_Manual Training._--Loud complaints are heard to the effect that the elementary school fails to secure a general and harmonious development of the bodily and mental capacities of the child--that it merely crams the child with certain information, without endeavouring to secure that it shall acquire knowledge by its own experience. It is recognised that that knowledge only is permanent and possesses serious moral influence which constitutes an indispensable constituent of general culture; and it is understood that the recognised defects of our school children cannot be avoided unless we include as a part of the school curriculum a sufficiency of manual training. At first sight it may seem quite impossible for the educationalist, by training the child to perform certain suitable bodily movements, constituting the elements of some particular handicraft, to influence that child’s mental or moral development; it seems impossible, that is to say, that to teach the child a handicraft can subserve a profoundly important educational end. The impulse to physical activity is deep-seated in human nature, and is irresistible. It is present in every healthy child. It is an aim of education to cultivate the proper manifestations of this impulse; otherwise it is very apt to take the form of some bad habit, of passionate outbursts, or of destructiveness. In earliest childhood the impulse to activity finds complete satisfaction in the games of which young children are so fond. The irregular and mutable activity of games must gradually, and without obvious compulsion, be transformed into a regular and orderly activity. (Many physicians insist that children should not begin to learn to read and write until they are nine or ten years old, and that below this age their only instruction should be manual. The reason they give for this demand is that it is during the first seven years of life that the human brain grows most rapidly, that this organ should receive very gentle treatment during this period of life, and that all risk of its overstrain by one-sided stimulation of the intelligence must be carefully avoided.)