Chapter V: The Opportunity for Manual and Household Arts

A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon us. The aims, materials, and methods of instruction in manual training, cooking, sewing, agriculture, and commercial branches are changing. They have been influenced by the vocational-education movement, and because of it practical arts in general education must justify themselves or else be put into the scrap heap.

The development and organization of differentiated courses in industrial, agricultural, and household and commercial arts adapted to junior and senior high schools--more particularly in connection with the education of children from 12 to 16 years of age--offers a new field of service to teachers of these subjects who, up to now, have been following methods unsuited either to the needs of vocational training or to the needs of general education. Already the set of wood and iron models taken from the Russian system of the early seventies has disappeared, and the sampler book in sewing has passed away. The era of the coat hanger and sleeve board in manual training and of the set of doll's clothes and models of undergarments is doomed, and the cooking outline which starts out with making cocoa in September and in the thirteenth lesson takes up the making of an angel cake will soon meet the fate of flowerpot holders, doll's aprons, and book agriculture.

But there is a great field for the practical arts in general education,--a field which no scheme of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each has its place. Vocational training is fitting young persons for profitable employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts in general education consists of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household and taught in the school for the purpose of developing capacity to deal with concrete things and of arousing social and industrial interests in the workaday world.

In the early years of the child's life practical-arts work has a strong motor and social value. In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has a social and vocational-guidance value. The chapter entitled "The Field for Industrial and Trade Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to the work which boys and, to some extent, girls may offer as their service contribution in time of war. However there are fewer than 100 industrial and trade schools in the country. The majority of our youth are taking some practical-arts work as a part of general education in either the elementary or the secondary school, and surely these young people will want to do something in this emergency. And certainly the teachers of sewing, manual training, cooking, and agriculture will desire to do their part, not only because they can be of service at this time but also for the reason that through war-service work they will be able to improve upon the practical-arts work and make it conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the new methods is based upon getting away from individual models created out of the mind of a teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting student body which follows a "course in models" in about the same way that it takes a course in arithmetic.

The present scheme of teaching practical arts is based upon the project plan and not upon the model or exercise plan. It no longer depends upon the teacher's course of study founded on tool exercises or logical sequence of processes. It now comes out of a need which is as clear to the student as it should be to the teacher. The progressive teacher of manual training starts out with such a project, for example, as a garage. This involves making a sketch, working up a bill of materials, finding out the cost of lumber, cement, and so on. It involves work in concrete, laying the floor timbers, putting up the sides, laying out the roof, setting in the window and door frames, putting on the tarred paper or shingles or galvanized iron, and painting and staining.

The progressive teacher of domestic arts no longer thinks of catering merely to the personal decorative sense of young girls. She no longer has the girls spend the entire year making graduation dresses, or dish towels, caps, and aprons. She thinks in terms of quantity and in terms of social service which the domestic-arts work may render. She discovers that a hospital needs towels, aprons, caps, and bed linen, or that the orphan asylum near the school is sorely in need of children's garments, and then she tells of this need to the girls in her charge and the latter take up the problem in the same way that the boys take up the problem of building a garage. Each girl works in conjunction with others for a common purpose which all recognize as being worth while.

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that the idea of 20 cooking units in a schoolroom, where little batches of 20 model biscuits are made and where at the close of the lesson each girl has one of these small eatables, is far behind the practice of those manual-training teachers who are making drawing tables, benches, and looms, or laying concrete walks, building outdoor gymnasium apparatus, and so on. Some of the teachers have insisted on having a flat or tenement or entire house near the school, where girls taking domestic science can go to learn to make real beds that are really slept upon, to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, to cook meals that are really eaten by people who pay for what they eat, to shake real rugs that become really dirty, and to shop at stores where they come in contact with actual commercial conditions and at the end of a week discover that it really costs money to run a real home. A few teachers, and in time there will be many, desire to go still further. They believe that home-making cannot be taught without having some babies around, and so they have established day nurseries in connection with the home-making classes.

It is because of these things which have been mentioned in some detail that I was glad, as director of the Division of Agricultural and Industrial Education of the New York State Education Department, to send out a circular letter early in April, 1917, to our manual-training and household-arts teachers, in which I stated that every teacher of manual training, sewing, or cooking should be thinking in terms of mobilization service, and that any teacher of manual training who was conducting his course of models, instead of thinking and working in terms of food production or industrial war service, was absolutely out of touch with the needs of the day. I advised him to turn his shop work over to home and community gardens, to increase the time allowance given to manual work, and help fill the cellar and pantry. I advised him to give his Saturdays and afternoons after school and even his vacation period to supervising garden work in the community. I said, furthermore, that any teacher of sewing who was not thinking in terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and repairing, was as far away from the service idea as she possibly could be. I told her that with the increase in price of materials and with the scarcity of dress goods there would be necessary repairing and making over which would give her an opportunity to do some real things. I even told her that she might drop some of her sewing and help the cooking teacher in organizing classes in preserving. I told the teachers of cooking that if they were running through their outlines with no reference to the food shortage of next winter and the year after, they showed a lack of comprehension of the meaning of their jobs. I stated that the early summer and fall suggested lessons in preserving, while the winter season conveyed the idea of conserving. I asked whether they were planning to stop their work in June, before the canning season really began, and leave everything idle until school should open, when the canning season would be nearly over. I wondered what provision had been made in the community for using the summer service which they either had offered or, I hoped, were about to offer.

A few weeks later word came from England of how the manual-training teachers had been urged by those in authority to do garden work. A portion of these directions follows:

Surely wood and metal work have not the monopoly of the
educative value in manual operations. The harvesting of an orchard
of fruit or a field of potatoes by a class of school children,
accompanied by an enthusiastic teacher imbued with the right ideal
of his work, can be made to serve other purposes than merely that
of simple mechanical utility. A discussion started at first hand
between child and teacher on such matters as variety and quality
of produce, the destructive fruit pests and diseases encountered,
the crating, packing, and distribution of produce, the weighing
and measuring actually performed, the calculating of the value
of produce and of labor, and a knowledge that the coöperative
effort is in response to a call of England's need, would provide
open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arithmetic, and civics
quite as educative as any obtained in the elaborately equipped
manual-training centers.

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowledge that the coöperative effort is in response to a call of England's need," which embraces the socializing value of the manual-arts principles,--a value which we often talk about and as often fail to attain.

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon us and the greater one which may come, ought to suspend temporarily some of their work in teaching children and turn their attention to teaching adults. To be sure the girl of to-day will be the mother of to-morrow, but the mother of the immediate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and the food crisis will be over, it is to be hoped, by the time the girls in our present cooking classes have grown into motherhood. These courses to adults should be intensive and in short units. The printing schools should print leaflets giving practical and helpful recipes to be distributed to the adults. If the women will not come to the school, then the schools should go to the women. By this it is meant that classes can be organized in churches, vacant stores, and settlements. In this connection it may be of interest to quote from the Leicester (England) education committee:

Arrangements have been made in connection with the local
food campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work at the
domestic-science centers have been temporarily suspended and
special short courses in cookery instruction provided instead.
These courses have been designed primarily as a means of
instructing as many women and older girls as possible in the
method of preparing and cooking suitable substitutes for bread
and potatoes. In addition to the rooms equipped for cookery
instruction, those normally devoted to the teaching of laundering
and housewifery are being used for this special work. The course
is arranged to cover 4 lessons given on consecutive half days to
each group of attendants, and at the conclusion of each course the
women and girls attend one evening for a review lesson including a
practical demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets
have been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The
children themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to
individual families and take their copies home, thus becoming the
active agents in the food campaign.

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cooking was discontinued early in June for the school year of 1917, and a special course of 10 lessons in food conservation was given at 4 domestic-science centers. The course consisted of 1 lesson in the preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on canning, 1 on making soap, 1 on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies and marmalades, and 1 on the drying of a number of agricultural products.

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go to adults by the way of churches or settlements, but she may go directly,--in the rural districts, at least,--with demonstration kitchens mounted on automobiles. In Lindsay County, England, for example, a domestic-science lecturer arranged an experimental course of lectures and demonstrations on economical cookery, and equipped with necessary utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100. She covered each of the larger villages in the area selected, spending one day in each place, the morning being given over to traveling. In the afternoon, exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were arranged and demonstrations given that were based upon left-overs from her preceding evening's lesson. She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticulture, fruit bottling, and so on. In the evening she gave a cooking demonstration.

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, New York State, consisted of a train of cars behind a steam locomotive, from which demonstrations were given in fruit and vegetable preserving. The County of Nottingham, England, gave similar demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precautions with reference to the health of babies at this period. It was customary in much of the work in England to have an agriculturist go with the teacher and give talks on spraying, elimination of pests, and conservation of garden products.

One of the greatest services that the domestic-science teacher can render, whether she labors in rural or in urban fields, is the organization of canning clubs. The canning club enlists the services of women, girls, and even boys. It can be made as much of a social institution as corn husking and barn raising were formerly. But the teacher must, in most instances, move out of her domestic-science kitchen with its little gas stoves and quart sauce-pans. In the country district the equipment will be the stove in the village church, with a wash boiler, galvanized vat, washtub, or other vessel with a well-fitting top, which can easily be transformed into a home canner by making a false bottom with lifting handles. In a village or small city it may be necessary to beg, borrow, or buy the necessary cooking utensils, and to obtain free use of a vacant store, asking the local gas company to install, free of charge, some gas ranges. The boys will prepare the fruit; the women and girls will can it or dry it, as the case may be. To dispose of the product is a simple matter. It may be sold and the proceeds divided. It may be taken to the homes and the expense of producing shared.

In the city the domestic-science teacher serving as a leader of the canning club must watch closely the market and buy when the price is right, particularly when there is a surplus that may otherwise be wasted. It will be a new experience for many domestic-science teachers. It is a rather different proposition from canning a few baskets of strawberries, cherries, or currants in a classroom.

Naturally other containers than glass jars or tumblers will have to be used. In fact, the canning club after one season of experimentation is likely to resemble, with its larger and more efficient equipment, a miniature canning factory.

In Berkeley, California, the children of the entire city had a Jar Day, when they went out and collected every discarded and undesired jar. These were cleaned and sold and the money was turned into a "service fund." Many jars, also, were filled with surplus vegetable products to be used for the poor in the winter.

Of course the old drying methods of grandmother's days must be rejuvenated. Mr. Fred P. Reagle, supervisor of manual training in Montclair, discovered one of the old-fashioned evaporators and had a large number made up by the boys in his school and passed out to neighboring communities. Here is an old home industry which may be revived in the home or the community.

Mr. Reagle, in describing his evaporator, writes:

I was obliged to build something which could be used anywhere
regardless of the availability of steam heat, electric fans, or
coal. Furthermore, it was necessary to construct from common stock
material and to use some stock stove. I hit upon the idea of using
a common laundry stove which could burn either wood or coal. I
made 20 frames, covered with galvanized wire, to hold the fruit.
The control of the air circulation was obtained by means of an
adjustable sliding door beneath the stove. The heated air passes
around and over the stove and through the fresh food products,
taking out the moisture and going out through the adjustable
ventilator at the top. The evaporator has a capacity of from 5 to 8
bushels of fruit and vegetables a day.

Another activity for domestic-science teachers of more experience will be in the training of cooks for the army, or, as the director of the School of Practical Arts (Teachers College) believes, "in the training of people to train cooks."

The following quotation from a letter written by Sir Robert Blair of London to Superintendent Maxwell of New York City shows what was done in London:

In the summer recess, 1915, 264 of our domestic-science
teachers volunteered part of their holidays in order to help in the
work of training 2500 soldiers to cook and to meet the ordinary
requirements in this line of the private in the field. The War
Office drew men from different units from all over England and
brought them to London in two great groups and paid 1/9 a day for
the up-keep of the men. The soldiers were billeted in the school
buildings and the preparation of their food formed the basis of the
cookery instruction. Each group was taken for a period of ten days.
The War Office was most appreciative of the work done by these
domestic-economy instructresses. The War Office did not ask us to
repeat this the following summer, although it was repeated to some
extent in other parts of England. The War Office, however, did ask
us to lend them 30 carefully selected teachers of cooking for the
purpose of visiting army canteens and giving advice both on cooking
and (what I believe is more important) on quantities used.

Still another service can be rendered by the cooking teachers, especially in our large cities and in our industrial villages. This service consists in giving meals to children who are in want. Of course at the present moment we see little need for this work, but the pinch of poverty has come upon England, France, and Germany, and our own land may not always be one of plenty. When the need arises, teachers should be prepared to furnish lunches to the children and possibly even breakfasts, to say nothing about suppers. The dislocation of many ordinary trades and lines of business, the taking from the home of the family's means of support, the increased cost of food and provisions, and the prevalence of sickness due to neglect may necessitate the feeding of children in school. In London the list of children to whom meals were given daily increased rapidly from something like 32,000 in July, 1914, up to 75,000 about the middle of September, 1914. Fortunately, however, as trade and industry became better adjusted there was a steady decline in the number of children that were fed, so that in May, 1917, there were only about 12,000--the children then on the list being mainly the children of widows who were forced to go out to work. The number of meals provided per week in the schools of England in July, 1915, was 200,000. In a year this number had dropped to 120,000.

Good posters have a great influence on civic life at any time. Now they are invaluable. War-service posters designed by Manual Training High School boys of Brooklyn, New York.

The drawing departments might well have their students design posters. Those designed by American illustrators for the first Liberty Loan were surprisingly ineffective. Only one stood out--that with the reproduction of the Statue of Liberty with the accompanying symbol and direct wording. Our enlistment posters have been crude, lacking in psychological appeal as well as in design. It is questionable whether recruiting is aided by a picture showing a naval officer lounging under a palm tree while in the distance a marine is seen standing amid bursting shells on a battleship. There has been and will be an opportunity for students to design posters for Red Cross work; for enlistment as farm cadets; for enrollment in a home-service unit for girls, in community canning clubs, in Boy Scout work, in school, home, and community gardening; for patriotic meetings and a score of other occasions. Good posters have an almost incalculable influence on civic life at any time. Within the last year there have been held in many cities various competitions in poster work of pupils with such subjects as "Red Cross," "Thrift," "Safety First," "Fire Prevention," "Pure Milk," and "Liberty Loan."

There is plenty of work for the manual-training teacher. Mention has already been made of garden work, not so much in school gardens, however, as in community gardens, for, like the canning-club work, here is a splendid opportunity to bring adults and children together. In a number of small cities in the country where tillable land could be obtained, the manual-training teachers directed a community-garden project. The boys built the tool house; the Boy Scouts took turns in acting as watchmen; plots were laid out on a family or individual basis; seed was purchased in bulk and distributed at cost; experts, hired by the day, plowed and harrowed the ground; stakes marking the plots were made in the school; and the manual-training instructors, or, as they were termed, the garden directors, spent their summer vacation in a useful service.

The manual-training teacher may help the Red Cross chapter in packing supplies into the boxes which his boys have made. He can be planning the hospital furniture which he may be called upon to make, as in France, where the boys built furniture for improvised hospitals and installed electric lights. He can be thinking how he shall, if required, make hospital-bed racks, cots, tables, and simple reclining chairs. Perhaps he may have to supervise, as have the manual-training teachers in England, the making of hand-grenade bags, chaff bags, dummy cartridges for the training of troops, or sand bags. In a single secondary school in Bradford, England, more than 1200 articles--including splints, crutches, bed-boards and rests, screens, rollers, trays, etc.--have been made in the manual-training department in one year. Perhaps in the early spring latrines can be designed and built for the farm cadets, as was done in the Newton (Massachusetts) school, or shacks for troops, as was done at Plattsburg, New York, by the boys from the Stuyvesant High School, New York City. The teacher may have his part to play in giving vocational training to maimed soldiers (see chapter on "Reëducation of the Disabled"), as all of the instructors in manual-training schools of the Dominion of Canada are now doing.

A manual-training teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. John M. Foster, has his boys make jigsaw puzzles, checkerboards, and bandage winders for the use of our soldiers in France. During the summer of 1917 he organized a boys' auxiliary of the Red Cross, and the group made packing cases according to official specifications. The organization included a shop foreman, a timekeeper, and a stock man. Lumber and other materials were contributed by local dealers.

Perhaps the manual-training instructor will coöperate with the teacher of domestic science, as male strength is needed, in providing comforts for the soldiers, such as socks and mufflers made on knitting machines, and in helping with the packing and crating. In this connection there is another quotation on the work of London children:

At the end of the first year of the war we began to organize
efforts to provide clothing and other necessities for Belgian
and Serbian children. In a few months the schools were able to
furnish 10,000 complete kits made to the pattern and color and size
supplied by the two embassies. It is reported that the making of
these kits was one of the best exercises in planning, cutting, and
sewing which the schools ever undertook, and probably nothing has
done more to foster the school _esprit de corps_ in the history of
municipal schools since their origin, in 1870.

In France a number of schools, when the buildings were turned into hospitals, equipped either the entire hospital or a considerable number of beds at their own expense and by their own work. Hospital service was largely organized by these schools. One school would be responsible for the linen, another for mending, another for table service, another for cooking, and another for sending and receiving packages. A workroom established by the school girls in one of these hospitals had sent to the front in a year and a half 25,330 packages. One little village school of only 30 pupils in a short period collected 2542 eggs for the wounded soldiers and made socks and mufflers in addition. In another small district each of the schools specialized in some kind of work, one making up parcels for war prisoners, another knitting sailors' gloves, another making clothing for refugees, and still another providing candles for troops in trenches.

A small country school in the Midlands of England, in addition to weekly contributions of vegetables to the local hospital for wounded soldiers, has made 26 bed cradles and a dozen crutches, while the youngest boys have made splints.

A report from a northeast-coast district of England mentions manual-training centers where bed tables, toilet tables, bed rests, and clinical-chart carriers are made for the local hospital. Even the girls have made splints and bed tables. Of course hundreds of sand bags have been made in the schools.

The report closes with these significant words: "The effect of all this work has been most remarkable. Even districts where formerly little interest was taken by the children seem suddenly to realize the value of it all." This is what might have been expected, and what we in America may expect when we make our practical-arts work socializing, useful, and contributory to some great cause that the children see is worth while.