MANUAL EDUCATION AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1916, Page 8

MANUAL EDUCATION AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

THEIR SIMILARITIES AND DIP■FERENCES. At the annual meeting of the Taranaki School Committees' Association on Thursday, llr. A. Cray (Director of Technical Education in Taranaki) gave an address on the subject of manual and technical education. Mr. Gray said, inter alia: — In the first place, I have to make two statements, apparently paradoxical, but botli absolutely true. They are: (1) The aims of manual education are entirely different from those of technical work; (2) manual and technical education are inseparably bound up together. Referring to the Greek and Roman systems. Mr. Gray claimed that the Greek standard of judgment was that of rhythm, harmony or proportion, while the Romans valued a thing from the point of view of useful or effectiveness. He then traced the various phases of education down to the time of Froebel, to whom he claimed that we owed the beginning of what is now known as manual education in our schools. Frocbel, he said, realised what we have not yet attached sufficient importance to, viz., that the sense of touch can -be used as effectively as the senses of sight and hearing. Developing along these, he insisted that the natural activities of the child must be encouraged and directed, not suppressed. He saw that mental development could he materially assisted by physical keenness, and in his schools the younger children were taught largely by means of systematise ed games, with various e-bjects as playthings. Continuing, Mr. Gray said:—Modsm manual education is a development of Froebel's ideas. The manual training which your children obtain at school is not given them in the first place to produce manual dexterity, hut as a mental exercise controlled by sensations reaching the brain through the sense of touch. AH the paper-folding, stick-and-brick laying, and woodwork which are taught to-day form exercises in a carefully-thought-out scheme' which has for its object the fullest mental development on natural lines, together with the closer association of "touch" and brain, and "touch," and "sight." One of the natural results is the absolute and decorate obedience of a hand and eye-to the brain. When a boy is taught woodwork, he is not so taught with the object of making him a carpenter or a joiner, or even of making him a handy man about the house. He learns certain "principles" which help his mental development in a given direction, and from an educational standard. It is just as important that the future lawyer or doctor should develop on these lines, as it is that the future carpenter or cabinet-maker should do so. To illustrate what I mean I take two uni-versally-accepted general educational subjects, grammar and arithmetic. I wish to make clear that manual training develops a-4>oy in certain directions which are as essential as the development received from grammar and arithmetic.

■Manual work forms part of a genoral education and is not designed to fit a hoy for any special work. Technical work on the other hand is intensely specialistie. The work is arranged so as to train the boy. in the underlying principles of some "specific""trade Or profession. This work is easy or difficult in the same proportion as his primary education has been complete or imperfect. Having attempted to show that technical and manual work have different aims, I want to try to prove to you that the training in the latter has a very distinct bearing on the former, and I want to use again as illustration tlie two subjects, grammar and arithmetic. Aithough the study of gntmmar forms a part of the general education of the carpenter and the teacher alike, yet it is obvious tbat it is of far greater importance to the teacher than to the woodworker. A knowledge of grammar forms an absolutely necessary part of the stock-in-trade of the teacher; but although a carpenter would undoubtedly benefit from a study of the subject, yet he could be a very good "carpenter," as far as that goes, without it. Again, since it forms the ba-sis of his work the study of arithmetic lias a far greater bearing on the work of an accountant than it lias on the work of a clergyman or of a journalist. In the same way a manual subject such xs woodwork is of more importance to a future carpenter than to a saddler or to a bootmaker, notwithstanding the fact that both have benefited generally from the training received. For instance, two boys of equal ability begin work as a carpenter's apprentices; one has received a training in woodwork and the other has not. It would surely he foolish to argue that all the handling of tools, the making of joints, the working from simple plans, are 'to count for nothing. Tlie boy with the manual •training must have an immense advantage . over his less fortunate comrade, and the extent of this advantage. denotes the degree of interdependence of technical and manual work.