ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses which crafts are most valuable in schools and which approach can lead to the most rewarding study of those crafts. This is particularly concerned with crafts, not because they ought to be separated off from what is called ‘art’ in schools, but because there are several good books which have played their part in helping forward the revolution in art teaching which has done an incalculable amount to make the life of children happier. This state has its own dangers of an indiscriminate enthusiasm or laissez-faire on the teacher’s part, and a superficial decorativeness and failure to search deeply on the child’s. A great educationist1 wrote something which sums up a great deal of what we have been trying to say: ‘Culture (if it is not a superficial polish) is the growth of imagination in flexibility, in scope, in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society.’.
