b

and carry around to the first weaver. Then use the first weaver, thus alternating. (Note-A heavier weaver of reed or fibre cord could be used instead of No. 3, or 1/4" flat of either could be used.) A three rod coil is then put around, with No. 4 material, and the weaving is finished off by bringing each stake in front of two and back of one.

V. Weaving Sides of the Basket. Cut 50 stakes 8" long of No. 5 material. Glue and insert. The three rod coil is woven around first with No. 4 material and the weaver is put in just as it was in the lower part except that the two weavers have three

strands each instead of two. Weave up close to the horizontal rail. This finishes the weaving of the front and back but here we encounter a difficulty which is quite common in woven furnitre. Owing to the difference in height of rods going around the top it is impossible to carry the weaver around the leg in finishing the sides, so a new stake a (Fig. 15) is put down in beside the corner post. This stake is then woven around instead of the 34" rod. Weave the two sides up to the top and finish off all sides as shown in (Fig. 16) in front of one, and back of one, working from the inside. The stakes must be crushed with the round nose pliers close to the weaving before bending, if reed is used, and the last

FIG. 15. SEWING STAND.

by forcing a blunt awl into each one.

The 11 stakes 111/4" long, No. 5 material are then glued and inserted in one side. Weave with a three strand weaver back and forth with the over and under weave. After weaving three-fourths of the way across the other ends of the stakes are glued and forced into the holes. Complete the weaving and screw the lid in place, the two screws acting as hinges. Tacking on a four ply braid, of No. 3 material around both boards, finishes the strand."

See Fig. 4. Industrial-Arts Magazine, Sept., 1921, p. 348.

A

Adolescence.

properly reflecting and interpreting the many inherent conditions and relationships in modern productive industry. But, in order to realize successful instruction in the industrial activities represented, the psychological and physiological growth of the pupils must be recognized and respected during this all-important period of development. Many useful methods have been devised for selecting and organizing the various try-out or exploratory types of industrial courses, in order to help boys prepare themselves for the demands of manysided service as well as for intelligent citizenship. These helpful suggestions were reported in the two preceding articles dealing with the investigation of 379 progressive intermediate and junior-high schools, which are located in 21 different states.

This investigation and the majority of the recent school surveys make it evident that the influence of traditional practices, rather than the actual needs of our new and rapidly changing social conditions, still determines too largely the kind and amount of emphasis mines too largely the kind and amount of emphasis which the industrial experiences receive in much of the upper grade curricula. The tendency to covet this. familiar conception of education, which has the imparting and mastery of that great store of knowledge in school textbooks as its aim or purpose, undoubtedly is an inheritance from those early days before the sum total of the things worth knowing had increased many hundred fold. We have an abundance of early and recent records which share this attitude toward education with Oliver Goldsmith, who in his writings modestly expressed a yearning "to show" his "book-learned skill." Despite the many evidences of this inheritance which still exist in our American school systems, it is obvious that the growing demand for education today is not so much for the mere accumulation of a mass of facts as it is for the ability to reason from facts and to learn where to find valuable information when needed. At any rate, our present difficulties in meeting the needs and respecting the interests of seventh, eighth, and ninth year boys can not be solved satisfactorily unless a reasonable amount of time is allowed for giving instruction in a fairly wide range of profitable shop experiences and the wealth of related information involved.

Much has been said and written by G. Stanley Hall and other students of psychology regarding the characteristics of early adolescence, but a surprisingly small amount of suggestive material is available as yet for aid

ing those who are responsible for making the practical applications so essential to efficient industrial arts instruction. The need for adapting the methods of teaching the industrial activities to the peculiar characteristics of boys from 12 to 15 years of age is evident to all close observers. While the nature of the instruction

during this period will be determined partially by the schools, nevertheless, it is now recognized that the most variable types of activity represented in the different effective results can be realized only when the methods are flexible enough to provide for the individual differences, as well as for the varying abilities and needs of the differentiated groups.

The greater part of the schools that reported on this phase of their instruction expressed some need for representing a variety of industrial pursuits so that the experiences will be well adapted to the problems of revealing capacities and developing special interests and powers, which are in keeping with the general aims and purposes of their respective school organizations. Several even insist that this cannot be accomplished fully

unless allowance is made for freedom in choice and for individual experimentation. Others place the main emphasis upon methods for supplementing the school activities by excursions to study the larger constructions in productive industry, which they believe will do most. in helping boys of early adolescence to discover the value of their inclinations, either in positive or negative ways. Not only do some of the schools provide opportunity for each boy to try out, discover, and develop any special ability for doing and managing industrial work, but they also furnish information for maturing the pupil's judgment of industrial problems and relationships. The reports indicate that the best results have been gained by interpreting that valuable directly and indirectly related industrial knowledge which is an outgrowth of the manipulative aspects of shop experience. These rapidly developing courses thus attempt to make provision for constructive thinking, as well as to give contact with typical materials, tools, processes, and shop organization. The psychological foundation for this procedure is sound, as much of the educational value in these industrial experiences will come from the various habits. attitudes, and appreciations established in meet

The likes and dislikes which are fostered by boys of this age, as well as their correspondent relation to abilities and inabilities, have an important bearing on the methods of instruction given in the industrial-arts activities. A few years ago, Dr. Edward L. Thorndike of Columbia University measured the permanence in the interests of one hundred individuals, and also the resemblance between interest in the upper grades and capacity in the college period, with the following conclusions: "These facts unanimously witness to the importance of early interests. They are shown to be far from fickle and evanescent. On the contrary, the order of interests at twenty shows six-tenths of perfect resemblance to the order from eleven to fourteen, and has changed therefrom little more than the order of abilities has changed. It would indeed be hard to find any feature of a human being which was a much more permanent fact of his nature than his relative degrees of interest in different lines of thought and action. Interests are also shown to be symptomatic, to a very great extent. of present and future capacity or ability. Either because one likes what he can do well, or because one gives zeal and effort to what he likes, or because interest and ability are both symptoms of some fundamental feature of the individual's original nature, or because of the combined action of all three of these factors, interest and ability are bound very close together. The bond is so close that either may be used as a symptom for the other almost as well as for itself."14

Although some promising psychological devices and tests have been developed for selecting persons for specific occupations, there is no better method in use at present for discovering the boy's capacity for each type of industrial experience represented in the school workshop than to observe the degree of success and failure as he develops each division of the work and study. A suggestive experiment also has been conducted with 24 apprenticed boys, who ranged in age from 12 to 17 years, in order to ascertain whether or not those using hand tools in a systematic and workmanlike manner in one division of industry can do tasks of equal difficulty in other industrial pursuits with about the same facility. "It was discovered, bevond a doubt, that those who were most systematic and workmanlike in the making of working drawings and wooden patterns with hand tools likewise were most successful during their first six months in the machine shop, blacksmith shop, foundry, boiler shop, pipe and sheet metal shop, or wood shop, where they issued, accounted for and used hand tools."15 The results of this experiment, which were based upon the individual judgments of several instructors and me

14Thorndike, E. L. "The Permanence of Interests and Their Relation to Abilities." Popular Science Monthly. November, 1912.

15 Edgerton. A. H.. "Diversified Industrial Activities as a Means of Educational and Vocational Guidance for Seventh. Eighth, and Ninth Year Boys." Industrial-Arts Magazine. October, 1917, Vol. VI, pp. 390-392.

Methods of Offering Industrial-Arts Courses and Projects.

Because of the limited time available (six to twelve weeks in a large proportion of the school systems investigated), there is a tendency for most of these courses to include definite types of work to be done by all pupils. However, this does not necessarily mean that all pupils must develop the same problems and projects, or complete the minimum requirements in one kind of activity before taking up work in another. Some of the industrial departments even allow pupils upon entering new types of work, to choose between several introductory problems at hand, or to substitute work of equal difficulty. This also is the practice of a number of schools in connection with outside projects, after the boys have facility for doing a satisfactory grade of workmanship. In addition to the individual projects and problems. opportunity aslo is given in a number of the schools for trying out qualities of leadership and coöperation in managing construction work and groups of workers. While the student-foreman organization is the plan ordinarily employed to promote this form of group activity, there seems to be very little uniformity at present either in the scheme of organizing or the method of conducting this promising type of work.

The project method of learning,16 which has received such wide interpretation and publicity during the past few years, is favored in principle by over 90 per cent of the industrial-arts teachers in 303 of the intermediate and junior-high schools studied. As would be expected, different degrees of emphasis are given to the relative importance and desirability of having the purposing and planning of the projects done by the boys, especially in the seventh and eighth grades. A few of the instructors still require the boys to work largely from specifications and to do their work in a certain prescribed way, thus allowing little opportunity for each pupil to set up purposes or objectives and to develop plans for meeting the difficulties in their execution and for solving the problems to get results. However the great majority of these instructors are attempting to improve upon this traditional method, which undoubtedly has robbed many boys of the larger values in the educational process by over-emphasizing both the following of directions and manipulative skill in the tool processes.

15 Kilpatrick, Wm. H.: Teachers College Record. Columbia University, Vol. 21, pp. 319-335; and Snedden. David: School and Society, Vol. 4, pp. 419-423.

Although the importance of skill and dexterity is recognized by those who have adopted the project-problem method of procedure, it is insisted that a proper amount of technique can be realized and vitalized through profitable experiences which stimulate thinking and reasoning as well as industry.

This method of teaching requires the instructor to analyze, simplify, and adapt subject matter to aid pupils in securing suitable information to meet the somewhat varied situations which arise in their con

struction problems. In addition to the necessary technical information, which aids pupils in understanding the methods and processes involved in their work, a part of the educational value undoubtedly comes from observing tools in use, samples and pictures of commercial products, projects in various stages of completion, charts of industry, and the like. It also is found desirable to have an abundance of illustrated, descriptive material always available for the purpose of helping boys to understand and appreciate economic products, allied occupations, and vital relationships in each phase of industry sampled. When planned carefully, such devices as excursions, motion pictures, class discussions, student reports, talks by specialists, and class or group demonstrations gain the interest and offer possibilities in furthering achievement and success.

The instructor sometimes finds it advantageous to resort to shop tricks and kinks, in order to form the desired bonds in the teaching process. In demonstrating the proper uses of certain tools, for example, he might get the best results in determining habits and attitudes by showing their incorrect as well as their correct uses, in order that the boys may thoroughly appreciate the possible difficulties in the work provided they do not use the tools correctly. The results of experiments to ascertain the best methods for such work show that where boys are made conscious of the trouble which may be experienced or avoided, by using tools either incorrectly or correctly, there are few that do not exercise care to save themselves unnecessary waste in time and energy. "There is a tendency for teachers to depend too much. upon verbal explanations, because of the convenience of words and the immediate economy of time that results from their use. If words will give the desired clearness, use them by all means; but, if nothing more than an inadequate notion will result from such explanation, the teacher has made a poor choice to get results."17 Regardless of which one of these methods is chosen for offering a specific unit of industrial arts instruction, it is obvious that an unnecessary waste of time and effort is certain to result from forming wrong habits, inaccuracy, or forming no definite habits at all in the work and study covered.

17Edgerton. A. H. "Experimental Work in the School Shop as a Means of Industrial Efficiency." Industrial-Arts Magazine, April, 1915, Vol. III, pp. 161-163.

18Contributed by Arthur W. Richards. Director of Manual Arts, Ethical Culture School, New York City.

OTHER SUCCESSFULLY TRIED UNIT-COURSES IN LARGE AND SMALL SCHOOL SYSTEMS. Eighth Grade Prevocational or Aptitude Courses.18 In the eighth grade at the Ethical Culture School, New York City, a plan has been adopted for offering three semi-elective courses which aim to be prevocational or aptitude courses. These courses are known as mechanical, printing, and art-crafts.

They are considered semi-elective because their election is determined by the coöperative considerations of the pupil, his teachers, and his parents and are based partly on his records in the arts courses. The courses are prevocational or aptitude courses in the sense that they are intended to serve as experiences that may help the students find or verify so much regarding their interests and aptitudes as appears desirable, in order to start some thought of high school courses of study and prospective careers. For example, the mechanical course is planned for those (1) having some interest in and liking for machinery and a desire to study and experiment along this line; (2) showing some aptitude for mechanical problems and construction; (3) desiring to find out whether they have or have not any real and well founded liking and aptitude for mechanical things.

An appreciation of what is fine and admirable in the art and science of machinery is one aim. The acquisition of a definite body of technical practices and knowledge of elementary metal working processes, tools, and materials is also intended. This course consists of a study of the design, operation, mechanics, and construction of some good and industrially important mechanical project such as the steam engine. The general nature of the content, the organization, and the methods of instruction in this course are briefly as follows: Instruction cards, charts, and models used are:

1. Steam engine working chart.
Gas-auto engine working chart.

2.

3. Operating steam engine, reciprocating and turbine. 4. Operating hot air engine.

Outside study assigned on these special topics with specific references given for each includes:

1. How the steam engine works.

2.

Valves.

3. Boilers, types, flash, everyday engineering.

4. Types of steam engines.

Excursions made are:

1. To 59th Street or other power stations.

Social content studies involve:

1. History of steam engine and inventors as vocacational inspirational matter.

2.

The industrial and social importance of the steam engine.

3. Other power engines and the future of steam engines.

4. Vocations based on mechanical work interest. Organization plan includes:

1.

Class project to consist of a lot of engines which are carried to point of assembling. Individual students are to assemble, adjust, and finish one or two engines from the finished parts.

2. Individuals (1) to be assigned lot part jobs, (2) given problems to solve, (3) assigned duties necessary to advance the project.

Methods of personal instruction are:

1. To be on an individual problem or task basis.
2. To have teacher's demonstration on new, unknown
processes made largely to individuals, and class
lectures to be very short.

3. To allow pupil instruction to other pupils as the
jobs are transferred.

T

HERE is no use denying the fact that vocational courses, or rather those designated as industrial courses having for their aim. preparation for successful trade entry, have been much criticised and perhaps justly so. However, it is not the purpose of this article to refute criticism. In passing, it may be said that it is frankly recognized that much of the criticism is just. But, on the other hand, it is only fair to state that much criticism comes from individuals who either do not know the facts, or, are not qualified to criticise constructively. Certain work has come to the attention of the writer which is decidedly worth while and in the right direction. The record system of the automobile engine department of the Everett Vocational School is an example. The Everett schools are in charge of A. C. Roberts, superintendent of schools; and by way of introduction it should be further stated that the Everett Vocational School is not separated from the high school and is in no sense a separate trade school, but is organized as a part of the high school under the direction. of Mr. L. B. Travers, director of vocational education, in cooperation with the high school principal.

Course Organized on a Useful and Productive Basis.

This course, as in the case of the other vocational courses in this department, is organized on a useful and productive basis. The equipment is quite complete and contains many features not always found in a school shop, not the least of which is a student tool room foreman and a student stock room man. The school depends on cars from the outside for practical classwork. More details in regard to equipment and classroom procedure would be interesting, but that is another story and not the subject of this article.

Realizing that some practical record system, simple enough so that it could be handled by learners when meeting business standards, Mr. Fred McGinnis, head of the automobile gas engine department, worked out in cooperation with the director of vocational education, the following record system which will now be described. in detail, reproducing original sheets.

Repair Order.

The repair order, Fig. 1, is made out in duplicate by the instructor when the owner brings in the car. Referring to Fig. 1, it will be seen that it is in the nature of a contract, including a complete statement as to what the owner desires in the way of repairs and service, agreeing to pay for all materials and supplies furnished. by the school. He also pays an additional fifteen per cent as indicated in the job record, Fig. 3. This, al

though not stated in Fig. 1, is explained to the owner of the car at the time that the school agrees to repair same. It is signed in duplicate, the original being kept by the owner. The duplicate, which is yellow, is kept by the school and is handled by the tool room foreman. In all cases the signature of the owner is insisted upon; however, not until the instructor has inspected the car and accepted the job. This is of course neccssary for more than one reason, chief among which is to make sure that no jobs are accepted which the boys in the particular stage of the course are unable to repair, and to avoid working on "dead head" cars.

Parts Order Blank.

The parts order blank, Fig. 2, is made out by the stock room man at the direction of the tool room foreman, using as an order or a basis, the duplicate of the repair order, Fig. 1. This blank is made out in duplicate, including all articles not available in the stock room, and approved by the instructor before sending to the motor company who furnishes the supplies.

A good sized stock of standard parts and repairs are kept in the stock room. However, in addition to this it is necessary to send out for additional parts. All of this material is ordered from one company with whom the school has an open account. In the event that parts are ordered which this firm cannot supply, they send out for them and deliver them to the school. The original or white sheet of the duplicate parts order blank is then sent to the "blank" Motor Company, which delivers the articles called for, and upon submitting the bills, attaches them to this parts order blank which serves as a requisition. The duplicate or the yellow parts order blank is sent by the automobile gas engine department to the secretary of the school board, through the director of vocational education, after the parts