Manuel work.

Manuel work.

 

To interest children, they will be asked for simple, but complete and finished realizations. We will eliminate work that does not offer young people an act of direct use or the manufacture of a real object.

The work must be able to be done quickly enough so as not to tire the child's patience; but the educator must ensure that the child does not derive only a superficial experience from it. As much as we must to a large extent let the pupil choose his activities, so we must know how to demand care and finish.

 

a) Outdoor and Agricultural Works.

 

The training grounds or the school garden will give children the opportunity to carry out earthworks, maintenance and cultivation. We will also teach the braiding of the rush, the fascination, the construction of footbridges and rafts; we will prepare improvised shelters, in woven straw, in clods of grass, in tree branches, in wattle; we will build rustic furniture. If possible, young city dwellers will be associated with work in the countryside (harvest, harvest), work in the forest, etc.

              Finally, teachers must not forget that the best physical exercises and the best manual activities can sometimes be found in the performance of community service, for the benefit of the school and the municipality. This work will also have the merit of attaching young people to the environment in which they live: thus, the French will learn to love their village, their city, their country, by rendering the community the services of which they are capable. .

 

b) Handicraft work.

 

The initiation will begin with the easy cuts and massages, the rafia work, the tapestry, and others still well known in nursery school or in kindergartens.

Then come against cutting wood - plated, wire work iron, stencils, knitwear collections (herbaria, fingerprints), the work of cardboard (eg reproduction of a village to the nearest hundredth). Students can learn to net and weave heavy canvas.

Then we go to more complex work: linocuts, school printing, pyrography, wood knife work, leather, binding, under - glass, simple locksmith, carpentry. From the age of eleven, children will be able to start, for example, building their own canvas canoes. They will be interested in the construction of scale models of gliders and airplanes, which especially exercise their spirit of invention and observation by connecting to experiments which at the same time constitute a real outdoor game.

Finally, after fourteen years, they will tackle the work of adjustment, forge, cabinetmaking, bookbinding, wood carving, current electrical equipment, welding, photography, painting, decorations, assembly, masks and costumes, etc.

Some of these activities can be practiced almost without installations, thanks to a reduced equipment: one must be able to practice them everywhere. Others require installation; some schools have solved the problem by creating workshops for various trades and making manual activity compulsory: it is desirable that, gradually, in schools of a certain size, this example be followed.

The skill acquired by children can often be used with advantage in the decoration of the school and the manufacture of objects allowing to illustrate or to facilitate the intellectual teaching.