![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
At the end of the nineteenth century, proponents of the manual training movement called for the implementation of manual training classes in America’s schools. This movement – whose distinctive feature was ‘the education of the mind, and of the hand as the agent of the mind’ – was supported by a revolutionary rhetoric: manual training classes were supposed to be at the centre of a school transformation dedicated to the principles of ‘learning by doing’ and ‘freedom for the child.’ Using archival sources from the city of Menomonie, Wisconsin, this article is conceived as an effort to move beyond progressive reformers’ rhetoric in order to understand the functioning of manual training classes. By documenting how progressive reformers changed the curriculum, social purposes and reality of schooling for local pupils, it unveils the irony of manual training reform in Menomonie, ie that the Menomonie schools remained bastions of social order and stability.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Calvin M. Woodward, The Manual Training School (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1887), 217.
2 Henry H. Belfield, Address of Henry Belfield, as Director of the Chicago Manual Training School, June 19, 1884 (Chicago: Cowdrey, Clark, 1884), 7–8.
3 John Dewey, ‘The Place of Manual Training in the Elementary Course of Study’, Manual Training Magazine 2, no. 4 (July 1901): 194–7.
4 John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1899), 51.
5 John H. Mason, ‘Wisconsin Educational Alliance’, Manual Training Magazine 1, no. 2 (January 1900): 102.
6 Dewey, School and Society, 43; Edward L. Thorndike, ‘The Elimination of Pupils from School’, in Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 4, 1907 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1908), 10.
7 For the historiography of manual education in the United States, see: Charles A. Bennett, History of Manual and Industrial Education, 1870–1917 (Peoria, IL: Manual Arts Press, 1937); David B. Tyack and Harvey A. Kantor, eds., Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Arthur G. Wirth, Education in the Technological Society: The Vocational-Liberal Studies Controversy in the Early Twentieth Century (Scranton, PA: Intext Educational Publishers, 1972); Harvey A. Kantor, Learning to Earn: Work, School, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); John L. Rury, Education and Women’s Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991); Jane B. Powers, The ‘Girl Question’ in American Education: Vocational Education for Young Women in the Progressive Era (London: Falmer, 1992); and Herbert M. Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).
8 Lorenzo D. Harvey, ‘Senator James H. Stout’, Manual Training Magazine 12, no. 4 (April 1911): 391.
9 Michael V. O’Shea, Everyday Problems in Teaching (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1912), 310.
10 Adele M. Shaw, ‘The Ideal Schools of Menomonie’, The World’s Work 7 (1903–4): 4540–53.
11 Madison Journal, quoted in Dunn County News, January 4, 1895.
12 University of Wisconsin-Stout Archives: Stout Small Series 49: Awards and Certificates, 1904, Saint Louis World Fair Grand Prize and Gold Medal.
13 Ann M. Keppel and James I. Clark, ‘James H. Stout and the Menomonie Schools’, Wisconsin Magazine of History 42, no. 3 (Spring 1959): 200–10.
14 Ibid., 200.
15 Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 142–7; and D. Agnew, ‘A History of Stout State University (1893–1966)’, in History of the Wisconsin State Universities, ed. W. D. Wyman (River Falls, WI: River Falls University Press, 1968), 233–72.
16 Dwight Agnew, James Huff Stout: Maker of Models (Menomonie: University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents doing business as University of Wisconsin-Stout, 1990).
17 Kevin Thorie, Interpreting the Dream: A Stout History (Menomonie: University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents doing business as University of Wisconsin-Stout, 1990); Beatrice A. Bigony, ed., Women at Stout: A Centennial Retrospective (Menomonie: University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents doing business as University of Wisconsin-Stout, 1991).
18 Ann N. Hansen, ‘A Menomonie Perspective. The Photographs of Albert Hansen’, Wisconsin Magazine of History 87, no. 1 (2003): 30–7; Andrea Rottmann, ‘A Pictorial Class Prophecy: Revisiting the Menomonie High School Class of 1905’, The Wisconsin Magazine of History 93, no. 3 (2010): 42–9.
19 University of Wisconsin-Stout Archives, University Relations, Undergraduate Bulletins, 1903–1912, Stout Series 1, Box 1, Folder 6, Stout Institute Bulletin 5, no. 1 (Menomonie, WI: Stout Institute, March 1910), 5.
20 Wisconsin Journal of Education 27, no. 9 (September 1897): 195. This section of the article contains elements that are in part derived and translated from chapter two of my book: Sébastien-Akira Alix, L'éducation progressiste aux États-Unis. Histoire, philosophie et pratiques (1876–1919) (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2017), 69–80.
21 Dwight Agnew, ‘A Short History of Stout’, in Where the Wild Rice Grows: A Sesquicentennial Portrait of Menomonie, 1846–1996, ed. L. Lynd and J. M. Russell (Menomonie: Menomonie Sesquicentennial Commission, 1996), 154.
22 David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Selwyn K. Troen, The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis System, 1838–1920 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), 179; Julia Wrigley, Class Politics and Public Schools, Chicago 1900–1950 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982); David J. Hogan, Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 153; Walter Licht, Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840–1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
23 Shaw, ‘The Ideal Schools’, 4540.
24 Thorie, Interpreting the Dream, 3.
25 Agnew, ‘A History of Stout’, 236.
26 Agnew, James Huff Stout, 25.
27 Agnew, ‘A History of Stout’, 237.
28 The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Dunn Series 84, Menomonie Public Schools (Wis.), Testimonial and Petition to James H. Stout, 1897.
29 Keppel and Clark, ‘James H. Stout’, 204.
30 University of Wisconsin-Stout Archives, University Relations, Undergraduate Bulletins, 1903–1912, Stout Series 1, Box 1, Folder 6, Stout Institute Bulletin 5, no. 3 (Menomonie, WI: Stout Institute, September 1910).
31 Franklin Curtiss-Wedge, Geo. O. Jones et al., History of Dunn County, Wisconsin (Minneapolis-Winona, MN: H. Cooper, Jr., 1925), 118.
32 Tracy L. Steffes, School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern America, 1890–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 14.
33 Judson E. Hoyt, Annual Report of the Manual Training Department of the High School at Menomonie, County of Dunn, State of Wisconsin, for the year ending June 30, 1897, in State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Dunn Series 85, Annual Reports of the Manual Training Department to the State Superintendent, 1895–1908, Box 1, Folder 2.
34 Ibid.
35 Board of Education of Menomonie, Wisconsin, Circular of Information, School Year 1904–1905, Courses in Manual Work in the Menomonie Public Schools, 1904–5 (Menomonie, WI: News Print), 48; Stout Institute, Circular of Information: Manual Training, Domestic Science, Drawing and Art in the Menomonie Public Schools. School Year 1909–1910 (Menomonie, WI: News Print), 4.
36 Prior to the sixth grade, physical exercises were given by individual teachers in their classrooms under supervision of the director of physical culture or his assistant. Starting in the sixth grade onwards, pupils were exercising regularly in the gymnasium, which was supposed to be better fitted to meet their needs.
37 N. J. MacArthur, ‘Physical Training Results: The Menomonie School Boy Versus the Normal American Boy’, in Stout Training Schools, Bulletin of the Stout Training Schools 3, no. 1 (March 1908): 59.
38 Board of Education of Menomonie, Circular of Information, School Year 1904–1905, 48.
39 Ibid.; ‘Brief Announcement of the Public Schools of Menomonie’, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Dunn Series 85, High School Annual Reports, 1892–1920, Box 1, Folder 4.
40 Lists of textbooks used in the Menomonie schools may be found in the reports of the Board of Education to the Common Council. See: Report of the Board of Education to the Common Council. School Year 1902–1903, July 1903, 33–5; Report of the Board of Education for the School Year 1 July 1903–1 July 1904 to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Menomonie, 22–4, in State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Dunn Series 81, Report of the Board of Education to the Common Council, 1901–1910, Box 1, Folder 4.
41 Sarah E. Lockwood and Mary A. Emerson, Composition and Rhetoric for Higher Schools (Boston: Ginn, 1902); Philip V. N. Myers, General History (Boston: Ginn, 1906).
42 Franklin V. N. Painter, Introduction to English Literature (Boston: Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1894); Alphonso G. Newcomer, American Literature (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1902).
43 George F. Buxton and Fred L. Curran, Paper and Cardboard Construction: Book Problems, Box Problems, Card Problems, Envelope Problems. An Analysis of the Scope of Paper and Cardboard Construction for Primary Grades of Public Schools (Menomonie, WI: Menomonie Press, 1911), 9.
44 Ibid., 11, 153–4, here 154 (emphasis added).
45 Ibid.
46 At the time, there were five professional photographers in Menomonie: Milton Swant, Robert O. Helsom, George E. Belair, Fred Haft and Albert Hansen. The biggest photographic studio in Menomonie was the Helsom Studio, owned by Robert O. Helsom. In 1908, it became the Helsom-Belair Studio and was renamed the Belair Studio in 1913 after Belair bought it. In 1907, Albert Hansen, a self-taught photographer who had studied and taught at the Stout Institute, founded another photographic studio in Menomonie with his partner Fred Haft. See: Scott W. Raether, Wisconsin Family Albums & Photographers’ Imprints and Biographies 1800’s to Early 1900’s (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2013); Hansen, ‘A Menomonie Perspective’.
47 Most of the archival photographs taken during the Progressive Era preserved in the University of Wisconsin-Stout Archives were reproduced in the Stout Institute Bulletin. Menomonie school officials used these bulletins and the photographs it contained as a means to document, spread and propagandise manual training reform effort in Menomonie.
48 Richard B. Dudgeon, ‘The Menomonie Manual Training School’, Dunn County News, October 31, 1890.
49 Buxton and Curran, Paper and Cardboard Construction, 154.
50 David B. Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 84, 83.
51 Stout Institute, Stout Annual 1920 (Menomonie, WI: Dunn Co. News), 122.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Tyack and Cuban, Tinkering, 84.
57 James H. Stout, Duluth Evening Herald, April 10, 1908.
58 William T. Elzinga, ‘Trained Workers for the Shop’, in Stout Institute, Stout Annual 1910 (Menomonie, WI: Dunn Co. News), 69.
59 Ibid., 12–18.
60 See: Robert J. Clark, The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1876–1916 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Wendy Kaplan and Eileen Boris, eds., ‘The Art That Is Life’: The Art & Crafts Movement in America, 1875–1920 (Boston, MA: Bulfinch Press, 1998); and Wendy Kaplan, The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe & America: Design for the Modern World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004).
61 Rollin Marsden, ‘The Relation of the Arts and Crafts to Manual Training’, in Stout Training Schools, Bulletin of the Stout Training Schools, Menomonie, Wisconsin 11, no. 3 (September 1907): 27.
62 On the ways through which material culture shapes individuals’ experiences and identities, see: Leora Auslander, ‘Beyond Words’, American Historical Review 110, no. 4 (October 2005): 1015–45.
63 Dewey, School and Society, 51.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sébastien-Akira Alix
Sébastien-Akira Alix is currently an associate researcher at the Centre de Recherche sur les Liens Sociaux (CERLIS – UMR 8070) and a teacher in Educational Sciences at the Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, France. His publications so far have focused on the history and philosophy of progressive education in the United States; on John Dewey’s educational theory; and on the ways Americans perceived French schooling at the beginning of the twentieth century. His most recent book is L’éducation progressiste aux États-Unis. Histoire, philosophie et pratiques (1876–1919) (Grenoble, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2017).