The
ALASKA SOURDOUGH
Published for the Sourdough and
the Chechako as well, by A. B. Calla
3iam.
Subscription price, $3.00 a year;
Six Months, $1.60; Three Months, $1.00.
Single Copies Ten Cents.
Issued Every Tuesday
Application made for admission to
the Mail as Second Class Mail Matter,
and Conditional Permit Issued.
Home Office, Old Methodist Church
Building, Douglas, Alaska. Tel. 36.
WHY MANUAL TRAINING?
Douglas is a thousand miles from
the educational centers and it should
occasion no surprise if they fail to
keep abreast of , the improvements in
the modern system of education. The
wonder is that so many people do ap
preciate the efforts that the Douglas
school board and the Douglas teachers
are making to give the Douglas child
the very best which modern education
affords.
Methods of education, like methods
of agriculture, like methods of every
industry, are constantly improving.
Public education has come to mean
something more than the three r’s. The
methods of education today are as
much better than the educational me
thods of yesterday, as the electric light
■of today is better than the rush light
of a hundred years ago.
None of the inovations which have
taken place in the schools in the last
quarter of a century, are so popular
where they are understood, as the man
ual training. And there is of course,
a reason for it.
It is not often that we stop to real
ize the tremendous change in human
life, and therefore the tremendous
change that has been wrought in the
human animal by the introduction of
the machine. To our grandsires, the
human hand was a thousand times
more important in the life of the in
dividual than it is today. In the old
-lavs the average American “cut wood,
made rails and posts, built stone walls,
Turniture and farm utensils, involving
carpentery, blacksmithing and paint
ing, cared for bees, poultry, sheep,
cattle and horses, could break colts and
steers, milk, shear sheep and butcher,
could plow, plant, cultivate and har
vest vegetables; sow, mow, reap, thresh
and winnow grain; could read the sky,
tell birds, wild animals, insects and
common plants at sight; could plant,
prime and graft trees; make maple
syrup; make vinegar, cure hams and
bacon; fish , trap and hunt successful
ly; make shoes, harness and simple
tools, repair anything, and make a tell
ing speech at the town meetings.
The individual man was far more in
teresting then than he is now. Because
he needed them, every faculty was in
creased to the utmost, now, though dis
use, the individual is losing more and
more bf his efficiency.
The modern man, as Henderson says,
"has a voice which is a bit of squeeqy
and harsh, and boasts no great carry
ing power, but then he has the long
distance telephone, and can call prices
from New York to Chicago. The mod
ern man is rather near sighted and as
' tigmatic, and may fail to recognize
hts best friend across the street, but
then he can look at the moon through
his great telescope, and can see things
that Ptolemy—great astronomer in his
day—never thought of. Our modern
man may be a little dull of hearing
and rather hard to talk to, but with a
microphone he can hoar a fly walk. He
is a trifle sho,rt winded and finds run
ning fatal, but the elevated shoots him
over the city and the limited over the
country. All along the line of human
drift we find substitution of some me7
chanical exellenee. He has lost his
wholesome appetite, but gained a
French cook. He denies himself fresh
air and pure water, but he has the san
itarium and the doctor. Stated in this
bald fashion the illusion is evident.”
The substitutes are poor trinkets to
be offered in exchange for human pow
er and excellence.
Even in Alaska where there is so
much to be done, and everybody ought
to be useful, our boys do not have
much to do, and little disposition to do
that. A year or two ago, a small boy
who had been raised on a farm in a
timbered portion of Oregon, brought
up in something like the thrift of the
old days, earned eighty dollars a month
simply because he was willing to—as a
rule, boys of today ,are not industrious.
A local reason has been assigned for it
—the boys here get the money too eas
ily it has been said—but the fault is
not local but general, and one must
look deeper for the cause.
Not by any means is the public
school responsible for this change in
the youth of the human family, but
it must bear its chare of the blame.
One critic has said:
“One sees arrive at the school every
year a lot of brisk, healthy boys, with
fair intelligences, and quite disposed
to work; and xat the other end, one
sees depart, a corresponding set of
young gentlemen who know nothing
and who can do nothing, and are pro
foundly cynical about all intelectual
things. And this is the result of the
meal of chaff we serve out to them
week after week; we collect it„ we
chop it up, we tie it up in pack
ets, we spend hours administering it in
teaspoons, and this is the end. And
yet this preposterous system continues
year after year.
. . The merchant and the man
ufacturer in the city complain that the
young people who come to them have
no sense of the value of time, no con
ception of property rights, no power of
application, no thoroughness, no ambi
tions but to do as little as possible;
that they are lazy, eye-servants, self
seeking, and of flabby character. A
city tailor is swamped with orders.
When asked why he does not employ
more men, he replies ‘hire more men!
Would to God I could find a man, or
even an old fashioned boy! Tf you
will find me anybody who can do any
thing, or is williing to learn to do any
thing well, I will take a dozen tomor
row morning. ’
The manual training schools of the
United States have solved the problem
of how to teach the boy to want to
do things. This is a large claim, but
it is true. Here in Douglas it has been
asked skeptically: “What can be done
in one or two forty minute periods a
week?” In a properly conducted man
ual training school, it is unquestion
ably true that boys beg to be allowed
to put in extra time in the shop—boys
as a rule are glad to learn how to do
things well once they are but at it
right, and this extra time in the shop
is granted as a reward for work well
done in the other classes—so that man
ual training instruction strengthens the
work done in the books.
A manual training school, properly
conducted is not, necessarily, to teach
the boy some trade, but to teach him
to be handy with his hands, as men
were universally before the division of
labor due to the invention of the mod
ern machine. In a good public school
manual training department, the boys
are taught something about the nature
of work in wood and also in the met
als. The things he actually learns to
do is of some use to him, but the train
ing is worth a thousand times more.
“Such work,” says Turner, “will
help to produce sterling character. A
joint will not be a party to a decep
tion, a perfect curve, unlike a question
in geography, cannot be' answered by
a sidewise glance at a school mates
paper, hammer marks in metal cannot
be slyly wiped out,; skillful > technique
cannot be cribbed, there are no ponies
in translating raw material into finish
ed objects. If a little force pump,
which a boy in a manual training
school may be set to making does not
work, no amount of excuse, bluff, ex
planations on the part of the pupil, no
letters from home, can make it work.
An^ boys soon discover it and act ac
cordingly. ” In brief, a properly con
ducted manual training school does not
teach a boy to be a blacksmith, a car
penter or a coppersmith, but to want
to work and how to work—to work
well, for work’s sake, to be deft and
dexterous with the fingers, and trains
faculties of the brain that would other
wise remain undeveloped, and cul
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