
It isn’t often that I talk about my history research here, but yesterday I read this piece and felt compelled to share it. This was written for the annual report of the United States Indian Inspector for the Indian Territory to the Secretary of the Interior. The annual report included accountings from a variety of industries and their leaders. If you are a student, teacher, or parent I think you will find it interesting and informative.
Written by John D. Benedict, Superintendent of Schools, Indian Territory, 1900
It is high time that those who are responsible for the education of any class of children should realize that their educational training should be such as will prepare the children for the fullest enjoyment of the kind of life which they, in all human probability, are likely to lead. The purpose of the Government in educating children is to prepare them to become good citizens. It is true that one who is able to support himself and his family and is orderly in the community and obedient to the laws is a good citizen; but one who can do these things and in addition thereto can help other people to live by giving them employment, or who can add to the wealth of the world, is a still better citizen. Paupers, criminals, idlers, the sick, and the helpless are not useful citizens; but only those who are fitted for self-support, who are able to take care of money, who are able to buy and pay for the products of others, who are prepared to do a part in this commercial, industrial, mechanical world as now organized, are good citizens. To make such citizens is the aim of our best modern schools.
An education which fits for teaching, preaching, medicine, law, or for clerking in a store is good for those who follow those vocations; but all cannot, follow them. None of these vocations are constructive. It is only by work that all these material things that make our civilization so superior to all others have come into being. The work of the world must be done or we shall at once fall below the plane of civilization on which we are now living. It, therefore, is the function of these schools to train its pupils to work—to be able to learn how to build houses, how to furnish them, how to care for house and furniture, how to cook food so it will be both palatable and healthful as well as economical—how to make garments and how to mend them, and how to make and manage the machinery which is now so large a part of all our home and business life.
There is no difficulty in teaching these things to children and young people. There is nothing else that is so interesting to them, nor anything else in which their advancement is more marked. These matters are easily put in such form that the child or young person readily learns them. The great success of the manual-training and domestic-science schools of all places where established fully proves that these arts can be as readily taught as any other branches of our educational curricula.
That German manufactures are found in every market at this dawn of the twentieth century is the result of establishing such schools in the Fatherland.
Nor need any one fear that pure education—mental discipline—will suffer by the founding of such schools. It has been proved beyond question that our men of large affairs are our men of greatest mental power; that business gives a mental training fully equal to that of the books; that the world around us and our minds are so interrelated that for most people there is no higher mental discipline possible than the discipline that comes in the lines of the preparation of the most useful and most helpful living.
It is a true saying, “As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.” It is also true that the bent given the child in his school days determines his inclination in after life. If his schooling is entirely in books, his inclination will be toward some bookish profession; and if we wish him to follow some more active vocation we must give him a more active training. If he is to be an agriculturist, he should be trained along the lines of farming and stock raising and the like. If he is to be a builder, he should be trained along the lines of mechanics and architecture. If he is to go to the head of some great business interest, he must be trained along the lines that pertain to that business. If he is to be a mechanic, it is better to give him a training of the hand that will fit him to do his work well and easily. Manual training is hand training and hand training is brain training, for the hand can only do the things which the brain has first thought out. To get the greatest brain training the hand also must be trained. The scientist has shown us that the brain tracts which control the nerves that extend to the hand are of very great area. There is no way to cultivate these brain tracts—to develop these brain cells—but by training the hand. Other things being equal, the man having the best hand training has the highest education. Those people which are foremost in the world’s affairs have the highest hand training. The preeminence of the Greeks in the highest culture of the world for the past two thousand years is due largely to their wonderful hand training as shown in their temples, their columns, and their statuary. It is only what the hand does that endures. The human voice may speak words that will move the hearers to deeds of marvelous heroism. The voice of the singer may melt to tears or raise to loftiest ecstasy, but when the orator is absent or dead, and when the singer is silent, their powers are gone forever.
But let the hand be trained so that the words of the orator may be written down, cut in marble, or printed in books, let the song of the singer be written in music, and the words of the orator may thrill thousands who live in distant lands and the notes of the singer may send their sweet echo round the world.
It is only by the hand that man can give birth to his fullest thoughts and make them immortal. Does he think a beautiful edifice? If his hand is trained he can draw it upon paper, and other men with trained hands can erect it. Does he think out a new machine? The thought is worthless unless with trained hand he can work it out in metal and in wood, as did Fulton and Watt. Do beautiful forms flit through his brain? No one else can be charmed by their beauty unless, like Michael Angelo, he can paint them on dome or canvas. “The artist sees in the wayside stone the angel form struggling to be free,” but the angel will never enjoy its freedom till some one whose hands are skilled with mallet and chisel releases it from its bondage.
When it is realized how much of our health and wealth and life and happiness depend upon the skillful hands of some one, or rather of many, can any one doubt that there is need of hand training in the schools? Nor can this training wisely be delayed till later life. Unless those brain cells that connect with the delicate nerves of the hands and the fingers are used in youth they will not grow, and very early in the life of the youth it becomes impossible for them to be used. So the modern school gives the boy as well as the girl the needle and the knife to use, and later other delicate instruments that these nerve tracts may come into use, and may grow as the child grows. Boys need this training quite as much as girls. That the fingers of the average man are very much more awkward than those of the average woman is because in youth he did not receive the delicate training that she received. A baby boy’s fingers are no more clumsy than a baby girl’s, and if he is to be as deft as she he must have the same youthful training. Since steam and electricity have been harnessed to do the work of man, he needs a great dexterity of hand rather than great physical power.
Regarding domestic science—household arts—all that needs be said is: All the world eats and nearly all the world lives in houses. Probably 90 per cent of “all the ills that human flesh is heir to” have their origin in our food or in our unsanitary homes. Very many families fail to accumulate property—are kept always in poverty—because of wastefulness in cooking and in the other household matters, or because of sickness produced by faulty cooking and unwise eating or unhealthy home surroundings. . There is enough of wisdom in the world to save people from this poverty and this sickness. And this wisdom can easily be put in a teachable form, and can be presented to girls so that they take great pleasure in learning it; nor is it more expensive than any other kind of schooling. It only needs that these schools be established and then all is so simple, so easy, and of such high value that everybody will wonder why these things were not always taught.
The teaching of these industrial arts does not in any way lessen the amount of scholarship acquired along the usual scholastic lines, but on the contrary is an aid to them. The rule is that those pupils who are most proficient in their literature, languages, mathematics, and sciences are also the ablest in their industrial arts and studies.
The work of the world must be done. It were better done by skilled than by unskilled hands. The vast majority of these children must do some kind of work or business. The school should train them for their life work. As these schools have heretofore been conducted their tendency has been to train away from work rather than toward work. The result is that work and business are distasteful to our Indian pupils. It is believed that an industrial schooling will change this matter greatly, and that the lives of many can be made pleasant where otherwise they would be irksome.
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