building and furnishing, housekeeping, hammock and basket making, poultry raising and cranberry growing to vivify all the school activities. At North Adams the students have been taught cooking and sewing. Nearly all the schools have added school gardening to their work, and at Lowell, where the graduates will mostly teach in cities, home and window gardening has been given prom inence. In addition to this general work, special provision is now made for three kinds of industrial work in these schools. Household arts and economics are cared for at Framingham in a special department; a department for training teachers of commercial branches has been opened this year at Salem; and, by arrangement with the Massachusetts Agricultural College, work in agriculture is to be done at North Adams. It is most significant that in each of these cases the opening of the courses has shown an unexpected demand. The household arts department at Framingham has grown more rapidly than the other departments. It was supposed that 25 was an outside limit for the number of students likely to undertake the new work at Salem, and provision was made for only that number. The class at opening in September of this year numbered 65. At North Adams with the starting of the new work this year the entering class has doubled. THE NORMAL ART SCHOOL. If the Normal Art School is to maintain its position and meet the needs of the times, it must have enlarged facilities for doing its work. It should be remembered that when the State, in response to public demand, undertook to lay a new foundation for its various industrial interests by the introduction of drawing into all the public schools and by opening evening classes in drawing for workmen in all the industrial centers, it estab lished the Normal Art School, the first and still the only State school of the kind, to prepare teachers and directors for all these schools. It was intended to be a center of influence to reach all the manufacturing industries of the State. It was to hold a place in Massachusetts similar to that held by the South Kensington Art School in England, and for that reason Mr. Walter Smith, a graduate of that school, was made its first principal. Because of the broad foundation on which it. was built, it has been able to secure the services as instructors of able and distinguished men: its present accomplished and versatile principal, Mr. Bartlett, teacher, artist and craftsman; Cyrus E. Dallin, Joseph R. De Camp and other noted teachers and artists. The graduates of the school have gone widely as instructors into public and private schools and directly as designers into the industries. Had there been maintained in connection with the school, as at South Kensington, a museum of industrial art, there is no doubt that the influence of the school as an industrial art center would have been greatly increased. Now the school is cramped in its quarters, and is obliged to turn away large numbers of would-be students. It is impossible to meet in any adequate way the demand arising from the revival of interest in industrial education in this State. As a school of industrial design, it needs rooms in which to illustrate the constructive side of the practical arts. The present building is used to its utmost limit, probably beyond the limit of health and safety. Two years ago the Board presented to the Legislature a plan for enlargement of the plant and a request for an appropriation. This was not granted, and the intervening years have made the case still more urgent. The Board will this year renew its application for relief. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. In any movement for the enlargement of educational activities it is sound public policy to utilize existing agencies to the fullest extent possible. The State is now face to face with this problem in connection with industrial education, and will probably have to face it in the near future in connection with higher technical and general education. The time has come to consider whether the public high school system, which is now more complete than in any other State, should not be utilized so far as practicable, and without weak ening its influence for general education for the new forms of education in which the people are becoming interested. If it is desirable to acquaint the young men and women of the State with those industrial processes upon which the life of the State depends; if it is desirable to imbue them with the spirit of productive industry, and lead them to respect and honor the life of the home, the shop and the farm; if it is desirable to fit for earlier usefulness the largest number possible of these young people, then it would seem beyond doubt or cavil that the place to do this work most economically is where the youth now are,-50,000 of them in the high schools. To duplicate existing buildings and laboratories and faculties would only add to the expense with no gain to education. By suitable additions and modifications, much of the new work could be done. In many of the larger schools this could be done with little additional expense. The smaller schools would need some State aid, but not much, and for this legislation may be necessary. The practical question now is, Will the State encourage and assist these schools to undertake this enlargement of their usefulness? When the high schools have done all they can, there will still remain field enough for independent effort, and the high school work will be found to have prepared the way and created demand for such effort. Every school in which this work is undertaken and carried to a successful issue would become a center of influence, and help to build up a public sentiment in favor of the new education. Without turning the elementary schools into shops, modifications of their work are possible which would make them more valuable in preparation both for higher schools and for wageearning pursuits. Were manual training of a practical sort provided for all the grades, and were the arithmetic, the language and the drawing brought into closer relations to it; were nature study and. school and home garden work made more general, the passage from the grammar school to the high school would not be less easy, but the passage from the school to the shop and the farm would be easier. There is nothing revolutionary in this. It would only be carrying out the historic policy of the State to fit the schools of each new generation for the needs of the times. THOMAS B. FITZPATRICK. KATE GANNETT WELLS. ALBERT E. WINSHIP. |