Dr. Hall sees in industrial training a motor education of more psychic
impulsion and generic ground than pure manual training artificially
designed. Adolescence is the golden period for it. “Industry has
determined the nature and trend of muscular development and youth who
have pets, till the soil, build, manufacture, use tools, and master
elementary processes and skills, are most truly repeating the history
of the race. This, too, lays the best foundation for intellectual
careers. The study of pure science as well as a higher technology
follows rather than precedes this” (1: vol. i, p. 174). The danger here
that should be guarded against is its tendency to narrow exclusiveness
and too early specialization. Health and free development of body as
well as of mind are apt to be sacrificed. However, utility is naturally
its essential aim, and maximal efficiency of productive power is the
standard of success; it ought to fit the pupil for the struggle of
life. Such “struggle-for-lifeurs,” sturdy in arms and spirit, not
“flabby, undeveloped, anæmic, easy-living city youth,” is the demand of
modern America. Real industrial training is a man-making education.
Thus, according to Dr. Hall, character is to be built not upon
Herbart’s coherent and compact system of ideas, but upon vigorous,
well-developed, and perfectly coördinated muscles. However, this is
not, of course, the whole of moral training. Will is to be made moral,
not only to be strong and healthy. This moralization of will is the
task of discipline.
Not unlike Dr. Harris, but more in the spirit of the father of English
pedagogy, he posits that about the only duty of small children is
habitual and prompt obedience. Nothing like the reasoning ground of
conduct, or the free self-determination of will, for them; the extent
of authority felt, revered, and depended upon is the measure of
success. He thinks that “if our love is deep, obedience is an instinct
if not a religion” for the child: “as the plant grows toward light, so
they unfold in the direction of our wishes, felt as by divination” (2:
p. 332).
Dr. Hall sees in the present trend of education more danger of becoming
oversentimental than of falling into brutality; so he recommends
“drastic reconstructions” of will, when habituation does not, as should
be expected, run smoothly. He likens the corporal punishment to a sword
in its scabbard: “it may be reserved, but should not get so rusted
that it cannot be drawn on occasion”; and believes that “will culture
for boys is rarely as thorough as it should be without more or less
flogging” (2: pp. 338-339).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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