French Schools.

This view of the Continental methods of training foremen would not be complete without an allusion to the French École des Arts et. Métiers at Châlons-sur-Marne. There are others of the same type in France, at Aix, Angers, and Lille, each having a fixed geographical limit. In each substantially the same plan is followed; but it will conduce to clearness to confine the description to that at Chalons-sur-Marne. The number of students is 285, all boarders; one-half are tree, page 17 each of the other half pays $120 a year. The age of the students on entering is 16. The total annual budget is about $83,000, largely paid, of course, by the state. This makes the annual cost per pupil, including board, about $290. The school appliances, which are of an antiquated form, are being supplanted by machinery in accordance with modern demands, requiring an expenditure of $28,000 before the complete substitution can be accomplished.

The pupils daily spend 6 hours in school and 6¾ in the workshop; the school day is therefore 12¾ hours long, the weekly tale of hours 76½. Tools and machines made in the workshops by the students are sold each year and produce about $6,500.¹

The pupils are admitted on the results of the examinations, a preliminary competitive examination in French, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, and manual work, and another at the school in other elementary branches and in general aptitude. Many of the large public schools have special preparatory classes for this school.

The 100 boys who enter each year are separated into two divisions of 50 each, one section going to a fitting shop, the other to a pattern shop; after six months they exchange places. The same plan is pursued in the smithy and foundry.

In the fitting shop, which is divided into three sections, one of which corresponds with each year of training, there is a large plant, viz, an engine and boiler, which each student manages in turn for a week, a tool store, and abundant machinery. In the first year the students make squares, compasses, vises, &c.; in the second, detached portions of machinery and small machines; in the third they are employed in the production of machines for actual use in the institution or for sale.

The foundry contains three cupolas, one for heavy castings, say of thirty hundred-weight. The smithy has eight forges, at each of which two students work, taking turns as smith and striker. The pattern shop has places for 100 students, and is thoroughly furnished. In all the shops, besides the regular foremen, instructors, several mechanics are employed. The "fitter's shop" is preferred by the students, and in the third year 69 of them are found there, against 10 in the foundry, 7 in the smithy, and 8 in the pattern shop.

The discipline is of the most rigorous character; the students wear uniform, and are closely confined to the school, which they leave only at rare intervals under the charge of an instructor. To this militarylike severity of discipline much of the success of the graduates is justly attributed.

It is fair to say that opinions differ in France respecting the merits

¹ The director of the excellent Ambachts school at Amsterdam says: "Experience shows that his being engaged on a bona fide piece of workmanship serves as a powerful stimulant to a pupil."

page 18 of the students trained at these schools, though no one questions their great serviceableness. The complaint is that the graduates fail to appreciate the value of time and of materials as elements in practical work, and have a tendency to minute and artificial finish. It is found that they require some preparation by experience in actual business before they are competent to take full charge of work. This is quite natural.

The commissioners ascertained, however, that nearly all the graduates of this school obtain positions in remunerative and honorable callings, being employed as draughtsmen in manufactories, chiefs of drawing offices, and directors of works and managers of shops.

A few become teachers of engineering, as M. Bocquet of la Villette; many have positions on railways; a very few remain workmen, or simply foremen. They generally enter works as workmen, but owing to their technical training rapidly rise to the position of foremen. The conclusion of the commissioners is no doubt justified that "in affording an education in which theory is not carried too far and is duly combined with laboratory practice and in some cases with workshop instruction, and in which, moreover, the scientific teaching is made to bear upon the principal manufactures of the districts, these higher technical schools [a grade below the German Polytechnics and the École Centrale of Paris] provide the kind of education that is best adapted to the various grades of managers of works."

This being the case, it is gratifying to know that these schools are increasing in number and influence in every European country. In the matter of attempting to provide some substitute for the extinct apprenticeship system, France clearly takes the lead. There are two distinct plaus now in vogue: one to introduce manual instruction into the ordinary elementary schools; the other, to erect apprenticeship schools, sometimes called superior elementary schools.

The primary communal school of the Rue Tournefort was for a long time the only school in France in which trade-teaching was combined with other elementary education; now it has many imitators. It was started on its present footing in 1873. The school hours are from 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening, a free hour at noon and a halt holiday on Thursday; and on Sundays the pupils from 9 to 12 and from 1 to 4 hear instructive or amusing lectures. The weekly tale of hours, excluding Sunday and the half holiday on Thursday, is 49. The number of hours spent in the shop is 18. Deducting this number from 49, we have 31, the time spent in school in the United States by primary and secondary pupils being about 30. It appears, then, that the French add the shop work to the time spent in what may be called literary work. In the lowest class the children are six years old and receive three lessons a week, of one hour each, in handicraft. From ten years old and until graduation they have 18 hours in the shop. There are 300 children in this school, and they are generally able to earn on graduating, at the age of 13-15, about one dollar a week.

The studies of the school are drawing, modelling, mouldiug, and carving; arithmetic and geometry; geography and history; physics; anatomy, physiology, and hygiene; French reading and writing; and civil government, technology, and morals. The duties of the workshop are lathe and forge work, joinery, and a little higher machine work.

The reports of the inspectors tending to cast some suspicion on the quality of the literary work of this school, the authorities of the city of Paris, in their further experiments in the introduction of manual training into ordinary primary schools, have confined themselves to teaching more advanced drawing from models¹ and the use of ordinary tools for working wood and iron, without attempting to teach special trades. There are about fifty schools where these experiments are in progress. It is already apparent that the shop work tends to concentrate along the lines of dominant French industries, and the effort to avoid teaching trades will not be very successful.

These schools must not be confounded with another sort, viz, the municipal apprenticeship schools, from which they are quite distinct, in respect to the age of the pupils, the course of study, and the end in view. The most famous of these is that in the Boulevard dela Villette, which has been in operation since December 8, 1872.

It is a day school designed to fit boys to be good artisans, and proves its success by pointing to the large number of its graduates who have been successful in the fields for which the school prepared them.² No pretence is made that the shopwork serves any educational purpose other than to teach the boys to use tools and machines. The hours are from 7 A. M. to 7 P. M., 6 days a week for three years, allowing two hours a day for meals and recreation. The boys enter at 14. During the first two years they work four hours in the school and six in the shops. In the third year, two in the school and eight in the shops. In the first year they are taught the nature and conversion of material; in the second, they pass to actual construction. In the first year the work is uniform for all; in the second, a trade must be chosen and followed.

In 188l-'82 there were 250 pupils; 107 in the first year, 81 in the second, and 62 in the third. The number of absentees did not equal 7 per cent, of the whole, and was mainly confined to the entering class. A considerable number leave at the end of the first year for many causes, usually because they are unfit for the work. Those who leave at the end of the second year generally find remunerative employment.

The annual cost of maintenance is about $15,000, or a little less than $60 per pupil. The trades taught at this school are shown in the fol-

¹ In all the primary schools of Paris it is noteworthy that drawing is taught from models and casts rather than from flat examples and copies.

² M. Greard, in his report on primary education, calls attention to the fact that of 74 graduates 69 have remained "loyal" to the profession taught them at the schools.

page 20 lowing exbibit of the number of boys engaged in each for the last two years of the course:

	Second year.	Third year.
Fitters	42	34
Smiths	5	2
Turners in motal	3	5
Carpenters and joiners	4	2
Patten-makers	11	5
Wood-turners	0	0
Locksmiths	11	4
Electric apparatus makers	5	10
Total	81	62

The following schedule will show how the time of the boys is spent in the Paris Municipal Apprenticeship School:

In addition to the municipal apprenticeship schools there are two other sorts substantially of the same kind that are largely attended, viz: (1) apprenticeship schools, sustained by great corporations for the benefit page 21 of children of their employés, of which a good example is that of Messrs. Chaix & Co., printers; (2) those conducted under the superintendence of the Christain Brothers by a charitable association whose schools in the Rue de Vaugirard, at Issy, and at Igny, contain more than 2,400 pupils.

The schools already mentioned do not in any case confine themselves to a single trade. The Government sustains many simple apprenticeship schools, the main effect of each being to foster some trade, as the watchmaking school at Cluses and the school of porcelain decoration at Sèvres.

There is a large number of these schools in Europe, some supported by the State and some by a corporation. To this category must be referred the many Fachschulen, as at Iserlohn, for industrial art applied to metal-work; one of the most interesting schools in Europe for jewellers and goldsmiths, at Vienna; and one for drawing, modelling, and decoration, including house painting, at Cologne. There are one hundred of these Fachschulen in Austria alone. In the Cologne school there are two sessions a year, the winter session being the better attended, because the young men go to practical work during the summer months.

There is also a large number of weaving, dyeing, and industrial-art schools which fall a little outside the scope of this paper.

In all these institutions, while the craft is foremost, great attention is paid to drawing, modelling, the elementary mathematics, and the elements of the physical sciences; while, as far as possible, evening schools are everywhere maintained, to remedy the deficiencies of the day schools or day scholars.