Vaughn and Mays
state:
Changes in terminology have not always,
by any means, indicated changes in the content or
character of the work which the terms were supposed to
designate. In some cases, new terms have simply been
attempts to improve upon the preceding ones in
describing a little more accurately the work under
consideration. [33 : 56]
Although new terms
have been coined, some of the older terms have endured
after their period of apparent usefulness has ended. No
doubt some terms have existed in certain localities
because it would require a legislative act to effect
change, while in other localities, the weight of
tradition has resisted change.
Chicago and
St. Louis use the term "manual
training."
Philadelphia
makes use of the term "mechanic arts" to designate the
school shop activity work. "Manual education" is a term
used extensively in California;
while in Nova
Scotia
"industrial science" is the term commonly used. Many
cities designate such school work as "manual arts" or
"industrial arts." Among the organizations representing
the work, the American Vocational Education Association
and the Eastern Arts Association use the term
"industrial arts." The West-ern Arts Association used
the term "manual training," until the recent
terminological study [192] effected a change to the term
"industrial arts."
The same confusion
is to be found in the educational publications of the
field. There is an Industrial Education Magazine
published by the "Manual Arts Press." Another magazine
is called Industrial Arts and Vocational Education.
There is a company called "The Practical Arts Publishing
Company." [192 : 112] Articles on school shopwork are
listed in the Readers' Guide under the heading "manual
training." In the Education Index the same titles are
found under "industrial arts."
A study by Warner
[40 : 5] also shows the extent of this con-fusion. He
lists twenty-eight terms used by shop and drawing
teachers of
Ohio
in designating the kind of work they were teaching. Of
these 358 teachers, 113 used the term "manual arts," 110
used "manual training," 74 used "industrial arts," and
45 used the term "vocational teaching." It is safe to
assume that all these persons were referring to the same
or a very similar kind of school activity work.
Industrial
Education
In the earlier
periods of the movement many writers use the term
"industrial education" under conditions that indicate
they were thinking of an industrial activity work
similar to present-day industrial arts. The United
States Bureau of Education make the statement that the
term "industrial education" is frequently applied to a
variety of forms of practical training.
Among the forms of
so-called practical training to which the term
"Industrial Education" is sometimes applied are manual
training, sloyd, mechanical drawing, mechanic arts
training, printing, book binding, metal work, etc. [212
: 36]
The concept of
industrial education today is largely that of training
a person for some specific occupation so that he may
take his place in industry. A bulletin of the Bureau of
Education uses the following definition:
Vocational industrial education includes
those forms of vocational education the direct purpose
of each of which is to fit the individual for some
pursuit or trade. [212 : 45]
Such a definition of
the term "industrial education" was current in the early
eighties. Many who were advocating industrial activity
work in the schools were thinking of it in this sense.
There was another
group, however, who were attaching another meaning to
the term, a group who were thinking of the general
educational values of this type of work for the pupil.
Felix Adler (1883), writing about the two "distinct
meanings" of the term "industrial education" and of the
latter interpretation, says,
There is a totally different sense in
which the phrase "Industrial Education" may be
understood; not that education shall be made subservient
to industrial success, but that the acquisition of
industrial skill shall be the means for promoting the
general education of the pupil; that the education of
the hand shall be more completely and more efficaciously
educating the brain. It is in the latter sense, in which
labor is regarded as a means of mental development, that
industrial education is understood by the most
enlightened of its advocates. [41 : 145]
In an address given
in 1888, Nicholas Murray Butler was thinking of
industrial education in terms of general education and
not in terms of specific trade training when he said,
Industrial education is an education in
which the training of the pupils' powers of expression
goes on side by side with the training of his receptive
faculties, and in which the training of both is based on
knowledge of things and not words merely. [144 : 217]
In differentiating
between technical education and industrial education,
Dr. Butler continues:
Industrial education . . . is the
foundation itself. It is the general and common training
which underlies all instruction in particular
techniques. [144 : 217]
It is this general
educational meaning that the writer has in mind when he
makes reference to industrial education in the early
development of industrial work in the public schools.
Manual Training
Manual training was
the original term under which the industrial activity
work was introduced into this country following the
Centennial Exposition at
Philadelphia
in 1876. It was an all-inclusive term, descriptive of
the formal hand training of the period which was based
on fundamental industrial processes characteristic of
the school work for many years after the opening of the
first manual training schools.
That manual training
held much in common with industrial arts is shown by the
following definitions and statements. In 1888 the New
Jersey Council of Education reported that
Whereas there are several and conflicting
uses of the term manual training be it hereby Resolved,
that the New Jersey Council of Education defines manual
training as training in thought expression by other
means than gesture and verbal language, in such a
carefully graded course of study as shall also provide
adequate training for the judgment and the executive
faculty. This training will necessarily include drawing
and constructive work, but experience alone can
determine by what special means this instruction can
best be given. [233 : 5]
Further along in the
report, the following comment is found:
I believe that the term "Manual Training"
might be rightly applied to any exercise in which
thought is expressed by means of the hand. [233 : 5]
Woodward, in
referring to the term "manual training," wrote as
follows:
This term, according to the best usage,
signifies the systematic study of the theory and use of
common tools, and the nature of common materials,
elementary and typical processes of construction, and
the execution and reading of working drawings. [214 :
1019]
Manual Arts
Bennett, in an
editorial in the Manual Training Magazine for April
1904, states his belief that manual training, manual
arts, and industrial arts are almost identical. On this
point he says,
Our observation indicates that
representative work being done today under the name
"Industrial Arts," or "Practical Arts," is almost
identical in content and method with equally
representative work under the name of manual training,
and likewise with work done in other places under the
name "Manual Arts." Any differences are chiefly in the
minds of the promoters of the work, not in the work
itself. [48 : 307—308]
Manual arts as a
term came into use with the change from the emphasis
upon the formal hand-skill-producing exercises to an
emphasis upon the construction of articles of
utilitarian value which involved the use of skill with
tools together with some freedom in design. Vaughn and
Mays comment as follows:
The term manual arts is an attempt to fit
the name to the content rather than to the form of the
work. It indicates that those who brought it forward
were thinking in terms of the ideas, materials, and
practices of at least some of those trades, vocations,
or "arts" in which people use the skill of their hands
to do the work of the world. [33 : 58]
Bollinger's
terminological study analyzed the concepts involved in a
number of definitions and as a result he defined "manual
arts" as
A term used to describe such objects as
woodworking, mechanical drawing, metal work, printing,
leather work, jewelry making, clay work, book-binding,
etc., when taught as a form of general education having
for its chief purpose that of developing within the
pupil, manual skill and an appreciation of good design
and construction by practice in a variety of exercises
and projects of personal value. [192 : 125]
Industrial Arts
Richards expresses
the belief that a large part of the confusion in the
field has been due to the fact that the first name given
to the industrial activity work was not adequate to
express its real purpose and content. He has the
feeling that in using the term "manual training" too
much emphasis has been placed upon the manipulative
phase of the work rather than the content back of the
manipulative activity. He writes:
If in lieu of such a phrase as manual
training, the term industrial art, for instance, had
been used, much of the above confusion and
misconception would have been entirely avoided. Such a
term clearly indicates a specific body of knowledge as
the subject-matter of instruction and at once
establishes criteria as to the selection and
organization of material and, to a certain extent,
definite standards of performance. [ion : 373]
Professor Bonser has
contributed extensively to the use and development of
the term "industrial arts." In his article,
"Fundamental Values in Industrial Arts," he presented a
new point of view which has exerted a great influence in
bringing about a change from the emphasis on
manipulative processes and tool sequences to an emphasis
upon valid educational content. [127 : 4–20] In the
article referred to above, Professor Bonser gives the
following definition:
Industrial Arts, as a school subject, is
the distilled experience of man in his resolution of
natural materials to his needs, for creature comfort, to
the end that he may more richly live his spiritual life.
[1'27 : 20]
The common
conception of the meaning of the term industrial arts is
derived, to a large extent, from Bonser and Mossman:
The industrial arts are those occupations
by which changes are made in the form of materials to
increase their values for human usage. As a subject for
educative purposes, industrial arts is a study of the
changes made by man in the forms of materials to
increase their values, and of the problems of life
related to these changes. [5 : 5]
Professor Bonser expanded the meaning of
industrial arts further in an address given before the
industrial arts section of the Central Ohio Teachers
Association in November 1928. [4 : 95—96]
The committee of the
Western Arts Association for "The Terminological
Investigation" of which Dr. Warner, of the Ohio State
University was chairman, presented the following
definition, Industrial Arts is one of the Practical
Arts, a form of general or non-vocational education,
which provides learners with experiences,
under-standings, and appreciations of materials, tools,
processes, products and of the vocational conditions and
requirements incident generally to the manufacturing and
mechanical industries. [192 : 122]
Vaughn and Mays
imply that the term "industrial arts" is another attempt
to give an appropriate name, as a means of promoting a
better conception of the content of the industrial
activity work which has evolved in the
United States
"under the old names of manual training and manual
arts." [33 : 58—59]
SUMMARY
It would seem that
regardless of the term used to identify the work, the
central concept has been the study of industries for
purposes of general educational values, values that
apply in varying degrees for all pupils regardless of
what their future occupation may be. There is a growing
conviction that industrial insights, appreciations, and
experiences may be obtained through school activities
of an investigative nature in which hand work is an
important and necessary element.
Sources:
