The Carnegie Technical Schools represent the farthest steps yet taken
in this country in providing vocational training for those entering
non-professional callings. Considering that the greatest weakness of
the whole American scheme of education is precisely at this point, the
progress of the Carnegie Schools is being watched with keen attention,
on both the educational and the economic side, from all parts of the
country. Thus far schools of applied design and of applied science,
a special vocational school for women, and a school for apprentices
and journeymen, have made a strikingly successful beginning. All the
schools are open day and evening. The present enrollment includes
2,000 students representing every state in the Union and many foreign
countries. It can be said of the administration of the schools that
it is worthy of its opportunity. The staff of instructors shows a rare
spirit of fresh initiative, of quick and varied flexibility of mind,
and of thoroughgoing achievement.
[Illustration: JOHN W. BEATTY.
Director of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Member Civic Improvement
Commission.]
The University of Pittsburgh, is new in name but has in reality
existed for more than a century. The institution has, however, not
found Pittsburgh conditions conducive to academical development. Its
engineering department has, somewhat to the regret of the university
authorities, been by far its most important feature. A strong effort
is now being made to build it up into a university worthy of a great
city. A new site has been purchased and an exceptionally interesting
plan for the various buildings has been accepted. When completed these
structures will describe a circle up and down a hillside looking out
over Schenley Park, with an administration building modelled after the
Parthenon as a crowning effect.
The presence of all these educational institutions at the entrance of
Schenley Park, with its 420 acres, situated within twenty minutes'
ride by electric cars from the heart of the city and on the way to
the chief residential sections of Greater Pittsburgh, creates a civic
center with a condensed attractiveness and resourcefulness that is
already definitely re-enforcing the public imagination.
All this cluster of enlightened agencies, however, to the discerning
eye points by contrast to the ultimate, close analysis of economic
as well as moral conditions among the people in all the less-favored
sections of the city and in all the satellite industrial towns.
The conception of a direct community of interest between employer
and workman, particularly if the workman is a leader in his craft,
begins to be visible as in a few streaks of dawn. But the mass of
the unintelligible Hungarians and Slavs must be reached by the more
generous and democratic sense of responsibility on the part of
employers and the more prosperous classes generally. The work of the
next decade is to bring them on a really large scale into the circle of
American citizenship and up to the essential standards of American home
life.
The touchstone of progress and success in this great enterprise lies
first of all with the public schools. The public school system of
Pittsburgh is in very many respects behind accepted standards. Its
chief defects come out of the faulty system of administration. Every
ward has its local school board with the power of levying taxes,
erecting buildings, and appointing teachers. This means that in some
wards there is a good quality of instruction and properly developed
curriculum, while other wards fall far short. It happens from this
condition of things that in the working-class wards there is little or
no provision for manual training; and in general the points of greatest
need are the most poorly supplied. Objectionable political methods
on the part of the local boards are pretty clearly in evidence; and
such tendencies are by no means absent from the central board. Signs
of progress are, however, becoming apparent here and there throughout
the school system. The Carnegie Technical Schools are having a
powerful influence in this direction. In the South Side, under direct
encouragement from this source, and with the co-operation of local
manufacturers, an evening trade school has been opened. There have been
experiments in the direction of medical inspection and school nursing.
There is an active agitation among the teachers for a parental school.
In general the whole problem of public school administration has been
thrown open for debate by the appointment of a capable state commission
to report upon the subject. It is thought that for one thing it will
recommend the practical abolition of the power of the local boards, so
that they become simply visiting committees.
The high school in Pittsburgh is and always has been an important
educational influence. In popular sentiment, it occupies a place
somewhat analogous to that of the College of the City of New York. In
order to make its service as general as possible the present director
sends to the parents of all children graduating from the grammar school
an interesting printed statement of the concrete objects and value of
the high school. The pressure of the demands of industry as against
the attraction of general studies is of course keenly felt. An evening
high school with a definitely vocational trend has recently made an
encouraging beginning.
The Pennsylvania method of combining public subsidy with private
initiative is followed in connection with the kindergartens. A private
association has supervision of all the kindergartens in the public
schools as well as of some carried on in private institutions. There
are altogether eighty-one kindergartens in this system. It is felt
that, at least in the early stages, this method of control brings
better standards of teaching and assures such collateral work as
visiting in the children's homes and conducting mothers' meetings. It
is needless to say, however, that in the long run such a division of
responsibility will be injurious in point of effective service and of a
proper sense of responsibility in the public administrative officers.
This sort of apprehension is all that qualifies in the least one's
impression of the admirable work of the Pittsburgh Playground
Association. Its activity began twelve years ago, and now,--with
an off-shoot in Allegheny,--includes the administration of six
well-equipped recreation parks, twenty-four vacation schools held in
school buildings, and a number of small playgrounds. The center of the
system is the site of an old arsenal, thirty acres in extent, in the
midst of a great working class district. At every point in all this
work, discriminating effort is made to achieve positive educational
results as well as to bring healthful enjoyment to the largest possible
number of persons. In this respect, as well as in the definite prospect
of appropriations sufficient to provide every now neglected section of
the city with an ample playground, Pittsburgh stands at the forefront
in this most vital phase of educational and civic advance.
[Illustration: JOSEPH BUFFINGTON.
Judge United States Circuit Court and one of the first citizens of
Pittsburgh.]
Like Chicago and other typical American cities where men are deeply
absorbed in business, women have contributed a particularly important
share to public betterment work. The Civic Club of Allegheny County,
in which women have for the most part been the active spirits, and
various women's organizations, particularly the Twentieth Century
Club and the Council of Jewish Women, have accomplished many telling
results in this direction. The Civic Club has the direct management
of two people's bath houses; but its main service consists not in
work of administration but rather in initiating enterprises to meet
new problems as they arise, and then setting them loose to develop
permanent organizations on their own account. In this way the club
started the playground association, a municipal hospital for contagious
diseases, manual training in the public schools, a legal aid society,
an open-air tuberculosis camp, and a child labor association, beside
having an active share in the creation of the juvenile court and the
securing of progressive tenement-house legislation.
[Illustration: WILLIAM M. KENNEDY.