The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

"Our Work"

House of Education--To ex-students. The report and the Natural Science and Handicrafts taught by our ex-students during the past five years is most cheering and encouraging. Not one handicraft seems to have fallen through. There has not been time yet for our Leather-embossing, Repousse and Woodcarving to work their way, but Book-binding, Cardboard-Sloyd and Basket-making seem to have succeeded very well. With regard to sloyd work, the fact that it encourages children to invent and carry out models of their own speaks greatly in its favor. It is the inventive faculty in children we all wish to encourage and cultivate. The same may be said of Basket-making. Children soon begin to invent their own patterns, and if along with pretty designs we get careful and accurate work the educational value of these employments soon shows itself. The Nature Note-books, where they have been properly worked by teachers and pupils are invariably a success, but where they are taken up in a half-hearted kind of way they, naturally, do not succeed. This rarely the case, and the report on the Natural History is most gratifying. All our ex-students have done something, many exceedingly well; they are interested themselves and succeeded in making the out-door world a delight to their pupils. This as it should be; a boy who grows up with a strong love for Nature and natural science will possess a safeguard against many temptations in after life, and may possibly not only lend a hand to science in general but may turn out a good scientist himself. Encourage this taste then whenever you can, only be on your guard and strenuously set your faces against any collections that involve pain and suffering, or that encourage the cruelty so often a part of a boy's nature.