Industrial and High Art Education in the United States

Abstract

CHANGES required in school training, in the substance as well as in the method of it, are now felt to be a vital question to the political economist and the lawmaker, as well as to the moralist. While the old apprenticeship system was in its vigour, the youth was taught at school the three R's and whatever other branches of a liberal education his parents could afford, and for seven years after that technical instruction was given to him in all the branches of the trade he had chosen by his master, the best teacher that could be found in those days. But under the influence of machinery that system has completely collapsed, and the feeling is rising everywhere that something must be done at school to replace instruction given of old by the master. Theorists insist that nothing short of a technical school, where each trade is taught from beginning to end, will sufficiently replace the care and the interest of the latter, and they hold up the Russian Strogonoff school as an example of their being taught in this complete way and triumphantly compare its work with that of the best manufacturing countries. They urge that in a system of public education like that of the United States it is a serious fault that, while a classical or professional education is provided free for the youth who desires it, technical instruction is denied to a far larger body of mechanics who have as perfect a claim to the education they require. In Stockholm the experiment of every elementary school having a carpenter's and joiner's shop attached is being tried, but the impracticability of carrying on in every town schools where instruction in each art can be efficiently given to the labouring classes has left the teaching of theorists little else but theory, and a technical school giving instruction in the one or two principal trades of a district is all that can be looked for.

Industrial and High Art Education in the United States.

Part I. “Drawing in Public Schools.” By J. Edwards Clarke (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1885.)