SCHOOL SHOPS.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 73, 28 August 1878, Page 3

SCHOOL SHOPS.

(From the ‘ Scientific American.’)

Not merely shops of the nature of the kinder garten for older children, or of affording the rudiments of a knowledge of the trades as now practised in America, but shops affording a knowledge of the many practical industries not now established in America. Little shops which teach other uses of raw material than those now known, and incite to the establishment of workshops which shall grow to great industries. One crying defect of the eager superficial system of most American teaching, either in books or schools, is that there are no handbooks of practical information from which a knowledge of the production of a great number of articles may be obtained. Since the labor societies and the compulsory school laws keep boys still more from apprenticeships, there should be a series of cheap practical handbooks within the reach of every boy, and, at the same time, so practical that a knowledge of the pursuit may be easily worked out. Practical common sense shops, where a boy may earn his expenses and learn a trade, or, by paying for his night attendance, may learn the rudiments oi any pursuit to such an extent as to he able to put his knowledge to practice. How few people in America know the nature and uses of clay, or know what clay is ! Plaster of Paris, or how obtained, to say nothing of working it. Probably not one persbn in a thousand, in the United States, knows that placing a piece ot limestone, so common all over the country, for an hour upon a coal fire, converts it into lime. This is not an isolated instance, but the rule is that the first rudiments of practical knowledge are not provided by books or schools, and until they arc children will read trash and be ignorant of the means by which they may be useful citizens.