Recently the writer noticed several communications in THE SURVEY, in
reference to the proposition of establishing a separate system of
vocational schools, distinct from the existing traditional public
school system.
As a reason for the establishment of this so-called “dual” system of
vocational education the claim is advanced that, since manual training
had been emasculated by being in contact with the public school, so
likewise would vocational and industrial education be emasculated if
these forms of education were to be carried on side by side with the
other schools under the old organization.
The writer having seen the retarding effects of such a “dual” system
in one of our larger industrial cities, and Massachusetts having tried
and abandoned it, and since the writer is firmly convinced that such a
divided system of education will, before long, react injuriously upon
the social and ethical life of a state and her communities, and will
plague the industries with its uneconomic and unsocial consequences, he
is decidedly opposed to such a separated system of vocational schools.
It is a shrewd move to get entire control of the education of the
masses of industrial workers, a mentally narrowing, mind killing
education which, in its effects, would pull the intelligence of a
community down to a lower level, being re-enforced by the ossifying
influences of extreme specialization, which are noticeable in shop,
store and office in all our industrial centers even now.
Manufacturers and business men do not take kindly to the idea that
they should be made responsible for the mental, moral and aesthetic
development of their employes and under these circumstances industrial
education would soon degenerate into a feudal appendage of our
industrial system. Manufacturers, corporations and business men are
certainly entitled to a share in the management of our educational
system and industrial schools and it is highly desirable that they
should claim their share.
But they can accomplish all they need either as members of school
boards, or as advisory committees on industrial education.
As to the danger of vocational schools being emasculated there is
no such danger. No one who understands anything about the matter
expects to have vocational or industrial schools articulated with the
elementary or high schools in the manner manual training has been and
is articulated, but have these lower schools separate in just the same
manner as manual training high schools or technical high schools are
separate from the academic schools, yet are under the same organization
and management without any detriment to their usefulness.
It is true that, if specific industrial education is yoked together
with academic education in the high school, industrial education will
be emasculated. But then it is due to a managerial blunder of trying to
straddle two horses and there is no excuse to make such a managerial
mistake the pretext for the creation of an expensive separate system of
education. Manual training, as we understand it, was never emasculated
because neither by the originators, and the writer is one of them,
nor subsequently, was manual training in the elementary and high
school considered anything else but an adjunct to academic schools
for cultural purposes and down to the N. E. A. meeting at Boston
in 1903, Professor Woodward, the father of the American system of
manual training, disclaimed any other but cultural purpose for manual
training, without any distinct vocational aim.
At the above meeting Dean Woodward, in referring to the manual training
work done at St. Louis said: “The secondary school should enable a
boy to discover the world and find himself. I use the word ‘discover’
in the sense of uncover--that is lay bare--the problems, the demands,
the opportunities, the possibilities of the eternal world. A boy finds
himself when he has taken a correct inventory of his inherited and
acquired tastes and capacities”. While many friends of manual training
were disappointed in finding it did not revolutionize trade education,
it never intended to do that and therefore was not emasculated.
PAUL KREUZPOINTNER.
[Chairman Committee on Industrial Education, American
Foundryman’s Association.]
Altoona, Pa.
=THE I. W. W.: AN OUTLAW ORGANIZATION=