INTRODUCTION. IT is surprising that so few efforts have hitherto been mde in this coury to introduce manual training into EIementary Schools. Adequate reason for making such training part of the national system of education exists in the fact, that a large proportion of the people have to earn their livelihood by industries for the attainment of a high degree of skill in which early mining of hand and eye is necessary as it is for success in the use of musical instruments. There can be no doubt that if, in 1870, a system, resembIing that of Sloyd, had been generally introduced into English Elementary Schools, the joiners, metal-workers, and most other craftsmen of to-day, would possess more skill in their own work, and more interest in all kinds of manual work, than they do now possess, and that English workpeople, finding that their children received at school kinds of training obviously well fitted to increase wage-earning power, would less commonly than now be careless with regard to their childrens attendance at school.
This reason for desiring the introduction of manual mining into Elementary Schools might have been expected to suggest itself to all persons who are acquainted with the conditions under which the mass of English people live but experience gained in Sweden and other countries where the Sloyd system has been largely used, proves that there are also strong educational reasons for desiring that Sloyd shall be introduced into all English Elementary Schools as soon as possible. It has been found that this admirably graduated system of training not only fosters deftness of hand and correctness of eye, as it might be expected to do, but also has distinctly moral and inteIIectual effects, as it promotes patient attention, steady application, and interest in work, to a very high degree. Its effect on many of the large class of children who, though not dullards, show lack of interest in, and deficiency in the power to understand, the subjects comprised in the ordinary school-curriculum, has been most beneficial.
In their Sloyd-lessons many of these children have found themselves the equals, some more than the equals, of companions far their superiors at book-work, and have by this gained a confidence in their own ability which has often reacted on their power and their will to conquer their other lessons. Thus many children who, when they first began Sloyd, were distinctly below the average in intelligence, have become under its influence completely normal...
