ABSTRACT
The following passage is taken from the lecture on •• The Place of Manual Training in Education," by Mr. J. H. Reynolds, which is referred to in Article I. of our last number:-'' If we cannot afford to leave a single child without the knowledge of the three R's, stillleSB can we afford to leave him without a carefully graduated training of the eye and the band, and there is one grand advantage about it, that once gained, it can scarcely ever be lost. In the course of an elaborate argument, f:;ir J. Crichton Browne shows that upon the development of the motor centres of the brain depends the power of skilful muscular exercise, and that this, in its turn, bas a most significant relation to the growth and development of these centres. From this he infers the great importance ' of the part played by early exercise of the hand in evoking inherited skill, and in creating the industrial capabilities of a nation.' • The nascent or development period of the band centres,' he says, ' has not yet been accurately measured off; it probably extends from the first year to the end of adolescence, but there can be no doubt that its most active epoch is frotn the fourth to the fifteenth year, after which these centres become comparatively fixed and stubborn. Hence it can be understood that boys and girls whose bands have been left untrained up to the fifteenth year are practically incapable of high manual efficieocv e'\"er afterwards. And hence we can comprehend.how, by keeping the children of our working
classes without hand training, and in school up to that age, poring over books, by cramming them with decimals and geography, while t~eir hands, being flaccid, and their digits growing. clumsy and stiff, . by withholding them from timely exercise in handicraft, we should be doing our best to abolish th·e skill of our next generation of workers.'"
