



































Marketing a Sloyd Curriculum


Marketing a Sloyd Curriculum 
 

Linda  Morice 

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville 

 

Abstract 

 

 This essay discusses a successful effort to 

market a woodworking curriculum to an 

international audience during the late nineteenth 

and early twentieth centuries—before 

“marketing” was used as a noun, much less 

considered an academic discipline. The 

curriculum, known as educational sloyd, was 

based on the writings of Comenius and Pestalozzi 

and promoted by Swedish entrepreneurs August 

Abramson and Otto Salomon. Its effects are still 

in evidence today. 

 

Marketing a Sloyd Curriculum 

This essay examines the work of August 

Abramson (1817-98) and Otto Salomon (1849-

1907), two Swedish entrepreneurs who marketed 

a woodworking curriculum called educational 

sloyd to consumers throughout the world. The 

curriculum, based primarily on the writings of 

John Amos Comenius and Johann Heinrich 

Pestalozzi, promoted individualized learning and 

the enhancement of cognitive skills. Abramson 

and Salomon‟s efforts occurred long before 

“marketing” was used as a noun, much less 

considered an academic discipline (Bartels 1976, 

3). By the early twentieth century, the two men‟s 

impact was evident in elementary and secondary 

schools and higher education institutions in 

countries throughout Europe and South America, 

as well as in the United States, South Africa, and 

Japan. In 1903, Salomon remarked that their 

curricular principles were so widely accepted as 

to be seen as self-evident; therefore, the program 

should be discarded like a well-worn casting 

model that had outlived its usefulness. Its 

influence is still apparent today.  

The exploration of this historical case of 

marketing a curriculum is especially important in 

light of the role entrepreneurship and marketing 

play in current educational discourse. In 2007, 

Frederick M. Hess, director of policy studies at 

the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), declared, 

“To an unprecedented degree, this is the era of 

educational entrepreneurship” (Hess 2007, 3). 

Only two years earlier, Henry M. Levin, director 

of the National Center for the Study of 

Privatization in Education, wrote a paper for 

AEI‟s Conference on Educational 

Entrepreneurship. In “Why Is Educational 

Entrepreneurship So Difficult?” Levin 

acknowledged that “the historical record 

documenting substantial and sustained departure 

from conventional educational practices is scant” 

(Levin 2006, 4). Nevertheless, he urged educators 

to continue to seek “beneficial change through 

spirited entrepreneurism” (Levin 2006, 29). 

During the last five years scholars have 

discussed examples of educational 

entrepreneurship through growing private sector 

involvement in American public education.  In 

Hidden Markets: The New Education 

Privatization, Patricia Burch noted that 

“Education is rapidly becoming a $1 trillion 

industry, representing 10% of America‟s GNP 

and second in size only to the health care 

industry” (2009, 156). Burch studied the impact 

of private companies on schools over a period of 

time following the Improving America‟s Schools 

Act of 1994, Goals 2000, and No Child Left 

Behind; she concluded that although companies 

have a role to play in education, the “center of 

gravity is shifting‟ such that education policy is 

now being remade “to fit the needs of the market” 

(Burch 2009, 136). 



49 

 

This essay will argue that while the global 

spread of educational sloyd during the late 

nineteenth and early twentieth century has been 

attributed to “the efforts of individual, highly 

dedicated men and women,” (Thorbjornsson 

2006, 11) it was largely the result of the 

systematic marketing efforts of Abramson and 

Salomon. An examination of primary and 

secondary sources reveals that while individual 

sloyd proponents were instrumental in advancing 

the program, they were influenced by, and highly 

dependent on, Abramson and Salomon‟s strategy, 

careful planning, and access to resources in 

promoting this innovative curriculum throughout 

the world.  

 

Sources and Review of Literature 

In his seminal work, The History of 

Marketing Thought, Robert Bartels connected the 

development of marketing to the rise of 

industrialization.  New inventions created new 

products; the population expanded; education and 

personal income increased; and new social values 

affirmed financial success. The change was 

dramatic. Historically, trade had been conducted 

between countries or groups (not individuals), 

with prices being set by treaty or administrative 

decision. With industrialization‟s emphasis on 

mass production, “[t]he motives of trucking and 

bartering”—which, according to Bartels, were not 

previously seen to exist—were “assumed to be 

inherent” (Bartels 1976, 6).  In this environment, 

trade focused on the consumer rather than on the 

seller; furthermore, markets—previously thought 

to be determined by supply—were now seen to be 

affected by demand.  By the turn of the twentieth 

century, economic theorists recognized that 

consumer demand was influenced not only by the 

ability to purchase, but also by desire. Advertising 

and sales initiatives demonstrated that 

promotional efforts could create desire and 

thereby increase demand. Middlemen (people 

standing between producers and consumers) were 

performing new functions, one of which was to 

create forms of value that, in turn, enhanced the 

ability to sell a product. 

In an environment of growing 

industrialization in Sweden, middleman August 

Abramson (a retired hardware merchant and 

landowner who had amassed great personal 

wealth) and his nephew Otto Salomon (a largely 

self-educated teacher who studied one year at the 

Institute of Technology at Stockholm) developed 

and promoted an educational sloyd curriculum 

that was at “the international forefront” by the 

turn of the twentieth century (Thorbjornsson 

2006, 11). A number of primary and secondary 

sources document their efforts. One of the most 

important is The Theory of Educational Sloyd by 

Salomon (1900), which discusses the curriculum 

and its growth. Sloyd‟s theoretical underpinnings 

are documented in the personal correspondence of 

Otto Salomon and Uno Cygnaeus, the father of 

Finnish folk schools and pioneer in educational 

arts and crafts (Karanjola 2006). The 1891 letters 

of Flora White--a U.S. citizen who attended 

Salomon‟s sloyd classes in Sweden--provides a 

unique perspective by showing how teachers 

across the globe learned to teach educational 

sloyd at Naas and publicized it upon returning 

home.  The delivery of the sloyd curriculum is 

further documented in writings by Gustaf 

Larsson, a Swedish protégé of Salomon who 

became the principal of the Sloyd Training 

School in Boston. Larsson‟s books--Sloyd (1903), 

Sloyd for the Three Upper Grammar Grades 

(1907), and Elementary Sloyd and Whittling 

(1906)--reveal the practical aspects of 

implementing the curriculum in classroom 

settings in locations outside Sweden. Secondary 

sources include the essays of Hans Thorbjornsson 

(1994, 2006), curator at Abramson and Salomon‟s 



50 

 

historic school, who characterizes sloyd as an 

international education movement and details the 

manner in which it was disseminated across the 

globe. Other sources document the growth of 

educational sloyd within individual countries. 

Brehony (1998) demonstrates educational sloyd‟s 

presence in the English Froebel movement as well 

as in Japan; Herrara (1997) shows sloyd‟s 

influence in Cuba, while Henry and Williams 

(1985) connect educational sloyd to the 

immigrant community in Boston through 

activities of the North Bennet Street School. The 

Sloyd Bulletin, a publication of the North Bennet 

Street School, provides further testimony from 

sloyd proponents, including Gustaf Larsson 

(1899) and Flora White (1899). Eyestone (1992) 

highlights the enduring influence of sloyd in arts 

education in the United States. Bennett (1937) 

and Cremin (1969) contextualize educational 

sloyd as it related to other educational 

developments of the period. Cremin, in particular, 

links educational sloyd to efforts by Calvin M. 

Woodward and others to promote manual 

education in the United States. 

 

Creating the Educational Sloyd Product 

 It is ironic that educational sloyd--a 

curriculum created and marketed during a period 

of rapid industrialization--was closely tied to 

traditional Swedish handcrafts. Slojd—or “sloyd” 

in English—is a Scandinavian word meaning 

“craft” or “manual skill” (Thorbjornsson 1994, 1). 

Until the late nineteenth century many rural 

Swedes spent winter evenings making household 

and farm utensils from wood to supplement the 

family income. As industrialization transformed  

Swedish society—and work and school were 

removed from the home and institutionalized—

there was growing support for promoting home 

industries by teaching young people traditional 

Swedish handcrafts. In response to this sentiment, 

the government provided funds to set up private 

sloyd schools to develop skilled workers and 

reaffirm the values of good citizenship. August 

Abramson became an early supporter; in 1868 he 

founded a sloyd folk (neighborhood) school and 

four years later established a sloyd work school 

for boys on his estate in Naas, near Gothenburg. 

Having recently lost his wife (a popular opera 

singer) and with no progeny, Abramson invited 

his nephew Otto Salomon to live at Naas and 

assist him in his work. In 1874 the two men began 

a sloyd training school for girls. The curriculum 

at Naas incorporated a broad range of studies and 

a separation of craft work along gender lines—

wood-sloyd, turnery, wood-carving, or saddlery 

for boys and weaving, spinning, knitting, sewing, 

and cookery for girls. By 1886 the girls‟ and 

boys‟ schools had merged. Abramson and 

Salomon closed the school in 1888 to devote full 

attention to training teachers in sloyd methods.  

 Abramson and Salomon had already been 

experimenting, for a number of years, with sloyd 

training for teachers. Although their initial plan 

was to train artisans to become sloyd teachers, 

Salomon modified that approach when he visited 

Uno Cygnaeus in Finland in 1877. Cygnaeus 

convinced Salomon to organize sloyd on an 

educational rather than an economic basis and 

incorporate it into the elementary curriculum. 

Salomon thereby began a scientific study of sloyd 

as a means of education. He developed five-week 

courses for Swedish teachers and in 1882 

discontinued the artisan training program. In 

addition, he dropped other forms of sloyd in favor 

of wood-sloyd. Eventually Salomon offered four 

courses for teachers annually--each lasting six 

weeks—as well as two summer courses for men 

and women, a spring course for women, and a 

winter course for men. He called the program the 

Seminarium for Teachers.  



51 

 

Training in traditional Swedish handcrafts 

seems an unlikely point of departure for 

reforming schools in an industrializing country; 

however, Salomon--beneath his conservative 

demeanor--had ideas about education that were 

“progressive, even radical” (Thorbjornsson 1994, 

2). He convinced teachers at Naas that handcrafts 

were a critical medium for transforming the 

elementary school and moving away from mass 

education emphasizing superficial knowledge. 

While Salomon delivered sloyd instruction—

promoting individualized learning and 

independence of thought and action—Abramson 

maintained good relations with the conservative 

Swedish king, Oskar II, and other influential 

Swedes. Keenly aware that their Jewish family 

had been forced to migrate to Lutheran Sweden 

seventy or eighty years earlier, Abramson and 

Salomon wanted to demonstrate they were good 

Swedish citizens. Showcasing the country‟s 

handcrafts helped to deflect criticism that might 

have otherwise been aimed at their school.  

 Salomon borrowed ideas from Comenius 

and Pestalozzi as well as Locke, Rousseau, 

Salzman, Froebel and Spencer. He read in their 

own languages the works of educators and 

philosophers who favored physical activity as a 

means of formative education. As a result of his 

reading, Salomon believed elementary schools 

placed too much emphasis on rote learning, and 

that children suffered from spending too much 

time at desks without physical movement. The 

core of education, he felt, was developing a child 

through his or her own learning. He articulated 

several principles of educational sloyd:  

 

1. To instill a taste for and an appreciation of 

work in general. 

2. To create a respect for hard, honest, 

physical labor. 

3. To develop independence and self-

reliance. 

4. To provide training in the habits of order, 

accuracy, cleanliness and neatness. 

5. To train the eye to see accurately and to 

appreciate the sense of beauty in form. 

6. To develop a sense of touch and to give 

general dexterity to the hands. 

7. To inculcate the habits of attention, 

industry, perseverance and patience. 

8. To promote the development of the body‟s 

physical powers. 

9. To acquire dexterity in the use of tools. 

10. To executive precise work and produce 

useful products (Thorbjornsson 1994, 4).  

 

Salomon‟s curriculum consisted of series 

of woodcraft exercises of increasing difficulty—

88 in all—designed to incrementally develop the 

student‟s physical and cognitive skills. [(In 1902 

Salomon reduced the number to of exercises to 

68) (Thorbjornsson 1994, 6).] The curriculum 

also included a series of models of everyday 

household items that students could build from 

wood. Students were supposed to accurately 

reproduce the models by working at their own 

speed, with the teacher acting as a guide but not 

interfering in the work process. As students 

moved through the curriculum, they increased 

their skill levels with new—and increasingly 

complex--shapes, tools, and procedures. Salomon 

encouraged teachers to know their students 

throughout the process, and to develop a 

knowledge base in crafts as well as theoretical 

subjects so they could understand each child‟s 

mental, physical, and moral development. As 

educational sloyd began to gain international 

notice, Salomon also encouraged followers to 

develop a model series that was relevant to 

various cultures in which sloyd was taught. 

 Each day at Naas, Salomon involved 

participating teachers in six to seven hours of 

practical handcraft work and one to two hours of 

theoretical lectures and discussions. Classes were 

free and offered in more than one language. 



52 

 

Salomon‟s lectures focused on varied subjects 

including educational history, handcraft teaching 

methods, psychology, morals, and hygiene. He 

hoped to develop the will, morality, and interests 

as students learned to solve problems at higher 

and more complex levels.  

Marketing the Curriculum 

 Robert Bartels wrote that marketing was 

not officially named until 1906-11 (1976, 3). 

Nevertheless, Salomon‟s efforts in curriculum 

and instruction were matched by the energy he 

and Abramson spent in marketing educational 

sloyd. Contemporary marketing practitioners 

often cite the Four Principles of Marketing—

product, price, place, and promotion—as key 

components of their work. A fifth principle is 

sometimes added—people (Offord n.d.). A 

review of primary and secondary sources shows 

that all five components were evident in Salomon 

and Abramson‟s efforts to market educational 

sloyd. 

Almost from the beginning, the men 

identified the international arena as the place 

where their product would be promoted. In 1876, 

Salomon and Abramson published the first part of 

Slojdskolan och Folkskolan  (Handicraft School 

and Elementary School) and distributed the book 

throughout the Nordic countries to supporters of 

handcraft teaching. That same year the two men 

sent models, plans, and a description of Naas to 

the World Exhibition in Philadelphia. In 1877 

Abramson sent a series of sloyd models as a gift 

to the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janiero. 

When Abramson received encouragement to send 

a model to Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II, he 

obliged. As a result, one Naas model was used at 

a Brazilian deaf-blind institute, and another was 

exhibited at the Brazilian Bureau of Education. 

The following year Abramson sent a description 

of the Naas sloyd schools and a cover letter to 

several Swedish ambassadors in Europe. 

Abramson asked the ambassadors to give the 

description to appropriate government officials in 

the host country and invite them to visit the Naas 

stand at the 1878 World Exhibition in Paris. In 

1880, a German delegation visited Naas, as did 

groups of teachers from Belgium, Russia and 

Austria. Over time, Abramson and Salomon 

invited participants from over 40 countries who 

came to Naas to make woodcrafts and attend 

Salomon‟s lectures (Thorbjornsson 1994, 4). One 

of the participants, Hjalmar Berg, wrote the 

following favorable description of the 

Seminarium: 

 

Naas is a good Sloyd school, and much 

besides. It is the meeting place of 

leading teachers of all degrees and all 

nationalities, for common work, and for 

the interchange of ideas. Professors, 

inspectors, secondary and elementary 

teacher, women as well as men, there 

meet on common ground as comrades 

(Salomon 1900, xi-xii). 

 

Every one or two years, Salomon traveled 

through western or central Europe, frequently 

conversing with “international greats” on the 

subject of handcrafts [(The “greats” included 

Woldemar Gotze of the Training College in 

Leipzig and Gustave Salicis, a manual training 

leader in Paris.) (Thorbjornsson 2006, 15).] 

Salomon gave several lectures in Denmark, 

Germany, Holland, and Switzerland in 1884. In 

1904, he embarked on a long lecture tour through 

Britain and Holland and in other years visited 

Italy and Austria to study and establish new 

contacts. He also lectured in the Nordic countries 

and participated in international conferences on 

handcraft. 

Since instruction at Naas was free, 

educational sloyd was priced to sell; however, 

participants had to pay for their own 



53 

 

transportation. The peace that existed in Europe 

between 1875 and 1914, as well as advances in 

travel, made this possible. Railroads had 

expanded to link the large cities of Europe and 

North America, and regular steamship service 

connected Europe with the other continents. 

Before Salomon died in 1907, approximately 

1500 participants from 40 countries had studied 

educational sloyd at Naas, and a few hundred 

delegations and individuals from other countries 

made short visits there (Thorbjornsson 1994, 4). 

The establishment of an international postal 

service also allowed Abramson and Salomon to 

promote educational sloyd globally through 

correspondence. Although Salomon  featured the 

Naas sloyd curriculum at World Exhibitions in 

Chicago in 1893 and in St. Louis in 1904, he 

never traveled to the United States— even after 

receiving personal invitations from John Dewey 

and Euphrosyne Langley to deliver a series of 

lectures at the University of Chicago. Salomon 

had to decline because he was committed to 

teaching classes at Naas, and his alumni assumed 

the role of publicizing educational sloyd to U. S. 

audiences.  

The fifth marketing principle—people—

was an essential part of Abramson and Salomon‟s 

strategic promotion of their curriculum. As early 

as 1885, Salomon had established a small 

newspaper, Slojdundervisningsblad fran Naas 

(Handcraft Teaching Pamphlet from Naas) to 

inform handcraft teachers about new models and 

changes in the educational sloyd curriculum. The 

newspaper had a circulation of one thousand, 

which included one hundred readers from outside 

Sweden (Thorbjornson 2006, 17). Salomon 

encouraged Naas students to write about their 

experiences when they returned home, and they 

did so. Over one hundred books were published 

on educational sloyd at Naas, written by authors 

from a range of countries including Belgium, 

Italy, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Argentina, 

Cuba, and Brazil. Additionally, over one thousand 

articles on Swedish educational sloyd appeared in 

newspapers, magazines, and journals throughout 

the world. Finally, over one hundred Naas 

supporters from across the globe gave lectures 

about teaching sloyd handcrafts (Thorbjornsson 

2006, 16).   

Abramson died in 1898, but Salomon 

remained “the spider at the centre of the sloyd 

web” (Thorbjornsson 2006, 11, 17). Salomon 

“received and sent four to five, often long and 

substantial, letters a day while he 

resided…[there]. Perhaps half of them were sent 

to and from his handicraft friends on different 

continents” (Thorbjornsson 2006, 18). 

Throughout his correspondence, Salomon 

encouraged recipients to summarize their 

experiences and problems with educational sloyd, 

and describe the educational system and teaching 

practices in their country. 

Thorbjornsson attributes the “personal 

contact between Salomon and the course 

attendants at Naas” as “the key to the widespread 

distribution of Naas educational sloyd” 

(Thorbjornsson 2006, 26). Thorbjornsson also 

cites Salomon‟s dedication to the cause, his 

hospitality at Naas, his ongoing correspondence, 

and the fact that “his ideas fitted with the times” 

and “awoke new thoughts” (Thorbjornsson 2006, 

26). Additionally, Thorbjornsson made note of 

the “way of life at Naas,” with “hard work, 

interesting lectures and pleasant company during 

the many hours of daylight, with singing and 

games in the beautiful countryside” 

(Thorbjornsson 2006, 26). 

Flora White‟s correspondence shows that 

Salomon met her upon her arrival in Sweden in 

the summer of 1891, and that she had contact 

with both Abramson and King Oskar during her 

stay there. In a letter to her mother and sister 



54 

 

White described the “exquisitely simple” 

surroundings of Naas. She reported that she and 

her fellow teachers were in the work room from 

8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a half hour lunch 

break. They stood for their work and had exercise 

in the Ling system of gymnastics twice daily. 

White reported that despite the hard work that 

was required them, “the rooms are so pleasant and 

the views so lovely when we look up that nothing 

seems a hardship” (Flora White to Harriet and 

Mary White, 31 May, 1891).  

Teachers who returned from Naas 

promoted educational sloyd through existing 

professional organizations, or created new ones. 

In 1888, the Union of Sloyd Teachers in England 

Trained at Naas was established, along with the 

Association of Sloyd Teachers in Great Britain 

and Ireland. In the U. S., the National Education 

Association (NEA) demonstrated an early interest 

in educational sloyd. Although speakers at the 

NEA annual meeting in 1896 were described as 

“all male, and almost all administrators” 

(Rousmaniere 2005, 106),  Flora White (1896)  

presented a paper at that meeting titled, “Physical 

Effects of Sloyd.” It was subsequently featured in 

the Sloyd Bulletin, a publication of the Sloyd 

Training School in Boston. In 1899 the NEA 

Committee on Normal Schools proposed the 

inclusion of sloyd in the four-year curriculum of 

normal school students. By 1902, an organization 

of alumni of the Sloyd Training School in Boston 

featured Gustaf Larsson and two Swedish-

Americans on its board. Teaching organizations 

to support educational sloyd also were established 

in Switzerland in 1886 and in Austria and 

Belgium in 1887.  

These organizational initiatives were 

supplemented by teachers who returned from 

Naas and incorporated educational sloyd into 

their own pedagogy. In White‟s case, she 

“crusaded” for the inclusion of “[fine and gross] 

motor activities” in U. S. schools (Pickwick 1941, 

5). From 1892 to 1895 she taught at Westfield 

Normal School where she introduced sloyd into 

the two-year teacher training course. She then 

moved to Boston to become associate principal at 

Baron Nils Posse‟s Normal School of Gymnastics 

(utilizing her Naas experience with Ling 

gymnastics) and in 1897 founded Miss White‟s 

Home School for Children in Concord, 

Massachusetts where she again included sloyd in 

the curriculum. 

In promoting educational sloyd in the 

United States, Flora White never forgot the 

program‟s antecedents. When she presented her 

paper to the NEA she explained: 

 

Cygnaeus bared his head to child 

life, and for what was revealed to him 

strove with all the persistency of a Finn, 

till the elementary schools of Finland 

were reformed and made fit study for the 

world. 

Herr Otto Soloman [sic], by 

Cygnaeus‟ side, looked where he looked, 

and found that to which he devoted his 

life, creating a new era in Swedish 

schools, and sending forth a new hope to 

American schools through his pupil, 

Herr Gustaf Larsson, whom it is your 

misfortune not to have with you today. 

Mr. Larsson is the leader of sloyd in 

this country, and he has ably 

demonstrated that sloyd is no finality, no 

system, no course of models or tools or 

materials, but such a use of tools and 

materials that space and opportunity are 

afforded for the growth and development 

of the child in the direction of his 

individuality (White, 1896, 5-6). 

 

Salomon’s Dilemma 

 Despite the spread of educational sloyd, it 

had critics. Salomon felt compelled to defend the 

strange-sounding Swedish name by reminding 



55 

 

audiences that the German word kindergarten 

initially seemed odd but, over time, became a 

household word. Some professors of education 

found educational sloyd to be too practical, 

preferring instead to focus on theoretical subjects. 

In the U. K. and the U. S., tradesmen and 

craftsmen in industry wanted to train their own 

apprentices rather than leave the job to teachers.  

Perhaps most important, a system that focused on 

Swedish handcrafts had limited appeal for other 

cultures and traditions.    

 The international interest in educational 

sloyd presented Salomon with two choices: create 

a fixed, easily accessible system of handcrafts for 

use in Swedish elementary schools, or create a 

flexible system based on principles that could be 

applied differently in countries and cultures 

across the globe. He chose the latter. 

Nevertheless, Salomon‟s approach did not gain 

favor in Germany, which had strong and 

competing pedagogical traditions of its own. 

Although Salomon won the support of eminent U. 

S. psychology professor William James, other 

prominent U. S. educators (including G. Stanley 

Hall, Francis Parker, and Caroline Pratt) found 

sloyd to be too rigid and lacking in opportunities 

for student creativity. While today educational 

sloyd is credited with being an important 

influence in art education (Eyestone 1992) and a 

forerunner of technology education in the U. S. 

(New Hampshire Technology Education 

Curriculum Guide 2001), its support began to 

decline early in the twentieth century. Still, 

between Salomon‟s death in 1907 and the transfer 

of the program to Linkoping University in 1966, 

an additional 5,000 to 7,000 teachers received 

training at Naas in the sloyd system 

(Thorbjornsson 1994, 9). 

Enduring Legacy of Educational Sloyd in the 

United States 

In the United States, a major center of 

sloyd activity was Boston, where Naas graduate 

Gustaf Larsson directed the Sloyd Training 

School located in the North Bennett Street 

Industrial School building. The school offered 

instruction to immigrant children through the 

support of philanthropist Pauline Agassiz Shaw, 

daughter of famed scientist Louis Agassiz. (She 

was married to Boston financier Quincy Shaw, 

one of the richest men in New England.) Prior to 

Larsson‟s arrival, Pauline Shaw had established 

nurseries and kindergartens throughout Boston to 

serve the growing immigrant population. Larsson 

persuaded her to fund free sloyd instruction to 

Boston‟s kindergarten and elementary teachers, 

and by 1892, 23 sloyd teachers had graduated 

from the school. By 1917, the number had risen to 

over 400 (Hoffman 2000, 364). When Shaw died 

that year, Larsson offered the following 

description of her interest in educational sloyd: 

 

After painstaking and thorough 

observation Mrs. Shaw became 

convinced that sloyd was founded on the 

same principle that underlies the 

kindergarten system, namely, that the 

mental and moral growth of the human 

being must be the first consideration of 

every teacher and that occupations, 

whether of mind or hands, must serve 

only as a means to that end (1917, 1). 

   

In implementing educational sloyd in the 

United States, Larsson made three important 

modifications to the curriculum. He altered the 

use of drawings to permit more spontaneity in 

students; he also reinforced Salomon‟s assertion 

that sloyd models could be modified to meet 

everyday needs of people of various cultures and 

locations. Additionally, Larsson expanded sloyd 

work to include new media such as bookbinding, 

printing, machine work, metal work, forging, 



56 

 

cement work, and furniture-making. The Sloyd 

Training School continued to operate until 1921, 

two years after Larsson‟s death. As early as 1903 

Larsson estimated that graduates of the school 

had influenced 34,000 students across the United 

States (Henry and Williams 1985, 20). Larsson 

described the difference between the teacher of 

sloyd and one who used more “mechanical” 

methods: 

 

The Sloyd teacher does not say, “Now I 

will teach this boy to saw, and he shall 

continue to saw until he can saw well,” 

regardless of monotony or the too 

prolonged use of the same muscles. The 

problem of the Sloyd teacher is to find 

the tool, whether knife or saw or plane, 

and also the series of exercises, best 

adapted to the present need of the 

average pupil, and also to vary or 

alternate the tools and to graduate the 

exercises with constant reference to the 

growing capacity, the formative age, and 

to the various activities of the body and 

mind (1908, 22). 

 

Larsson also specified the general 

presentation procedure that teachers should 

follow in their lessons “in order to give the 

children a clear idea of what they are to do” 

(Larsson 1906, 3). He suggested that teachers 

begin by presenting the model, and through 

questions and explanations, “lead the children to a 

correct understanding of both the model and its 

use” (Larsson 1906, 3). Utilizing large blackboard 

drawings and student sketches and rudimentary 

working drawings, teachers should follow the 

following procedure: 

 

First: From the model. 

Second: From model and drawing. 

Third: From drawing alone. 

Fourth: From the children‟s own 

suggestions guided by the teacher 

(Larsson 1906, 3).  

 

In Sloyd for the Three Upper Grammar 

Grades--Gustaf Larsson wrote that the sloyd 

teacher would be well advised to ask the 

following questions: 

 

First. Are the child‟s positions and 

movements while working such as are 

likely to be injurious or beneficial to his 

physical development? 

Second. Is he doing his own thinking 

unprompted and uninterrupted by the 

teacher? 

Third. Is his work so carried on that self-

respect is developed rather than vanity? 

Fourth. Is he learning to recognize and to 

love excellence of workmanship, as 

shown by becoming more and more 

critical of himself and of his own 

achievements? 

Fifth. Is he learning to recognize good 

form and to avoid unsuitable decoration? 

Sixth. Is he getting some training in 

good citizenship by working for others? 

Seventh. Does the finished product 

represent the child‟s own effort, and is 

the workmanship good, or was the 

problem too difficult? (Larsson 1907, 2). 

 

 In addition to Gustaf Larsson, other 

educators who promoted educational sloyd in the 

U. S. included Charles Kunou, Larsson‟s fellow 

student at Naas who came to the U. S. in 1890 

with the intention of helping him in Boston. 

Instead, Kunou went to Pasadena, California, to 

establish the sloyd department at Throop 

Polytechnic Institute, now California Institute of 

Technology. One of Kunou‟s students, Ella 

Victoria Dobbs, had a distinguished career 

advancing the ideas of educational sloyd—as a 

full-time faculty member at Throop, and in 



57 

 

supervisory positions Los Angeles, California, 

and Helena, Montana, public schools. Dobbs 

studied at Teachers College of Columbia 

University where she worked on methods of 

correlating art and handwork in the regular school 

curriculum. In 1909, Dobbs joined the faculty of 

the University of Missouri, where she inspired a 

generation of teachers with the idea that 

handwork was both an end in itself and a means 

to an end. 

Educational sloyd‟s pervasive influence 

can also be seen in a 1910 article in the 

Elementary School Teacher, which noted sloyd 

was one of two systems of European industrial 

education adopted in the U. S. over the previous 

quarter century, the other being the Russian 

system of manual training promoted by Victor 

Della Vos. The article observed, “These forms of 

handwork with various modifications have been 

gradually introduced into our schools until today 

the city system which does not include manual 

training from its primary grades through the high 

school is considered unprogressive” (Fletcher 

1910, 8).  

  

Epilogue and Conclusion 

Lawrence Cremin wrote that sloyd 

advocates in the U. S. had hoped to find a balance 

between manual work and intellectual activities 

through the first twelve years of education, 

thereby providing appropriate education in an 

industrial age. However, sloyd was eventually 

eclipsed as tool work moved from wood to steel, 

hand tools were replaced by machines, and 

production rather than artistic handcraft became a 

primary focus. In his final years, Otto Salomon 

understood that his opportunities to market the 

sloyd curriculum were waning. He offered a 

candid appraisal: 

 

I believe that the so-called „Naas-

system‟ has had its day; it lies in the 

past, not in the present, still less in the 

future. While most of the principles have 

become so universal that they are stated 

to be self-evident, even by persons who 

certainly would not like to promote 

anything that comes out of Naas, there is 

no further need for a „Naas-system‟ in 

the domain of manual training. 

 May it die and may it rest in peace! I 

will not be found among its mourners. I 

have long ago lost my belief in systems 

within the Art of Education, and believe 

now only in personalities (Thorbjornsson 

1994, 9). 

The lives of August Abramson and Otto 

Salomon illustrate how micro-histories can add to 

an understanding of the role marketing and 

entrepreneurship have played in promoting a 

curriculum. Even though marketing, according to 

Bartels, was not formally named until 1906-11, 

Abramson and Salomon were clearly marketing 

an educational program during the late nineteenth 

century--using political connections, networks, 

pricing, and promotional methods to connect to 

an international audience. The story of 

educational sloyd suggests that, while the present 

era has been heralded as the age of educational 

entrepreneurship, people have been engaged in 

curriculum marketing for a long tine. Given the 

growing influence of the market in our current 

educational system, additional research is needed 

on the historical antecedents of the so-called “age 

of entrepreneurship” — its processes, 

opportunities, and pitfalls. 

 

References 

 

Bartels, R. 1976. The History of Marketing 

Thought. 2
nd

 ed. Grid, Inc. 



58 

 

Bennett, C. A. 1937. History of manual and 

industrial education, 1870 to 1917. Peria, IL: 

Charles A. Bennett Co., Inc. 

Brehony, K. 1998. “Even far distant Japan” is 

showing an interest: The English Froebel 

movement‟s turn to sloyd. History of 

Education 27, no. 3:1-22. 

Burch, P. 2009. Hidden markets: The new 

education privatization. New York: 

Routledge. 

Cremin, L. A. 1969. The transformation of the 

school. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

Eyestone, J. E. 1992. The influence of Swedish 

sloyd and its interpreters on American art 

education. Studies in Art Education: A 

Journal of Issues and Research 34, no. 1: 28-

38. 

Fletcher, A. P. September 1910. An experiment in 

industrial education. Elementary School  

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Henry, S. and Williams, M. 1985. North Bennet 

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educational research on developing creativity. 

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entrepreneurship: Hard truths about risk, 

reform, and reinvention. Phi Delta Kappan 

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Larsson, G. 1899. March 1899. Letter to Sloyd 

graduates. Sloyd Bulletin, 2:1-5. 

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whittling. New York: Silver Burdett. 

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grades. Boston: G.H. Ellis. 

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Privately printed.  

Levin, H. 2006. Why is educational 

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1907): Prospects. The Quarterly Review of  

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May 31, 1891. 

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presented at the 1896 meeting of the  

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