One of the most interesting aspects of the school situation in Central
America and Panama is the important position occupied by commercial
and industrial education in the courses of study of many institutions.
Public men and teachers in Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, and Panama have taken into account the need of offering to
the new generation an education which shall be completely practical,
with the purpose of turning the thoughts and energies of all the youth
to fruitful service of their country.
The teaching of arts and crafts, as well as that of commerce and
agriculture, was formerly not begun, as in the United States, upon the
student’s entering the secondary school, though there has for some time
been a movement to make such instruction a part of the work of the
advanced classes in the primary schools, to be continued in the liceo
and the normal schools.
This universal interest in practical lines of education is a striking
indication of the influences and tendencies now at work in Central
America. In the different countries included under this designation
there are schools and academies, workshops and laboratories, intended
for the practical education of the student body. When it is remembered
that the introduction of practical and industrial education in the
school régime of Central America is a matter of the past few years,
the progress realized is regarded as highly satisfactory. The rapid
increase of the commerce of Central America, the improvement in
the means of intercommunication, the travels of its people abroad,
the influence of foreign elements in its territory, and the various
interests thus awakened have aroused in the interior of the Republics
composing it the belief that national greatness in modern times must
rest upon economic and industrial foundations. The influx of foreign
capital and the consequent establishment of powerful industrial
enterprises have likewise emphasized the necessity of training men
for work in such enterprises. The introduction of modern machinery,
the increase of the different forms of the application of steam, the
adoption of the inventions intended to gather up the results of labor,
and numerous similar influences have given rise to a tremendous demand
in this part of the continent for skilled and reliable mechanics.
Central America has thus addressed itself with enthusiasm to the task
of training the children of its schools for the activities of the
present day.
The capitals, other important cities, and even many small towns
have schools devoted to practical education, generally provided
with buildings and equipment well adapted to this end. Honduras,
for example, has founded a school for scientific instruction in the
cultivation and preparation of tobacco and for the manufacture of
cigars and cigarettes in the tobacco district around Danli. In several
Provinces of the same Republic, and in Panama, where agriculture is
subordinate, the Governments have founded schools for training pupils
to weave hats and other objects.
The more generalized industrial schools are those of arts and crafts
and the so-called practical schools for boys. Their organization
presents marked differences. In some of the countries named there exist
schools that receive pupils either as full or half time boarders,
and offer night courses as the situation demands. In all these
instruction is free. The Government generally offers a certain number
of scholarships in the boarding schools for pupils approved by the
different Departments or Provinces of the country. Tools, instruments,
and supplies used in the schools are provided by the Government. In
return the school exacts of such students certain services and thereby
carries out certain work that represents a partial reimbursement for
the amount spent upon their maintenance. This is the case with the
schools of arts and crafts in Honduras and Panama. Some small schools
of this class are maintained by means of the labor they carry on for
private individuals and by the sale of the products they turn out.
These industrial schools are generally of two kinds: (1) Those in which
the training in commercial subjects and in arts and crafts constitutes
part of the regular course of study and (2) those devoted exclusively
to the teaching of arts and crafts.
(1) In those of the first class the pupils study the ordinary subjects
prescribed by the department of public instruction and devote only
several hours weekly to arts and crafts. This class in its turn
includes two groups of institutions. To be admitted to those of the
first group the pupils must know how to read and write and apply
the elementary rules of arithmetic. During the entire school year
instruction is given in Spanish, geography, history, and arithmetic.
The practical schools for girls and boys are generally of this kind,
being especially numerous in Guatemala and Honduras. The schools
conducted by the Christian Brothers in Nicaragua are also of this
type. The duration of studies is from three to five years, a half
day being devoted to the classes in the ordinary subjects of primary
education and the other half to practical work. In the second group
are comprised various institutions which require certificates from the
higher elementary schools, such as the liceo and the higher colegio for
women in Costa Rica, the National Institute in Salvador, the Central
National Institute for Boys in Guatemala, and the normal schools in
these countries and in Honduras.
(2) Of the special institutions which constitute the second category,
there are to be noted two prominent instances in the schools of arts
and crafts in Panama and in Honduras. In organization and purposes they
are schools of mechanical arts, and not schools of manual training.
Their workshops have not been established to impart general notions of
manual arts or a general apprenticeship, but to train the pupils from
entrance upon the line of education chosen by themselves. In these
schools are taught carpentry, tanning, shoemaking, blacksmithing,
cabinetmaking, electricity, installation and management of machinery,
mechanics, printing and bookbinding, telegraphy, etc. All workshops in
such schools are well equipped with machinery and tools.
All that has been said in regard to modern educational tendencies and
influences to which boys are subject in the countries mentioned can be
extended, though in less degree, to the girls and young women. Within
the past few years women’s sphere of action has steadily been enlarged,
and has come to include not only teaching but various employments
in shops and mercantile establishments. Within the next few years
their instruction must be taken into account in schools of domestic
training, vocational schools, practical schools, and the technical
colegios. The organization and range of these institutions does not
differ materially from those for boys. The vocational school for girls
is essentially a school of arts and crafts in which the pupils devote
themselves from entrance to the study of a special line, such as
dressmaking, embroidery, millinery, and, in certain schools, cooking,
washing and ironing, etc. A certificate of proficiency is granted them
upon the completion of certain assigned courses. The other schools
for girls before mentioned combine general subjects with the special
apprenticeship in crafts upon which they enter as soon as they reach
the higher classes of the primary school and which they continue into
the high school and the normal school.