Balancing work and intellectual activity: Boston's Sloyd Training School

This article examines efforts of late nineteenth century educational reformers in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), to meet the pedagogical needs of an industrial age by balancing manual work and intellectual activity. Led by Swedish educator Gustaf Larsson and Boston philanthropist Pauline Agassiz Shaw, they employed traditional Swedish wood handcrafts (slojd, or 'sloyd' in English) to teach theoretical academic subjects and foster individualised learning. The reformers hoped to create, for students in kindergarten through to twelfth grade, a progression of manual work to parallel intellectual activities in the curriculum. That task became difficult as tool work moved from wood to steel, machines replaced hand tools, and artistic handcraft fell victim to efficient production. The school failed to sustain itself following the deaths of Shaw and Larsson. Today sloyd is credited as being a forerunner of technology education as well as an important influence on arts education in the United States.