EDUCATION THROUGH INDUSTRY
The experiments of some of our cities in giving their children training
which shall make them intelligent in all the activities of their life,
including the important one of earning a living, furnish excellent
examples of the best that is being done in industrial education. The
cities chosen for description are Gary, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This
book is not concerned with schools or courses which are designed simply
to give the pupils control of one specialized field of knowledge; that
is, which train people for the processes of one particular industry
or profession. It is true that most of the experiments in industrial
education tried so far in this country have taken the material offered
by the largest skilled industries of the neighborhood for their basis,
and as a result have trained pupils for one or more definite trades.
But wherever the experiment has been prompted by a sincere interest
in education and in the welfare of the community this has not been
the object of the work. The interest of the teachers is not centered
on the welfare of any one industry, but on the welfare of the young
people of the community. If the material prosperity of a community is
due almost entirely to one or two industries, obviously the welfare of
the individuals of the community is very closely connected with those
industries. Then the educational purpose of training the children
to the most intelligent use of their own capabilities and of their
environment, is most easily served by using these industries as the
material for the strictly utilitarian part of this training. The
problem of general public-school education is not to train workers for
a trade, but to make use of the whole environment of the child in order
to supply motive and meaning to the work.
In Gary this has been done more completely than in any other single
place. Superintendent Wirt believes firmly in the value of muscular
and sense training for children; and instead of arranging artificial
exercises for the purpose, he gives children the same sort of things
to do that occupy their parents and call for muscular skill and fine
coördination in the business of everyday life. Every child in Gary,
boy and girl, has before his eyes in school finely equipped workshops,
where he may, as soon as he is old enough, do his share of the actual
work of running and keeping in order the school buildings. All of the
schools except one small one where there are no high school pupils,
have a lunch room where the girls learn to cook, and a sewing room
where they learn to make their own clothes; a printing shop, and
carpenter, electrical, machine, pattern, forging, and molding shops,
where boys, and girls if they wish, can learn how most of the things
that they see about them every day are made. There are painting
departments, and a metal working room, and also bookkeeping and
stenography classes. The science laboratories help give the child some
understanding of the principles and processes at work in the world in
which he lives.
The money and space required to equip and run these shops are saved
from an ordinary sized school budget by the “two school system” that
has been described above, and by the fact that all the expense usually
charged by a school to repairs and paid out to contractors, is spent on
these shops and for the salaries of the skilled workmen who teach in
them. The buildings are kept in better repair than where all the work
is done during the summer vacation, because as soon as anything needs
to be fixed the pupils who are working in the shop that does that kind
of work get at the repairs under the direction of the teacher. These
shops can not be considered in any way an unnecessary luxury because
they are used also by the high school pupils who are specializing
for one kind of work and by the night and summer school for their
vocational classes. The school management says in regard to the success
of this plan, “When you have provided a plant where the children may
live a complete life eight hours a day in work, study, and play, it is
the simplest thing imaginable to permit the children in the workshops,
under the direction and with the help of well-trained men and women,
to assume the responsibility for the equipment and maintenance of the
school plant. An industrial and commercial school for every child is
thus provided without extra cost to the taxpayers.”
[Illustration: Learning moulding, and manufacturing school equipment.
(Gary, Ind.)]
The first three grades spend one hour a day in manual training and
drawing, which take the form of simple hand-work and are not done
in the shops, but in an especially equipped room with a trained
teacher. The pupils draw, do painting and clay modeling, sewing and
simple carpentry work. The five higher grades spend twice as much
time on manual training and drawing. The little children go into the
shops as helpers and watchers, much as they go into the science
laboratories, and they pick up almost as much theory and understanding
of processes as the older children possess. The art work and simpler
forms of hand-work are kept up for the definite training in control and
technique that comes from carrying through a problem independently.
Because the small child’s love of creating is very great, they continue
until the pupils are old enough to choose what shop they will go into
as apprentices to the teacher. Since sixth grade children are old
enough and strong enough to begin doing the actual work of repairing
and maintaining the building, in this grade they cease to be watchers
and helpers and become real workers. Distributing school supplies,
keeping the school records and taking care of the grounds are done by
the pupils under the direction of the school office or the botanical
laboratory, and constitute a course in shop work just as much as
does painting or repairing the electric lights. The school heat and
power plant is also a laboratory for the pupils, in which they learn
the principles of heating and lighting in a thoroughly practical way
because they do much of the work connected with keeping the plant
running.
The shop and science courses of the schools last only a third of
the year, and there is a shorter probation course of five weeks. The
pupils choose with the advice of their teachers what shop course they
will take; if at the end of five weeks they do not like it they may
change. They must change twice during the year. In this way the work
can not lose its educational character and become simply a method of
making juvenile factory hands to do the school repairs. Taking three
shop courses in one school year results in giving the pupil merely a
superficial knowledge of the theory and processes of any one kind of
work. But this is as it should be, for the pupils are not taking the
courses to become carpenters, or electricians, or dressmakers, but to
find out how the work of the world is done. Moving as they do from one
thing to another they learn as much of the theory of the industry as
children of their age can understand, while an all-around muscular and
sense training is insured. To confine the growing child too long to the
same kind of muscular activity is harmful both mentally and physically;
to keep on growing he must have work which exercises his whole body,
which presents new problems, keeps teaching him new things, and thus
develops his powers of reasoning and judgment. Any manual labor
ceases to be educative the moment it becomes thoroughly familiar and
automatic.
In Gary, the child of the newly arrived immigrant from the agricultural
districts of eastern Europe has as much chance to prepare for a
vocation, that is really to learn his own capabilities for the
environment in which he finds himself, as the child of the educated
American. From the time he enters the public school system, whether
day nursery, kindergarten, or first grade, he is among people who are
interested in making him see things as they are, and in teaching him
how to do things. In the nursery he has toys to play with which teach
him to control his body; and he learns unconsciously, by being well
taken care of, some of the principles of hygiene and right living. In
the kindergarten the work to train his growing body to perform useful
and accurate motions and coördination goes on. In the first three
grades, emphasis is put on teaching him to read and write and obtain
a good foundation for the theoretical knowledge which comes from
books. His physical growth is taken care of on the playground, where
he spends about two hours a day, doing things that develop his whole
body in a natural way and playing games that give him opportunity to
satisfy his desire to play. At the same time he is taking the first
steps in a training which is more specifically vocational, in that it
deals with the practical bread and butter side of life. He learns to
handle the materials which lie at the foundations of civilization in
much the same way that primitive people used them, because this way
is suited to the degree of skill and understanding he has reached. On
a little hand loom he weaves a piece of coarse cloth; with clay he
makes dishes or other objects that are familiar to him; with reeds or
raffia he makes baskets; and with pencil or paints he draws for the
pleasure of making something beautiful; with needle and thread he makes
himself a bag or apron. All these activities teach him the first steps
in the manufacture of the things which are necessary to our life as
we live it. The weaving and sewing show him how our clothing is made;
the artistic turn that is given to all this work, through modeling and
drawing, teach him that even the simplest things in life can be made
beautiful, besides furnishing a necessary method of self-expression.
In the fourth grade the pupils stop the making of isolated things, the
value of which lies entirely in the process of making, and where the
thing’s value lies solely in its interest to the child. They still have
time, however, to train whatever artistic ability they may possess,
and to develop through their music and art the esthetic side of their
nature. But the rest of their hand-work takes a further vocational
turn. The time for manual occupation is now all spent on intensive and
useful work in some one kind of work or industry. These pupils are now
less interested in games, so they spend less time playing and more
time making things. The girl goes into the dressmaking department and
learns to sew from the point of view of the worker who has to produce
her own things. She is still too young to carry through a long, hard
piece of work, so she goes for the first two years as a watcher and
helper, listening to the lessons in theory that the seventh, eighth, or
ninth grade pupils are taking, and helping them with their work. A girl
may choose dressmaking for her first course, but at the end of three
months she must change to some other department, perhaps helping cook
the lunch for the school and learning about wholesome foods and food
chemistry for the next three months. Or if she is fond of drawing, she
may devote nearly all her time for shop work to developing her talent
for that.
In the same way the boy chooses what shop he will go into for three
months. In the carpenter shop he will be old enough really to make for
himself some of the simpler things needed in the school building. If
he choose the forging or casting shop he will have a chance to help at
shoeing the horses for the use of the department of education, or to
help an older boy make the mold for the iron stand to a school desk.
In such ways he finds out something about the way iron is used for so
many of our commonest things. In the fifth and sixth grades nearly all
the boys try to get at least one course in store keeping. Here they go
into the school storerooms with the janitor; and with the school lists
at hand unpack and check up the material which comes in both from the
workshops and from outside. Then as these things are needed through the
building they take the requisitions from the office, distribute the
material, and make the proper entries on the books. They are taught
practical bookkeeping and are responsible for the smooth running of
the supply department while they are working there. As they learn
the cost of all the material as well as the method of caring for it
and distributing it, they get a good idea of the way a city spends
its taxes and of the general business methods in use in stores. Both
boys and girls may take a beginners’ course in bookkeeping and office
management. Here they go into what is called the school bank, and keep
the records of the shop work of all the pupils in the school.
Before pupils can graduate from school they must have completed a
certain number of hours of satisfactory work in the school shops. In
order to fit the needs of every individual pupil, the amount of credit
does not depend upon the mere attendance through a three months’
course, but each pupil is given credit by the shop teacher for so many
hours of work for the piece of work he has done. The rate of work
is standardized, and thus a more equal training is insured for all,
for the slow worker will get credit for only so much completed work
regardless of the time it has taken him, and the fast worker will get
credit for all he does even if he outstrips the average. A fixed number
of “standard hours” of work entitle the pupil to “one credit,” for
which the pupil receives a credit certificate. When he has eight of
these he has completed the work required by the vocational section of
the Gary schools for graduation. All the work connected with keeping
the records for these credit certificates is done by pupils under the
direction of an advanced pupil.
From the seventh grade the pupils are the responsible workers in all
the shops. A pupil who knows that he has to leave school when he has
finished the eighth grade can now begin to specialize in the workrooms
of some one department. If he wishes to become a printer he can work
on the school presses for an entire year, or he can put in all his
shop time in the bookkeeping department if he is attracted by office
work. The girls begin to take charge of the lunch room, doing all the
marketing and planning for the menus and keeping the books. Sewing work
takes in more and more of the complications of the industry. The girls
learn pattern drawing and designing, and may take a millinery course.
The work for the students in office work is now extended to include
stenography and typewriting and business methods. The art work also
broadens to take in designing and hand metal work. There is no break
between the work of the grades and the high school in the vocational
department, except that as the pupil grows older he naturally tends
to specialize toward what is to be his life work. The vocational
department is on exactly the same level as the academic, and the school
takes the wholesome attitude that the boy who intends to be a carpenter
or painter needs to stay in school just as many years as the boy who is
going to college. The result is the very high per cent. of pupils who
go on to higher schools.
The ordinary view among children of laboring people in large cities
is that only those who are going to be teachers need to continue at
school after the age of fourteen; it does not make any difference that
one is leaving to go into a factory or shop. But since the first day
the Gary child began going to school he has seen boys and girls in
their last year of high school still learning how to do the work that
is being done where, perhaps, he expects ultimately to go to work.
He knows that these pupils all have a tremendous advantage over him
in the shop, that they will earn more, get a higher grade of work to
do, and do it better. Through the theory lessons in the school shop
he has a general idea of the scope and possibilities in his chosen
trade, and what is more to the purpose, he knows how much more he has
to learn about the work. He is familiar with the statistics of workers
in that trade, knows the wages for the different degrees of skill and
how far additional training can take a man. With all this information
about, and outlook upon, his vocation it is not strange that so few,
comparatively, of the pupils leave school, or that so many of those who
have to leave come back for evening or Sunday classes.
The pupil who stays in a Gary school through the four years of high
school knows the purpose of the work he is doing, whether he is going
to college or not. If he wants to go into office work, he shapes his
course to that end, even before he gets his grammar grades diploma
perhaps. But he is not taking any short cut to mere earning capacity in
the first steps of office work. He is doing all the work necessary to
give him the widest possible outlook. His studies include, of course,
lessons in typewriting and stenography, bookkeeping and accounting,
filing, etc.; but they include as well sufficient practice in English,
grammar, and spelling so that he will be able to do his work well. They
include work in history, geography and science, so that he will find
his work interesting, and will have a background of general knowledge
which will enrich his whole life. The student preparing for college
does the work necessary for his entrance examinations, and a great deal
of manual work besides, which most high school pupils are not supposed
to have time for. It is just as valuable for the man who works with his
brain to know how to do some of the things that the factory worker is
doing, as it is for the latter to know how the patterns for the machine
he is making were drawn, and the principles that govern the power
supply in the factory. In Gary the work is vocational in all of these
senses. Before the pupil leaves school he has an opportunity to learn
the specific processes for any one of a larger number of professions.
But from the first day he went to school he has been doing work that
teaches the motives and principles of the uses to which the material
world is put by his social environment, so that whatever work he goes
into will really be a vocation, a calling in life, and not a mere
routine engaged in only for the sake of pay.
The value of the pupils’ training is greatly increased by the fact that
all the work done is productive. All the shops are manufacturing plants
for the Gary school; the business school finds a laboratory in the
school office. In dressmaking or cooking the girls are making clothes
which they need, or else cooking their own and other people’s lunches.
The science laboratories use the work of the shops for the illustration
of their theories. The chemistry is the chemistry of food; botany and
zoölogy include the care of the school grounds and animals. Drawing
includes dress designing and house decoration, or pattern drawing for
the hand metal shop. Arithmetic classes do the problems for their
carpentry class, and English classes put emphasis on the things which
the pupils say they need to know to work in the printing shop: usually
paragraphing, spelling, and punctuation. The result of this coöperation
is to make the book work better than if they put in all their time on
books. The practical world is the real world to most people; but the
world of ideas becomes intensely interesting when its connection with
the world of action is clear. Because the work is real work constant
opportunities are furnished to carry out the school policy of meeting
the needs of the individual pupil. The classification according to
fast, slow, and average workers, both in the vocational and academic
departments, has already been described. It enables the pupil to do
his work when he is ready for it, without being pushed ahead or held
back by his fellow pupils; the slow worker may learn as much as the
rapid worker, and the latter in turn does not develop shiftless habits
because he has not enough to do. But if for any reason a pupil does not
fit into any of the usual programs of classification, he is not forced
to the conclusion that the school holds no place for him. The pupil
who is physically unfit to sit at a desk and study goes to school, and
spends all his time outdoors, with a teacher to help him get strong.
In the same way the two-school system enables the child who is weak in
arithmetic to catch up without losing his standing in other subjects.
He simply takes the arithmetic lessons with two grades. In the shops
the poor pupil simply works longer on one thing, but as his progress is
not bound up with that of the class it makes no difference. The pupil
who thinks he hates school, or is too stupid to keep on going, is not
dealt with by threats and punishments. His teachers take it for granted
that there is something wrong with his program, and with his help fix
it for him.
The child who hastens to leave school without any reason as soon as
he may, is told that he may come back and spend all his time on the
thing that he likes. This often results in winning back a pupil, for
after he has worked for a few months in his favorite shop or the art
room, he finds he needs more book knowledge to keep on there and so he
asks to go back to his grade. The large number of foreign pupils is
also more efficiently dealt with. The newcomer concentrates on English
and reading and writing until he is able to go into the grade where
his age would naturally place him, and the pupil who expects to go to
school only a very short time before going to work can be put into the
classes which will give him what he needs most, regardless of his age
or grade. The work around the school buildings which can not be done
by the pupils under the direction of the shop or department heads, is
not done by outside hired help, but is given to some school pupil who
is interested in that sort of work and is ready to leave school. This
pupil holds the position for a few months only, until he has no more
to learn from his work or gets a better position outside. These pupil
assistants are paid sightly less than they could earn if they went
into an office, but the plan often serves to keep a pupil under school
influences and learning when he would otherwise have to leave school
in order to earn money, perhaps just before he finishes his technical
training.
[Illustration: Real work in a real shop begins in the fifth grade.
(Gary, Ind.)]
Gary has fortunately been able to begin with such an all-around
system of education, putting it into operation in all her schools in
a nearly complete form, because the town was made, as it were, at a
stroke and has grown rapidly from a waste stretch of sand dunes to a
prosperous town. But many other cities are realizing more and more
strongly the necessity of linking their curriculum more closely to
the lives of their pupils, by furnishing the children with a general
training and outlook on life which will fit them for their place in
the world as adults. Recently the Chicago public schools have been
introducing vocational work in some of the school buildings, while
technical high schools give courses that are vocational, besides work
in trade-training. Of course such elaborate equipment as that in Gary
is impractical in a building where the shops are not used by the high
school as well as the grades. Twenty or more of the regular school
buildings in the city have been fitted up with carpenter shops and
cooking and sewing rooms as well as laboratories for work in science.
Each one of these schools has a garden where the pupils learn how to
do practical city gardening. From one-fourth to even a half of the
children’s time is spent on manual training instead of one-eighth as
in the other schools of the city, and in other respects the regular
curriculum is being followed. The teachers in the schools who were
there before the change of program feel convinced that the pupils not
only get through with as much book work as they did when practically
all their time was given to it, but that they actually do their work
better because of the motive furnished by the hand work.
The courses given by the schools are not uniform, but most of the
schools include courses in mechanical drawing, pattern making, metal
work, woodwork, and printing for the boys, and for the girls, work in
sewing, weaving, cooking, millinery, laundry, and general home-making.
Both boys and girls have work in designing, pottery, bookbinding,
and gardening. The program differs somewhat in different schools to
meet the needs of the neighborhood or because of the resources of
the building; but all the pupils of one school take the same work,
so that when a pupil graduates from the eighth grade in one of these
schools he has acquired a good beginner’s knowledge of the principles
and processes underlying two or three trades. This special work is
supplemented by the regular work in music and art and this, with
work in the elementary processes of sewing and weaving and pottery,
constitutes the work for the younger grades. The object of this
training is to enable the child to pick up the thread of life in his
own community, by giving him an understanding of the elements of the
occupations that supply man’s daily needs; it is not to confine him to
the industries of his neighborhood by teaching him some one skilled
trade.
The laboratories for the study of the elements of science play a most
important part in this work. In them the child learns to understand the
foundations of modern industry, and so comes to his environment as a
whole. Without this comprehensive vision no true vocational training
can be successful, for it is only as he sees the place of different
kinds of work and their relation to each other that the youth can truly
choose what his own vocation is to be. Elementary courses in physics,
chemistry, and botany are given pupils, and the bearing of the work on
what they are doing in the shops is made clear. The botany is taught
in connection with the gardening classes, chemistry for the girls is
given in the form of the elements of food chemistry. One school gives a
laboratory class in electricity, where the pupils make the industrial
application of the laws they are studying, learning how to wire when
they are learning about currents, and how to make a dynamo when they
are working on magnets, etc. All the pupils take a course in the
elements of science, so that they may get a true basis for their ideas
about the way things work. There is no doubt that even in this rather
tentative form the vocational schools have proved themselves a decided
success, enabling pupils to do their book work better than before.
Linking it with the things of everyday life gives it meaning and zest,
and at the same time furnishes a mental and muscular control over the
sort of thing they are going to need as adults while earning a living.
There are five technical high schools in Chicago, four for boys and one
for girls. In all of these and in three other schools there are given
what is known as “prevocational” courses. These are for pupils who have
reached the legal age for leaving school, but who are so backward in
their work that they ought not to be allowed to do so, while at the
same time this backwardness makes them wish not to stay. These classes
have proved again the great value of training for the practical things
of everyday life to the city child. The boys and girls who are put
into these classes are by no means deficient: they are simply children
who for one reason or another have not been able to get along in the
ordinary grade school as well as they ought; often the reason has been
poor health, or because the child has had to move from one school
to another, or simply because the usual curriculum made so little
appeal that they were not able to hold themselves to the work. The
prevocational classes include the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades,
and give the greater part of the time to training the child through
developing skill with his hands. Book work is not neglected, however,
and the pupils are held up to the same standards that they would have
to reach in an ordinary school, though they do not cover quite so much
ground. The work can be made more varied than in the vocational grammar
school because the equipment of the high school is available. Moreover,
their ambition is so stimulated that very large numbers of them do
additional work and transfer to the regular technical high school work,
where in spite of their prior backwardness they do as well as the
regular students. Ordinarily not a single one of them would ever have
entered a high school.
The girls’ technical high school does about what the vocational
grammar schools are doing excepting that the work is more thorough,
so that the graduate is more nearly prepared to take up work in some
one industry. The cooking includes work in the school lunch room, and
training in marketing, kitchen gardening and general housekeeping. The
vocational classes proper take up large-quantity cooking, household
administration, and restaurant management. In sewing the girls learn
how to make their own clothes, but they learn as the work would have
to be learned in a good dressmaking establishment; there is a course
in machine operating for the girls who wish it. More advanced work
teaches such principles of pattern making and designing as would be
needed by a shop manager. But the most important difference is found in
the emphasis that is put on the artistic side of women’s traditional
occupations. Drawing is taught while the girls are learning to design
dresses, and color in the same way; how to make the home pleasing to
the eye is made a vital problem in the housekeeping department, and the
art department has decorated the model rooms. The pattern and coloring
for any piece of work, whether it is a centerpiece to be embroidered,
a dress, a piece of pottery, or weaving, has been carefully worked out
in the art department by the worker herself before she begins upon it
in the shop. The girls are not simply learning how to do the drudgery
of housework more efficiently; they are learning how to lift it above
drudgery by making it into a profession.
The vocational courses in the boys’ technical high schools continue
the pupils’ study in the regular academic subjects, and give them work
in excellently equipped shops. There is work in printing, carpentry,
forging, metal work, mechanical drawing, and in the machine shop, well
supplemented by the art department. The pupil does not specialize in
one kind of work, but secures general training. The object of all the
vocational courses in the grammar schools is to prepare the pupils
for any branch of work that they may want to take up by giving them
an outlook over all the branches of work carried on around them. The
work is cultural in much the same way that it is cultural in Gary. The
success of these courses in bringing boys back to school, in enabling
others to catch up with their grade, and in keeping others in school,
points strongly to the fact that for a great many pupils at least some
work which will link their school course to the activities of everyday
life is necessary.
The technical high schools give two-year courses for the pupils who can
not afford to stay in school for four years. They are designed to give
a boy training for a definite vocation, and are at the same time broad
enough to count for the first two years of high school work if the boy
should be able to go on later. At the Lane School two-year courses are
given in patternmaking, machine shop work, carpentry, electricity,
printing and mechanical drawing; all of these courses include work
in English, shop arithmetic, drawing, and physiology. The four-year
pupils take one of three courses, according to what they expect to do.
The technical course prepares students for college, the architectural
course prepares for work in an architect’s office, and the general
trade course prepares for immediate entry into industry. During the
first two years of work the student devotes his time to the study of
general subjects, and during the last two the major part of his time
is put in on work that leads directly to the vocation that he has
chosen. The two-year course has not cut down the total attendance at
the school by offering a short cut to pupils who would otherwise stay
four years. On the contrary, it has drawn a different class of boys to
school, those who had expected to go directly to work, but who were
glad to make a sacrifice to stay on in school two years longer when
an opportunity appeared to put those two years to definite account in
training for the chosen occupation. All these technical high schools
have shown conclusively that boys and girls like to go to school and
like to learn, when they can see whither their lessons are leading.
Giving the young work they want to do is a more effective method of
keeping them in school than are truant officers or laws.
In the Lane School the work of the different departments is closely
connected so that the pupil sees the relations of any one kind of
work to everything he is doing. A problem being set to a group of
students, such as the making of a gasoline engine or a vacuum cleaner,
the different elements in its solution are worked out in the different
classrooms. For the vacuum cleaner, for instance, the pupils must have
reached a certain point in physics and electrical work before they are
capable of trying to make the machine, since each pupil becomes in
a sense the inventor, working out everything except the idea of the
machine. When they are familiar with the principles which govern the
cleaner they make rough sketches, which are discussed in the machine
shop and altered until the sketch holds the promise of a practical
result. In mechanical drawing, accurate drawings are made for the whole
thing and for each part, from which patterns are made in the pattern
shop. The pupils make their own molds and castings and when they have
all the parts they construct the vacuum cleaner in the machine and
electrical shops. The problem of the gasoline engine is worked out in
a like way; and since all the work that is given the pupils has been
chosen for its utility as well as its educational value, the pupil does
everything connected with its production himself, from working out the
theory in the laboratory or classroom to screwing the last bolt. The
connection of theory and practice not only makes the former concrete
and understandable, but it prevents the manual work from being routine
and narrow. When a pupil has completed a problem of this sort he has
increased knowledge and power. He has tested the facts he learned and
knows what they stand for in terms of the use the world makes of them;
and he has made a useful thing in a way which develops his own sense of
independent intelligent power.
The attempts of the Cincinnati school board to give the school children
of that city a better education, by giving them a better preparation
for the future, have been made from a somewhat different point of
view. Three-fourths of the school children of Cincinnati, as of so
many other cities, leave school when they are fourteen years old; most
of them do not go beyond the fifth grade. They do this because they
feel they must go to work in order to give help at home. Of course a
fifth-grade pupil of fourteen is fitted to do only the easiest and most
mechanical work and so receives very low pay. Once at work in factory
or shop on this routine kind of work, the chances for the worker to
advance, or to become master of any trade, or branch of his trade,
are slight. His schooling has given him only an elementary control of
the three R’s, and usually no knowledge of the theory or practice of
the business he is engaged in. He soon finds himself in a position
where he is not learning any more. It is only the very exceptional
person who will go on educating himself and push ahead to a position
of independence or responsibility under such conditions. The person
who becomes economically swamped in the cheapest grades of work is
not going to show much energy or intelligence in his life as citizen.
The experiments of the Cincinnati schools in introducing manual and
industrial training have been directed to remedying this evil by
making the school work such that the pupil will desire to stay in
school if this is in any way possible; and if it is not, by giving him
opportunities to go on with his education while working.
The Ohio law requires children to stay in school until they are
sixteen unless they must go to work, when they are given a certificate
permitting them to work for the employer with whom they have found
their first position. This permission must be renewed with each change
of position. Consequently the pupil is kept in school until he has
found work, and if for any reason he stops working, the school keeps
in touch with him and can see that he goes back to school. The city
also conducts continuation schools, where most of the pupils who leave
between the ages of fourteen and sixteen have to return to school for
a few hours a week, receiving theoretical instruction in the work they
are doing. The cash girl has lessons in business English, arithmetic
of the sort she has to use, and lessons in salesmanship, and receives
a certain amount of general instruction about her special branch of
trade. There are voluntary continuation classes for workers above
sixteen years of age, by means of which any shop or store is able to
use the facilities of the public schools to make their workers more
efficient by giving them more knowledge of the theory of the trade.
These continuation classes are undoubtedly of the greatest value to
the employee who can not go back to school, but they do not give him
that grasp of present problems and conditions which would enable
him intelligently to choose the work for which he is best suited.
They improve him in a particular calling, but the calling may have
been selected by accident. Their function is to make up to the child
somewhat for what he has lost by having to become a wage earner so
young. The coöperative plan which is being thoroughly tried out in
Cincinnati is less of a makeshift and more of a distinct contribution
to education, and has so far proved so successful as to be of great
suggestive value. More than any other vocational plan it takes
advantage of the educational value of the industries that are most
important in the community. The factory shops of the city become the
school shops for the pupils. Many of the big factories of the city
have shown themselves willing to coöperate with the city for the first
year of the experiment. This has proved so successful that many more
factories are anxious to get their beginning workers in this way. In a
sense it is a return to the old-fashioned apprenticeship method that
prevailed when manufacturing was done by hand; for the pupils get
their manual skill and the necessary practice in processes and shop
conditions by working for wages in the city factories.
When the plan is further along the factories and stores will not be
the only community institutions that will furnish laboratories for the
school children of the city. The city college will begin its plan of
having the domestic science pupils get their practice by working as
nurses, cooks, housekeepers, or bookkeepers in the city hospital, and
the engineering and architectural students will get theirs by working
in the machine shops and draught-room of the city. As far as possible
the departments of the city government will be used for the pupils’
workshops; where they can not furnish opportunities for the kind of
work the pupil needs, he will go into an office, store, or factory
where conditions reach the standard set by the board of education. So
far this plan has been tested only with the boys and girls who are
taking the technical course in the city high schools. The pupils who
have finished the first two years of work, which corresponds to the
work of any good technical high school, begin working alternate weeks
in shop and school. The pupil chooses a kind of work in which he wishes
to specialize, and is then given a position in one of the factories or
shops which are coöperating with the schools. He receives pay for his
work as any beginner would, and does the regular work of the place,
under the direction of, and responsible to, the shop superintendent.
One week he works here under trade conditions, meeting the requirements
of the place, the next week he returns to school, and his place in the
factory is taken by another pupil who has chosen the same line of
work. The week in school is devoted entirely to theoretical work. The
pupil continues his work in English, history, mathematics, drawing,
and science, and enriches his trade experience by a thorough study
of the industry, all its processes and the science they involve,
the use, history, and distribution of the goods, and the history of
the industry. This alternation between factory and shop is kept up
for the last two years of the course, and also during the pupil’s
college course, provided he goes on to a technical course in the city
university.
From the standpoint of vocational guidance, this method has certain
distinct advantages over having the pupil remain in the classroom
until he goes into a shop permanently. His practical work in the
factory is in the nature of an experiment. If his first choice proves
a failure, the pupil does not get the moral setback that comes from a
failure to the self-supporting person. The school takes the attitude
that the pupil did not make the right choice; by coöperating with him,
the effort is made to have his second factory experience correspond
more nearly to his abilities and interest. A careful record of the
pupil’s work in the factory is kept as well as of his classroom work,
and these two records are studied, not as separate items, but as
interacting and inseparable. If his class work is good and his factory
record poor, it is evident that he is in the wrong factory; and the
nature of the class work will often give a hint of the sort of work
to which the pupil ought to change. If all the work is mediocre,
a change to another kind of practical work will often result in a
marked improvement in the theoretical work if the change has been the
right one. The pupil has an opportunity to test his own interests and
abilities, to find if his judgment of them is correct; if it is not, he
has a scientific basis on which to form a more correct judgment.
[Illustration: Children are interested in the things they need to know
about. (Gary, Ind.)]
[Illustration: Making their own clothes in sewing class. (Gary, Ind.)]
The work is not approached from the trade point of view; that is, the
schools do not aim to turn out workers who have finished a two years’
apprenticeship in a trade and are to that extent qualified as skilled
workmen for that particular thing. The aim is to give the pupil some
knowledge of the actual conditions in trade and industry so that he
will have standards from which to make a final intelligent choice. The
school work forms a necessary part of the training for this choice,
for it is just as much a guide to the interests and bent of the boy as
would be his success in any one shop. And it lifts his judgments from
the plane of mere likes and dislikes to that of knowledge based on
theory as well as practice. For the exceptional pupil who really knows
what he wants, and is eager to go ahead with it, this plan offers
distinct advantages. The boy’s desire to get to work is satisfied by
his weeks in the shop, and in his classroom he is learning enough of
the larger aspects and possibilities of the trade to make him realize
the value of additional theoretical training for the satisfaction of
his own practical purposes.
As a result of the first year of working on this plan a large number
of factories, at first indifferent to the plan, have asked to receive
apprentices in this way, and a number of pupils have decided to go to
college who, when they were spending all their time in school, had no
such intention. The technical course for girls includes only those
occupations that are traditionally supposed to belong to women because
they are connected with home-making. They may continue for the four
years working in school, which is made practical by having the pupils
trim hats to wear, make their own clothes, do some commercial cooking,
with the buying, selling, and bookkeeping connected with it; or they
may specialize during the last two years as the boys do, by working
alternate weeks in shop and school. So far girls have gone only into
millinery or sewing establishments, where they work just as do the boys
under actual trade conditions. The aim of the work for the girl, just
as it is for the boy, is to help her find her life work, to fit herself
for it mentally and morally, and to give her an intelligent attitude
toward her profession and her community, using the shop experience not
as an end in itself but a means to these larger ends.