Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/214

This page has been validated.
202
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seaboard, or held in connection with some enterprising institution of learning. The student in pharmacy and chemistry can conduct her researches on an equality with men, or, if she prefer, in laboratories controlled and officered in large part by women themselves.

The student in medicine now gains access to medical colleges in nearly every State in the Union, and the legitimacy of her pursuit as well as her ability to grapple with it gains increasing advocates. "She is no longer regarded as too good and too stupid to study medicine." The candidate for medical honors also finds in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, well-appointed schools of medicine especially adapted to her needs, with corps of trained and sympathizing instructors ready to lend a helping hand.

Looking across the Atlantic, we find countries so lately intolerant of the intellectual advancement of woman at last yielding, not always gracefully, to the inevitable. The little republic of Switzerland and the mighty empire of Russia have for many years manifested practical sympathy with the cause; and now, slowly yet surely, conservative England begins to recognize the fact that the Anglo-Saxon race, with its boasted love of liberty, has been neglectful of its duty to womankind.

To trace any more fully the history of the recent period does not fall within the province of our address; we look to the pioneers of this movement who are still with us for an exhaustive and authentic record such as participators and eye-witnesses alone can supply.

METHODS IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.[1]

By Professor SILVANUS P. THOMPSON.

SHALL we have a school in the workshop, or a workshop in the school? Or what other combination can we devise that will permit mental and scientific training to proceed after the age has been attained at which serious manual labor must begin? Hitherto we have been contented at most to organize night schools, evening classes, and so-called Mechanics' Institutes for our apprentices, leaving it to their own caprice whether they chose to employ their leisure hours in self-improvement or squander them in self-indulgence. On the Continent of Europe somewhat different ideas have prevailed. In Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, and even Russia, there are innumerable examples of Technical Schools and Polytechnic Schools of all descriptions, which profess to teach with greater or less completeness the

  1. Continuation of article from the September "Contemporary Review," entitled "The Apprenticeship of the Future," the first part of which was published in the November Monthly, under the title of "Education as a Hindrance to Manual Occupations."