Although the results of manual training are so remarkably good,
it is only quite recently that it has been utilised as a means of
education. The explanation perhaps is that manual work being all done
by slaves, serfs, body-servants, and wage-labourers, was despised
by the upper classes, and for this reason its great educational
value was so long overlooked. Ethical and educative influences are
so completely lacking to wage-labour, that the child should not be
occupied in wage-labour, but only in manual work of an educative
influence and tendency. Instruction in productive work, involving
an explanation of the fundamental methods of the production of
commodities and habituation to the use of the simpler tools must
form a part of education. The attempt to extend manual training
expresses the general tendency of evolution. The elementary schools
of most civilised countries show that manual training can be readily
introduced into the elementary school curriculum. Indeed, in the
public elementary schools of many countries, manual training is now
compulsory, especially as regards instruction in feminine manual
occupations. But manual training cannot be developed to the fullest
extent, nor can this method be expected to furnish the best possible
results, until capitalist production for profit has been replaced by
social production for use.
_Preparatory Schools._--What we said about crèches applies, though
with some differences, to preparatory schools. Children go to the
modern elementary school at a comparatively early age, and are
subjected to the discipline of school without any preparatory
initiation. Institutions whose aim it is to prepare children for
the life of the public elementary schools are known as preparatory
schools. The idea that before the age of school-attendance the
child should be methodically employed for some hours daily, that
the occupation should be physical, and that the work should be so
arranged as to appear to the child as a kind of play, is not a new
one. Alike on educational and on social grounds it is certainly
desirable that the period of public education should begin earlier
than the present age of compulsory school-attendance. Such is indeed
the tendency of evolution, and in Hungary we have already advanced
far in this direction.
_Supervised Playgrounds for Children (Kinderhorte)._--With the
growth of capitalism there have come into existence (though somewhat
later than the preparatory schools) supervised playgrounds for
children (_Kinderhorte_) to provide care and training out of school
hours for the school children whose parents work away from home.
These institutions may be associated with the schools, or may exist
independently; there may be separate playgrounds for boys and for
girls, or the two sexes may play together. In the United States of
America there exist “Children’s Clubs” for school-children, which
differ from preparatory schools, inasmuch as their main purpose is to
provide entertainment.
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