I have confined myself till now to speaking of the importance of manual
training in its influence on the character of delinquent children. I
wish to add a few words touching the influence of manual training on
character in general, and its importance for children of all classes of
society. I need not here speak of the value of manual training to the
artisan class. That has been amply demonstrated of late by the many
technical and art schools which the leading manufacturing nations of
Europe have established and are establishing. I need not speak of the
value of manual training to the future surgeon, dentist, scientist, and
to all those who require deftness of hand in the pursuit of their
vocations. But I do wish to speak of the value of manual training to the
future lawyer and clergyman, and to all those who will perhaps never be
called upon to labor with their hands. Precisely because they will not
labor with their hands is manual training so important for them--in the
interest of an all-round culture--in order that they may not be entirely
crippled on one side of their nature. The Greek legend says that the
giant Antaeus was invincible so long as his feet were planted on the
solid earth. We need to have a care that our civilization shall remain
planted on the solid earth. There is danger lest it may be developed too
much into the air--that we may become too much separated from those
primal sources of strength from which mankind has always drawn its
vitality. The English nobility have deliberately adopted hunting as
their favorite pastime. They follow as a matter of physical exercise, in
order to keep up their physical strength, a pursuit which the savage man
followed from necessity. The introduction of athletics in colleges is a
move in the same direction. But it is not sufficient to maintain our
physical strength, our brute strength, the strength of limb and muscle.
We must also preserve that spiritualized strength which we call
skill--the tool-using faculty, the power of impressing on matter the
stamp of mind. And the more machinery takes the place of human labor,
the more necessary will it be to resort to manual training as a means of
keeping up skill, precisely as we have resorted to athletics as a means
of keeping up strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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