WORK FOR THE HANDS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 175, 20 April 1929, Page 21

WORK FOR THE HANDS

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN THE SCHOOLS ARE BRAINS NEEDED IN THE WORKSHOP? An interesting discussion as to whether a greater development of craftsmanship . should be introduced into modern education in order to meet the practical needs of the community took place recently at the Manchester Athenaeum. • The debate was opened by Mr. Douglas Miller, M.A., High Master of the Manchester Grammar School. He said that at the present time the most vital suggestion that had been made in education was to extend the school age to fifteen or sixteen. It was vital not only because it put a year or more on to school life and affected a vast number of children, but because it involved, the possibility of making available for every child in the country a distinct type of education which had been the perquisite of a comparatively few. He thought the great majority of people would vote to-day for the extension of education for all children to. the age of fifteen, but the thing which made educationists pause before voting for it was the question of 1 what was going to be given to the children if they remained until they were fifteen. Unfortunately there was a tendency among teachers t 6 look upon education in craftsmanship as something on a lower level than “applied” and book learning. “At .present there is a struggle going on as to whether we in the secondary schools shall admit learning through the hand, through craft work, to an equal degree with learning, through the book,” he said. The ■ majority of schoolmasters were prejudiced against it. They were willing, as it were, to make concessions as a sort of sop to the poor boy who could not do the work of the book, but they were still emphatic that it was not really the same thing as the education a boy received through the book. The education in craft, however, was the type he was most keen on seeing extended in the secondary schools. He wanted to give it an equal dignity with the work of books. The main thing in education was to get the boy interested in his work, to put his heart in it and not regard it merely as a task but as something of which he sees the purpose. ' Mr. Miller concluded by a reference to the great store set by business men on the matriculation certificate. He said that for practical business life the subjects taken under the school certificate were of much more value, yet so strong was the university influence that on the whole business men still looked for matriculation as the only certificate awarded for a satisfactory standard of education. In the discussion Mr. Gibson said he did not think there would be any advantage in teaching crafts in schools. Machinery had now been brought to such a high state of precision that the old need of craftsmanship in the workshops had been eliminated. Probably the best knowledge that a boy could have to fit him for the engineering and carpentering shops was a knowledge of geometry and a slight knowledge of mathematics, but this could be obtained better in the works than in the school. Mr. Scholefield said that while he was wholly in favour of raising the school age he was not in favour of introducing craftsmanship into the schools. “In the large workshops to-day there is not the. need for brains that some people make out,” he said, “and it is nd good teaching them skill in a certain direction if they are going to be kept,at drudgery and fret because they cannot put their skill into operation.” No matter what the capabilities of a pupil might be, he said, a certain standard should be set up and every .child given the advantage of takffig it whether he had ability or not. Mr. Coogan, who was at one time director of studies at Smart’s College, Manchester, said he was entirely opposed to Mr. Miller’s views. His experience had taught him that boys needed a better grounding in simple arithmetic and English rather than learning to make a cup or the spoke of a wheej. Other members spoke in support of Mr. Miller. Industry, said one, was at a low ebb, and needed such men put into it as would raise it to a standard of efficiency that "would enable us to compete with European countries.