illinois, as such committee.

Hon. W. B. PoWELL, superintendent of schools, Washington, D. C. : Ladies and Gentlemen: I think that the question before us is no longer open for discussion; that the public has declared that handcraft shall be taught in the public schools. I believe that the careful observer of

society during the last few years, with its commotion tending towards convulsion and anarchy, will decide that the two great parties in society, the capitalist and he who gains a livelihood by intellectual pursuit on the one hand and he who earns a living by the use of his hands on the other, shall cease to be educated at the public expense on diverging lines; that their education shall be conducted, while conducted at public expense, towards each other, to the end that each may appreciate more fully the part performed by the other in human society. I believe that the careful observer will decide that the public school shall consider all the faculties of the children and shall decide to build on broader lines at the bottom and cease to build finer and higher at the top. I prepared a paper of some length before I knew what would be required. After finding out, I tried to reduce it.

Mr. Powell then read the following paper:

If there is any institution of the many forming our complex society that is a growth, a development, the public school system is one. The needs of the people, as seen and understood by the people, are the soil out of which the public school system grows.

In a broad sense it is not the province of the schoolmaster to determine what shall be taught. In a restricted sense the school authorities fix the course of instruction and determine what parts of subjects shall be taught, but whenever this authority prescribes a curriculum not in accordance with the public needs, as understood by the public, trouble arises, and the school, if too ambitious, suffers and is not infrequently torn down. If not ambitious enough agitation never ceases until the work is corrected. The history of high schools is given in evidence of this position.

The public school does not make public sentiment; its office is to do the bidding of the public will. Public sentiment is formed by other instrumentalities-the professional and the secular magazines, the newspaper, the forum, the pulpit, the technical institution for investigation and experiment, supported by private benevolence, the philosophical society, the civic society, and scores of other societies-all public agitators. Each of these does its work in determining the relations of social, domestic, and political society, and declaring the values of these relations, until the people see and understand and decide what they want for themselves. These form public opinion.

The public schools to-day would be teaching "the three R's" had not public opinion demanded a broader teaching. In a restricted sense the school authorities fix the course of instruction. Public sentiment demands what subjects shall be taught; the school authorities decide how much and what parts of such subjects shall be taught and in what order they shall be presented. This educational problem is more important and more difficult than any other with which the schoolmaster has to deal.

It was decreed that the elements of physics should be understood by the children, and the work has been added to the school curriculum. It was declared that a knowledge of plants and animals, a knowledge of the laws of health and the rules of tight living should be taught our children, and these subjects have been added to the course of instruction. It was feared that the school course would be crowded, and many complaints have been made because of the great amount to be learned; but where the schoolmaster has performed his part well in determining what parts of these subjects shall be taught, where the professional part of the work has been done properly, it is found that there is no crowding of the curriculum and that this apparently great mass of work only gives healthful variety. For instance, if a child is to be taught the use of language he must first be made certain that he has idea and thought requiring expression. That he may gain idea and thought in a systematic training in seeing and comparing and concluding he is presented with natural objects, as plants or animals or with other physical phenomena. He thus comes to a knowledge of the forms of nature, either animal or vegetable, while, in fact, only preparing himself for his language lesson.

If I read the signs of the times correctly, the civic societies, the philosopher in his den, the essayist, the philanthropist, the political economist, the scientist-all have been at work. They have solved the problem, or they believe they have, and they have made the public believe they have solved it; and the schoolmaster has only to accept the result, for even the legislator, whose office it is to formulate the relations discovered by others and fix to such relations their values, has declared it, and the law has been made, and the demand upon the schoolmaster is mandatory that a part of the child's common school education shall be a training in bandcraft.

This is an age characterized by the triumphs of mechanical skill, which triumph alone is a recognition of the importance of handcraft as a factor in human development. The people have been easily convinced of the value of manual training because, as is natural, they see the relation of this to the question of subsistence and prosperity. But not this alone. The people have seen long lines of men going to the front, and have seen that these nen, without college education, without scholastic training other than that which has come through and because of the hand, now manage thousands of the industrial enterprises of this country. They see that they control complex means of communication, long and expensive and complex means of transportation. More than this, the people have looked into our workshops and have seen men skilled in handcraft capable of adjusting, creating conveniences and wealth and the instrumentalities that contribute to refinement, although the moods and tenses of their verbs are not always what they should be, and they have come to believe that there is an education intellectual, a development and training of the mental capacities, of perceiving, com

paring, concluding, and doing that comes through the training of the hand. The people have seen, and many of them now appreciate, that hand-culture, handcraft, is a sixth, a higher and a dominating sense, a sense purely anthropological, which, with the spiritual, puts man in a kingdom of nature above the animals which he controls; that this sense is that which puts man in control of his environments, so that instead of being their slave and being controlled and modified by them, he makes them do his bidding and contribute to his happiness, his grow th, and his financial benefit. The schoolmaster, in his capacity as such, never developed this and never would, such is the conservatism of letters. The schoolmaster as a philosopher, in his association in other societies and in other callings, has had his share in the growth of thought. The work of Pestalozzi and Froebel cannot be forgotten, but the kindergarten owes its introduction to the public school system-not to the schoolmaster, but to the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the capitalist who has gained his wealth by handcraft. It is beginning to be recog nized that handcraft has added no small share to the sum total of human thought, and that handcraft at all stages of cultivation is suggestive and is productive of new thought. It cannot be denied that the psychological importance of eye-culture and ear-culture, in connection with intellectual training, is recognized by all who seek a symmetrical development of the young, though to gain this recognition in systems of teaching the five senses have had a hard struggle. Equally hard has the sixth sense-handcraft-struggled for recognition. It is now recognized. It were unfortunate if eye-culture and hand-culture were not to be recognized in our system of intellectual training, that the kindergarten were introduced, for the kindergarten gives us the beginnings of all that is asked by those who would introduce manual training for general culture. The eye is trained and the hand is made to shape and form and adjust, doing the bidding of judgment and fancy.

The growth of machinery has transformed the industries of the coun. try and has practically reduced the work of learning to do the myriad things that are now done to learning a single trade-that is learning to manage and run a machine. What changes have been wrought! I was told ten days ago that the carpenter no longer even needs a shop, his work is turned out by machinery in condition to be put together a finished product; and that the laborer need to know only how to fit and to adjust, and moreover that he who has learned to adjust and control machinery can, with a few weeks or a few months of special effort at most, manage any one of the multitude of machines used in preparing the material. Now it takes but little more time, specially directed, to prepare him who has general training in the management of machines to manage profitably the machines doing work in iron or other material than wood.

Thus it is that apprenticeship has declined and that the trades have been reduced to one so far as learning a trade is concerned, except a