CHAPTER XLIII. STATISTICS OF SCHOOLS FOR MANUAL AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. Manual training is by no means a novelty in American schools. Thomas Jefferson recommended it for the students of the University of Virginia, and Benjamin Franklin included it in his plan for an academy in Philadelphia. An active propaganda was carried on in behalf of manual labor in educational institutions for many years, beginning about 1830, and some of our foremost institutions had their origin under its influence. But what is now known as "manual training" is traced to an exhibit of a Russian institution at the centennial in 1876. The value of the system of hand training there suggested was recognized by such men as Louis D. Runkle and C. M. Woodward, who became advocates of the new idea and introduced it into the institutions under their charge. Strong opposition was met among schoolmen for a time, but manual training has steadily grown in popularity, and with its growth it has constantly improved in matter and method, and consequently in usefulness. In 1896 manual training was an essential feature in the public school course of 95 cities. In 359 institutions other than city schools there is training which partakes more or less of the nature of manual training and which belongs in a general way to the same movement. These institutions embrace almost every class known to American education, and the manual features vary from the purely educational manual training of the Teachers College in New York City to the direct trade instruction of the apprentice schools. In many cases the legislatures have taken cognizance of the movement. Massachusetts requires every city of 200,000 inhabitants to maintain high-school manualtraining courses approved by the State board of education; Maine authorizes any city or town to provide instruction in industrial or mechanical drawing to pupils over 15 years of age; industrial training is authorized by general laws in Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana (in cities of over 100,000 population), New Jersey, New York, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Congressional appropriations are regularly made for manual training in the District of Columbia. In the Report of this office for the year 1893-94 a chapter was devoted to the statistics of manual and industrial training, pages 2093 to 2169. To the same Report Prof. C. M. Woodward, director of the Manual Training School of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., contributed a chapter on "The rise and progress of manual training," pages 877 to 949. In the 1895-96 Report, pages 1001 to 1152, is an examination of the courses of instruction in typical institutions offering manual or industrial training. In the following pages is printed a list of the leading manual-training schools in the United States with their statistics for the scholastic year 1896–97. Table 1 gives the statistics of 66 manual and industrial training schools and 24 industrial schools for Indian children reporting to this office. In the 66 manual and industrial training schools there were 551 teachers, 289 males and 262 females. These schools had 19,841 pupils in industrial and manual training, 12,123 males and 7,718 females. The amount of money paid to teachers in 48 of these schools was $288,890; the amount spent for materials by 41 of the schools was $43,889; the amount spent by 35 schools for new tools and repairs was $37,139; the amount for incidentals for 30 schools was $43,905, and the total expenditure reported by 54 of the 66 schools was $475,787. In the 24 Indian schools there were 286 teachers, 132 males and 154 females; 4,555 pupils, 2,645 males and 1,910 females. The amount paid to teachers was $101,465 for 18 of the schools, and the total expenditure for the same schools was $145,159. In the fourth column of the table the grade of literary instruction in each school is indicated. More than 30 of the 66 institutions are of high-school grade. The literary instruction in 9 of the Indian schools is also of secondary grade. Many of the 66 manual and industrial training schools in the first part of the table are also included in the lists of secondary schools given in Chapter XL. Table 2 gives for each school a statement in detail showing the number of pupils in each branch of manual or industrial training, the number of instructors in each branch, and the number of weeks devoted to each subject during the entire course. TABLE 1.-Statistics of manual and industrial training schools in the United States in 1896-97-Continued. 42 New York, N. Y 44 New York, N. Y |