Studio: international art (14.1898)

Bimanual Training

consist of blackboard drawing with both hands,
clay modelling and carving in wood.

This training is not made compulsory, but about
2000 boys and girls attend the Central Industrial
Art School one half-day each week to undergo the
course.

Except at Parklea (Private) School, Liverpool,
and in my own studio, no similar systematic teach-
ing is carried on in England.

The course extends through two years, and
instead of its interfering with the progress of other
studies it is found to be altogether helpful, and
that the deportment, character and intelligence of
the children are greatly improved. The teachers,
too, are enabled to infuse a new energy into their
classes by the introduction of blackboard drawing
and clay modelling to illustrate their subjects.

In the present-day endeavour to relieve the ex-
cessive burden of the mental work in the school by
assigning to the hand its share in all-round
education, it is well to remember how much the
control of the muscular movements of the normally
healthy child differ from the control exercised by
the adult.

Some interesting experiments made in this direc-
tion by Professor Hancock, of Clark University,
Massachusetts, upon a large number of children
in the first years of school life, tend to prove
that the larger muscles come first under control,

FIG. 3.—COMPLEX FORMS

the order of development of control being body,
shoulder, arm, forearm, hand. The hand power is
latent while the arm power is developing, but the
hand power gains, and eventually surpasses the
arm power.

Again, the undeveloped mental powers of the
child preclude any sustained attention except in
connection with his spontaneous activities, and the
close relation between the muscle, nerve, and mind
makes it impossible for exercise to affect either of 1
these singly.

FIG. 4.—EXERCISE FOR WHOLE ARM

Granting that the exercise of any set of faculties
increases the ability for work in which those facul-
ties are called into use, and that exercise of the
physical powers reacts upon the mental organs, it
would seem to follow that the plea for Bimanual
Training may consistently be supported, and that
parents and teachers may encourage the use of the
left hand as freely as the right.

Following the line of the preceding remarks,
the blackboard drawing exercises here illustrated
(Fig. 4) bring into action the whole arm from the
shoulder-joint. Hundreds of young pupils will
swing these large circles at a single stroke first
with one hand then with the other.

Figs. 2 and 6 are both large scale curves done with
right or left hands with whole movement of the
arm, and with definite intention as to start and
finish of the stroke. In these, and also in Fig. 5,
occur some of the exercises where both sides of
the pattern are drawn with both hands working in
unison.

Complex forms, as in Fig. 3, may be reversed

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