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APPENDIXES.

A.

THE MANUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION.

17

BY

JOHN D. RUNKLE, LL.D.

THE MANUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION.

THE Forty-first Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1876-77) contains a paper with the above title; and I gladly comply with the wish of the honorable Board that I should prepare a second paper upon the same subject, embodying such additional experience as may have been gained in our School of Mechanic Arts and other similar schools, together with any information I may have been able to gather since the date of the first paper. My chief aim in this paper will be to furnish such details as may be of service to corporations or individuals, as hints or aids in the establishment of this kind of education.

It is hardly worth while in this connection to consider the way that this element is to find its place in our educational system. Individual opinion may for a time have some influence in directing the current of thought upon this subject; but in the end the needs of the public will control. There is already a wide-felt impression, if not conviction, that something of the kind is necessary; and this conviction is most likely to find expression at first in special mechanic art schools, in centres where the need is most felt. If these schools shall demonstrate their value, not only as training schools for fitting students to enter upon certain lines of industrial activity, but also as schools for furnishing the needed mental discipline, then it seems reasonable to suppose that this element will become more general, and just in proportion to the value in which it is held by the educated and thinking public. The methods of teaching the manual element will become better settled through a larger experience; and there will not be the present lack of teachers properly trained for this kind of education.

The revolution in the method of teaching the physical and

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