USA > Ohio > Annual report of the State Commissioner of Common Schools, to the Governor of the State of Ohio, for the year 1880 > Part 4
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Five years ago New York recognized the importance of the study by enacting a law similar to that of Massachusetts, though not quite so stringent.
Ohio, from her immense natural resources, is destined to become a great manufacturing State. Shall she support only the ruder kinds of industries, taking the raw material and increase its value only slightly by its manufacture, or multiply it ten-fold ? This depends entirely on her provisions for Industrial Education. The pottery industry of East Liverpool, Ohio, is next to the largest in America. Shall they turn their clay into common table-ware only, or produce artistic wares that shall rival those of France and England ? Shall we turn our iron into rails, stoves or machinery only, increasing its value from 10 to 100 per cent., or shall we by more artistic and skilled labor increase it many times more ? A plan for Industrial Art Education as liberal as that in practice in Massachusetts, especially if supplemented by the establish- ment of technical schools, would quickly settle this question.
In most cities and larger towns in Ohio, Drawing of one kind or another is studied. In many of these, however, some of the most vital portions of any system of Industrial Drawing are omitted entirely. In
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other places the study has not been introduced on account of a popular misconception of the subject. The old notion is prevalent that Draw- ing is merely an ornamental study, an accomplishment, mere picture- making. It should be understood that Industrial Drawing is of the most practical nature, and has nothing to do with pictures of old ruins, landscapes, etc.
Another popular fallacy that special talent is necessary to learn and to teach Drawing has been a stumbling-block. There is abundance of proof, however, that as large a number will learn to draw well as will do good work in Arithmetic, Grammar, or Geography. In the majority of cases, the regular teachers who teach Drawing most successfully are the best teachers of other subjects.
It being evident that Drawing should and can be taught, it remains to suggest what should be taught and how the study can be successfully introduced.
Drawing should be taught in Public Schools not alone for the train- ing of hand and eye or the development of taste, but also as the only study we have which will tend to make pupils think more of industrial occupations and give them the necessary elementary knowledge to enter upon such pursuits. Whether all these requirements are met or not, especially the latter, depends on what is studied. Any course of Indus- trial Drawing sufficiently broad to meet these requirements must pro- vide for the representation, construction and decoration of any object or structure.
The departments of study providing for these essentials are Free- hand Drawing, Mechanical Drawing and Decorative Design. Several subjects occur under each department, those under Freehand Drawing being as follows:
1. Flat Copy, or copying from blackboard, books, or plates, straight lines, curves, geometric and abstract forms, standard or historical orna- ment, animal forms, foliage, fragments and finally the complete human figure. 2. Dictation Drawing, or drawing geometrical forms and designs from an oral or written description. 3. Memory Drawing of geometrical, natural and historical forms. 4. Model and Object Drawing, or drawing simple geometrical forms from the object, such as cylinders, cones, vases, cubes, prisms, pyramids, etc .; groups of two or more objects, as geo- metric blocks with vases, or common objects, as buckets, tin or crockery ware, tables, chairs, etc .; natural objects, as apples, potatoes, squashes, etc .; sprigs of foliage, flowers and plants from nature, and finally in High Schools, plaster casts of ornament, architectural and animal forms and the human figure.
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Flat Copy would extend over the entire course, from the lowest Primary into the High School; Dictation Drawing is taught principally in Primary grades; Memory Drawing to a limited extent in all grades ; Model and Object Drawing from the fifth school year through the High School. All Drawing below the High School should be in outline, advanced classes in the High School working in light and shade from copies, models and casts, using as media the charcoal, stump and sauce, brush and India ink, or sepia, and crayon point.
The above department gives training to the hand and eye, and en- ables the pupil to sketch readily and rapidly the form of any object, or structure. Without it there is no foundation for the pursuit of other departments of Drawing. By a knowledge of it the teacher, or lecturer can economize time, and present his ideas more clearly. He can add force to his descriptions by sketches of objects described. The student can note his researches in botany, physiology, physics, and other descrip- tive studies. The traveler can record the scenes he meets. The manu-
facturer, or workman can increase his patronage by submitting to cus- tomers sketches of things to be made. The inventor can carry away a picture of the thing he wishes to improve, and his mistakes will be made on paper instead of in a more costly material. It gives all a new language; it teaches all to see as they never saw before; it lays the foundation for the future painter, or sculptor.
These points indicate a few of the applications which can be made of a knowledge of this department, yet this alone could not be called In- dustrial Drawing. The student has learned nothing of the principles, or practice of Design, of the use of drafting instruments, nor how to make, or even read a working drawing, -the kind necessary for the con- struction of objects. It is true the workman should by all means have the knowledge gained in this department, yet he has learned nothing whatever of that kind of drawing which he wishes to use directly in his daily work in the construction of objects, all of which are made from drawings.
Mechanical Drawing is the second department of our subject. Any system of Industrial Drawing for Public Schools should embrace in its Mechanical department, Geometrical, Projection, and Perspective Draw- ing, with the elements of Machine and Architectural Drawing. The necessary implements are a cheap but accurate scale and drawing com- pass. For advanced work in High Schools pupils should use drawing- boards, T squares and set squares.
Geometrical Drawing is the alphabet of mechanical drawing. It
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teaches exact mechanical methods of dividing lines, finding centers, con- structing various angles and polygons, etc.
Projection Drawing is the representation of objects to scale by plans, elevations and sections. No subject is of greater practical significance. It is the kind of drawing made for the construction of all objects. It is the kind referred to when we say, "He is a poor workman, he cannot even read a drawing," i. e., he cannot interpret nor understand it.
Pupils first learn to draw to scale in simple positions plans and ele- vations of a line, square, rectangle, cube, rectangular prism, cylinder, cone, and other geometric solids. Two or more objects in simple posi- tions can next be taken, as a triangular prism upon a rectangular prism, giving a shape like a house. Common objects can then be undertaken, as a box, table-drawer, desk, cabinet, etc. Pupils should measure the object, work to scale, and show all details necessary for the workman to have in order to construct it.
Mechanical Perspective teaches mechanical methods of making picto- rial representations, which are frequently necessary in mechanical draw- ing, and fixes more firmly the principles underlying the study of free- hand perspective, or Model and Object Drawing.
Architectural Drawing is fully understood to mean generally the representation of plans, elevations, and details of buildings. Pupils can learn how to make plans and elevations of houses, giving most time to designing a convenient arrangement of rooms, and drawing the plans .. Next they can learn how to represent the various joints used in framing, design various details, as window-caps, cornices, etc., and finally such a problem as the following might be given :- Given a lot of land 40x100 feet, to design plans and elevations for a house of moderate cost, having a parlor, dining-room, kitchen, three sleeping-rooms, and a sufficient number of closets.
Machine Drawing. In this subject pupils would learn different methods of representing screws, V and square thread, nuts, bolts, parts of an engine, as fly-wheel, pillow-block, connecting and eccentric rods, stub, end, etc , and finally, perhaps, plans and elevations of a stationary engine.
The Architectural and Machine drawings should be lined in with ruling pen and India ink. Some details might be drawn in perspective.
There is no need of enlarging upon the importance of the mechan- ical department. It speaks for itself. It is one of the vital parts of any system of Industrial Drawing. It and Design will do more to turn the attention of boys to mechanical pursuits than any other subject they pursue.
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Mechanical Drawing should be studied in connection with Free- hand Drawing from the sixth school year through the High School. Advanced Projection Drawing, Perspective, Architectural and Machine Drawing should be studied only in the High School.
The department of Decorative Design is the last to be mentioned, but not for that reason of less importance. It is intimately associated with both the others, and a less distinct department than either. In its practice use is made of both the others. From its importance as the only study exercising the inventive faculties, and its immense practical significance, it is studied in connection with the other subjects from the lowest Primary through the High School.
Pupils commence by making variations and combinations of simple geometric forms; next they repeat these horizontally or vertically, making borders; then repeat in all directions, forming all-over patterns for the decoration of flat surfaces. Next various details are given to be arranged in a given geometric form, and pupils are taught to conven- tionalize and use natural foliage forms as material for designs. By the sixth school year, pupils should make creditable designs from foliage conventionalized and adapted to fill given geometric spaces. By the seventh or eighth year, pupils can make acceptable designs for carpets, tile flooring, chinaware, book-covers, wall-paper and other articles, the designs being worked in pencil or ink. In the High School, plants can be brought in and analyzed to discover the ornamental details that would be useful as material, and the designs may be worked in water- color. The subjects for design might depend something on the home industries. Throughout the course great pains should be taken to incul- cate the principles of good taste and design, and to give pupils a knowl- edge of the historical styles of ornament.
The necessity for instruction in the principles and practice of design is apparent when we remember that nearly every article made is more or less decorated, and frequently owes much of its value to this decoration. We, at present, import millions of dollars' worth of goods that receive most of their value from the art or design that has been bestowed upon them, and export almost none. A new occupation would be opened for girls, which is now almost entirely filled by foreigners.
The above course of study maps out substantially what is being done in Industrial Drawing in the public schools of Massachusetts and very many of our Western cities. Only one hour and a half to two hours a week is necessary. The regular teachers do all the teaching, except in the High School, when the work there has become so advanced as to make a special teacher necessary. Until pupils now in the lower grades of
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school have passed through this course and become the teachers, our teachers will need special instruction in order to attain the best results.
In a city of ten thousand inhabitants and upward, a special instructor can be engaged to instruct the teachers, superintend the teaching of the subject in the Primary and Grammar schools and teach in the High School. Several smaller towns can unite in engaging the services of such a person. Much can be done toward giving teachers the necessary instruction in County or City Institutes, especially if the same person can be obtained for a week or more several consecutive years.
If Superintendents prepare themselves to supervise this work, and a competent person is engaged to meet the teachers five to ten days during a year for instruction, good results could be obtained.
Boards of Education are at liberty to make Drawing one of the sub- jects of study and require teachers to be examined in it. When, how- ever, Drawing is made a regular subject for examination for all teachers, and when State Normal Schools are established and good teachers in this department provided, then Ohio will be in a fair way to develop this most important subject.
W. S. GOODNOUGH.
LITERARY CULTURE.
The assertions are getting well worn, that our people lack literary culture, and that our schools do not furnish a high grade of this valuable article. Sometimes, in the mind of the critic, there is a vagueness about the term, and we are not always sure that we catch his meaning.
But it is entirely safe to assert, that there are literary works, which the common judgment of readers of taste and intelligence has declared good, refining, elevating; while these works are not enjoyed by those, who read little besides the newspaper, whose ear perceives no concord of sweet sounds in the harmonious strains of the great poets, who care little for the results obtained by the investigators in mental or moral science, who yield to no temptations toward the study of history, except to gratify their worse half by conning over the red pages of war and tumult. These persons. and they are not few, will claim with emphasis, that they can read; while, so far as the great educating power of the art is concerned. they labor under a delusion. They can not read, at least they do not. The beautiful, the excellent, the real in letters do not draw them and give them pleasure, and make them better by the contact. They have rot literary culture.
Can not our schools do more than they are doing to heal this defect,
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and cause the bare mechanical ability to call words, when seen in a book, to bring forth a richer fruitage ?
We want our own children to gain, as a part of their school educa- tion, the power to enjoy, not merely to read as a task, or because it is the fashion, the great monuments of literary art. It may be admitted, for it is true, that the cases are rare where this power, in any great degree, is possessed by the boys and girls when they take their final leave of school.
The question is, how shall this spirit be infused into them ? What must we do in the way of training? To some extent this taste, faculty, spirit, is an inheritance. Silent example here, as elsewhere, is stronger than noisy precept. But many children receive no such inheritance, and their home examples point the other way. So the question stands : What should be done at the schools ?
One early step in the direction of literary culture is the reading of pleasant stories and simple poems to the little people, before they know how to treat themselves in this way. Many a glowing fire has been thus kindled. In homes, where books are an essential part of the furni- ture, kept for use and not for show, these kindlings are commonly pre- pared by the first teacher, the mother. But when there is a failure at home, the school may do something to supply the lack. Only those teachers who have tried the experiment, know what a delighted and attentive audience there will be. It would seem that progress has been many stages back to the time, when so many of the same listeners, men and women grown, wait, martyr-like, the end of essay, lecture, or sermon.
A little child loves to hear the same story over and over again. He is making it part of himself. There has been a change for the worse, when this habit gives way to a skimming of books.
But the second step is taken when, under the care of the teacher, the child makes the reading-book a daily companion. Now, if the matter be of the best, and the teacher be skillful enough to prevent the reading exercise's ever becoming a weariness to flesh and childhood's restless spirit, and if a pleasing variety result from an abundance of ordinary reading matter, while some of the most nutritive selections are read, and read, till they are fast locked in the memory, the work of cultivating a literary taste will progress. Indeed, there is not much trouble at this stage, for if children have the books, they will read, and by often reading, will commit to memory what pleases them, without any pur- pose so to do. I have sometimes thought that the germ of literary taste must be hard to kill if it survive and grow in the heart of a boy, who at stated times during every school-day has to stand erect, toe a mark,
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and, under penalty, keep his eyes on the book, where the keenestIsearch will show him nothing that he has not seen often before.
With no intention to discuss the right or wrong method of conduct- ing an oral reading recitation, I repeat that an abundance of well selected material, and a stimulus given to the memorizing and reciting of passages most worthy to be welded into the character of the youth, are the two things to secure during the earlier years of the school-course, while there is plenty of time for it. If the reading habit is not yet fixed, success will be the reward of that teacher, who, in the higher grades, with several additional branches, in which he must give instruc- tion, still by industry and tact finds the time and the way to keep up the practice ; adapting the material to the riper years of the pupil; or, going back to my illustration, piling on larger fuel as the fire waxes hotter. Better results are not wrought out, and pupils leave school without this culture, this taste for better reading, this reading habit, because, after the early grades, it is too much neglected, and a reading book is looked upon as something for children. English Grammar, and what we call English Literature-a book about books, criticisms often concerning things the pupil has never seen, studies about the style of an author, known only by name, are the next steps in the curriculum, and the youth is fortunate, indeed, if the last stage of the effort to beget in him a love of books and the power to rightly use them is not worse than the first. Though Thoreau spoke most truly, when he said: "To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit. is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise, which the customs of the day esteem."
I have not urged, for I do not believe, that the elementary work here outlined, is sufficient of itself to insure in every case the ripening of a literary taste, and that a facility for copious quotation from good authors is literary culture. I do affirm, that such exercises are a good beginning of a work which should receive more attention than it does. If the plant be not cultivated, the fault is not with the sowing of the seed.
The exercise of committing to memory proper selections of prose and poetry, cultivates memory, develops the nobler emotions, and directs their expression, affording excellent material for elocutionary drill. It should be continued by the study of master-pieces in their entirety. More benefit will arise from a familiarizing of eye, ear, memory, soul, with the stirring and sparkling lines of "The Lady of the Lake", "Snow Bound", "The Courtship of Miles Standish", and " The Deserted Village", than from the careless, hurried reading through of all
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the poems Scott, Whittier, Longfellow, and Goldsmith wrote. But if the child's taste do not relish these, or even before the trial is made, place in his hand the Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales, The Crofton Boys, Robinson Crusoe, Dickens's Child's History of England, and Pilgrim's Progress. No harm is done if he begin with any one of these, only have him begin and continue. Of course these writings and writers are named only as examples. The number is large. Let the teacher aid the young student in making his selections.
What I have just said with reference to certain models of art ยท within easy mental reach of our boys and girls, I may assert of the study, a little later, of an essay of Macaulay or Lowell, a novel of Dickens or Hawthorne, a sketch or biography of Irving or Holmes, a drama of Shakspeare. Only, the selection should always be within, at highest, tip-toe reach of the pupil; be something which, tasting, he finds he has some relish for; be taken as a whole, ruminated by the morsel, and inwardly digested.
It would be something to rejoice over, if every teacher in Ohio, whether at work in the graded schools, or toiling alone out among the sub-districts, would attempt something on this plan. Books of the best literature are now almost as free as "wine and milk and gospel grace." At any rate, the will finds the way. Let people call it a hobby, if the name suits them, and some persons think they have advanced a cogent argument against any plan proposed, when they christen it somebody's hobby. But it is worth while to ask, whether it is not better to ride a horse of this one-gaited species, especially if its path carry us where the air is pure and the prospect wide, than to go all the time afoot.
A thing which I wish to state in this connection is, that every teacher should, as he has opportunity, endeavor to cultivate in the minds and hearts of the young a love of nature. It is a refining and refined source of pleasure. Such a course in literature, as I am com- mending, may serve to implant and to foster this beautiful trait. Until the child has had his senses dulled, he loves to use his eyes in gazing upon the strange things of this curious world, into which he has come, and eagerly listens while some one tells him about these things. And that person has no call to the office of teacher, who has not in his bosom much of the child's heart left to respond to the wants of child- hood.
A love of nature herself and of the poetry of nature are near akin. The poet lends us his eyes and we see things in the world, which lay hidden before. The teacher, who has his own heart open to nature
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holding communion with her visible forms, and hearing her varied language, if he be also a lover of the best literature, may make these two interpret each other. The child under his skilled direction can learn to behold the snow-storm with more delight from having read what the poets say of it, and can come to the study of the verbal picture with a pleasant poetic glow, when he turns to it with the original fresh upon his retina.
A half-dozen readings of "Walden, or Life in the Woods" would open new fountains of the love of nature in the teacher's soul, and also give him access to a "well-spring of English undefiled," and Words- worth's Excursion, though it was Byron's aversion, will afford him a healthful mental journey.
I have here spoken of one trait of character-for a love of the works of the Creator seems to me to be an element of character-but it is apparent that other traits may receive culture from the same source- reverence for God, love of parents, patriotism, charity, honesty, truth, kindness, and whatever other ingredients help to make up true man- hood and womanhood. 1
There is nothing, as some have foolishly declared, antagonistic in the utmost refinement of taste, and the soundest morality; and these both may receive training and development from proper literary drill, especially if the list of books embrace one that should never be omitted from the shortest course-the Book which, read in the right spirit and absorbed into the life, is the only infallible guide through the mazes of this world to the delights of a better.
In concluding this, my final report, I wish to leave on record my opinion that our school system should be improved. It is inferior to those of most of the other States.
Something thorough and immediate should be done to prepare a large number of better qualified teachers.
Every district should be under the supervision of a skilled expert. In school matters only are our people slow to see and approve of this principle; and Ohio is almost alone among the States in making this strange exception.
Each township should be a district pure and simple.
My official term has been in the main pleasant. My professional brethren have been courteous. Both General Assemblies have given me fair appropriations, and though the members did not read my reports themselves, they ordered them printed for the use of others.
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