Educate The Hands

The questiou of estabhshing a manual training school in Detroit is being agituteil, and a munber of prominent citizens have orguuized to push the matter. At a nieoting held recently to discuss the questiou,' Rev. C. R. Hendereon of the Woodward avenue Baptist churih, who has made quite a study oí the subject, said: "Experience demonstratt'S that a. manual train ing school is not more exhausting than the course in preparation for college; that the exercise in the shoi is real recreation, and that if shop work is oflered to boys the benehes will bö iilled with volunteers. Manual training is a branch of liberal culture and should be placed on a level of honor and dignity equal to the Greek and Lat in course, tt creates powers ordinally rejected, and makes the body inore complutely the servant of the soul. Therefore the manual training school is reararded by its advocates as the most efficiënt adjunct of moral discipline. It gives rat onal employment to ïdle hands, and turns the n frora mischief to the creation of useful and beautiful objects. In England the manual training s.chool with its logical outgrowths is advocated by a great number of men of science, education, arts and manufactures as a more efficiënt means of meeting competition in trade. The manual training school is advocated as a most potent preventivo of costly crime and pauperism. Giving millions in alms to a population of unskilled laborera, is liko pouring water into a bottomless abyss or like irrigating a rook, If weadd immorality to the ubsen e of skill in industry, giving an alms would be like irrigating Canada thistles or other noxlous weeds. The manual training school enlarges the usefulness of the high school by extending the average time of attendance of children of the poor. In the present arrangement educ ation almost always ceases ab ut the 15th year, just when the iniml is most capable of receiving the direct preparation for social studies of h'storv and economy. If a shop is opened'it will De part of the preparation for actual bread winning, and that without loss of time in literary brrnches. Manual training is already introduoed into the state public school at Coldwater and in the reform schools at Lansin and Adrián. It will be a pity if we fail to see that as a preventivo of crime it is far more efticaciom than the remedies for an evil force already in full current. The sub;ect is at this hour beforo a committee of the Board of Education and will bu decided soon. Thero is some reason to believo that if the expense of the experimental stage was borne bv private ente prise, the board would Teel justified in lurnishing the room for the shop and such other help as could be given by the present force of teachers without extra oxpense. The expen e of starting the shop (according to iigures furni.hed by President Smart and Prof. oss. of Purdue University) would bo for shop about $2 00, and for a special teacher one year. f1,000 - $8,60 '. i he Hig'ii School would be the best place for a trial, bocause there are the bright and proraising lads who could most ly sce the advantage of such methods. "In St. Louis and Ch:eago separate schools have been founded by the men of wealth his is far more costly and not so good as a connection with the public school system, since it reaches fewer persons. "If business men would petitiou the Board of Educdiion at this time thu action would have much weight. Jf such a petiti n wns aceompanied by an offer of sustaining the movement through its ex,erimental stages wilh a subscri tiou based on their acceptance of the Ierras it would have much more weight.' It is natural that a Kky torrlar should bark at tbe moon. A man 's temper is one of the thlngi that improve by (JisuB. pTwo beads ore better than one, esyecittlly in a dium or a c-nüutioual uow panier axticJe.