Instinct and Health #249457

It is the hand, which has marked man from other animals, which has made him what he is. It was to keep his hand from bearing the weight of his body and leave it free for the club and the stone that he originally rose up on his hind legs and acquired the erect position of which we are so proud. It was the new uses to which the hand was put with the weapon, the tool, that built up the brain SO that speech and thought became possible. As shrewd old Benjamin Franklin said a hundred years ago, Man is a tool using animal. Yet a large body of respectable taxpayers protest against the introduction of manual training into our schools as a waste of public money! Train the hand, then answer half the questions that the brain which it builds will ask — and you have education at its best.