It is not the plan of "Elements of Woodwork" to lay out a course or a series of models for the use of students from their earliest ventures into manual training, as no course can be planned which is the best for all students. A student with natural aptitude for tool work will complete easily a model that another of the same class may not be able to make at all; thus the naturally skillful student loses the opportunity for advancement and development.

Many teachers have not the inclination, and others have not the technical knowledge, to do well the individual work that is necessary if each student's work is planned so that he can work to the best advantage. To do individual work so that each student may receive the best results, even though the student is naturally " handy' and likes to work with tools, requires that the teacher shall have a broader knowledge than can be acquired by a short course at a teachers' training school. The instruction of a poorly prepared teacher, if he departs from the course with which he is familiar, results almost invariably in work which is not built upon correct principles of construction. It is not reasonable to expect, as a rule, that a teacher can secure from his class better work than he can do himself; thus the results are false ideas of construction and poor and inaccurate methods.

Again, in many schools where the teachers realize their dependence upon one particular series of models, there is an ironbound course through which all students are required to go, model after model, in the same sequence, regardless of the different degrees of natural ability that must exist. In consequence, the development of the individual student's natural abilities is but little assisted, and the opportunity of promoting his originality and initiative is too often ignored entirely. This statement may seem severe in its reflections upon some teachers, and it is so, intentionally; but it applies only to those who are deliberately managing their classes to make their work easier, regardless of the effect upon their students, and who could do better if they chose to take the trouble, and to those who, with a slight smattering of knowledge, try to teach manual training because positions in this work are obtained with less difficulty, and often are better paid, than are those in the ordinary branches of academic work. The statement does not apply, however, to teachers who are in the employ of a school board whose only ideal of manual training is that the students shall make something that will please the eye of the board, and of the occasional visitor, in order to prove that their school system is up to date, and who require the teacher to handle with a meager equipment, and in rooms poorly lighted and ventilated, a class so large that it is impossible to conduct it properly. The teacher of manual training who has to work under these conditions is obliged to follow a more or less rigid course, since the students must be handled as a whole to the greatest extent possible.

To do acceptable individual work in the grades, a teacher should not have more than twenty in one class; in high schools, and in technical and industrial schools, where the students are older and, in most cases, have had elementary work, the classes may be larger, a competent teacher being able to handle as many as thirty with satisfactory results. In a large class students may be divided into squads, each of which works upon a model suited to its ability, thereby making it possible to do more nearly individual work. In order to arrange the squads to best advantage, time, judgment, and a thorough knowledge of each pupil's capacity is, of course, necessary.