Like Guatemala and Honduras, Panama has devoted special attention
to industrial training. The School of Arts and Crafts of the City
of Panama is one of the largest and best equipped of its kind. It
is essentially a school for artisans and possesses sections of
electricity, carpentry, cabinetmaking, printing and bookbinding,
carving, foundry work, etc., its principal object being to train men
for the separate industrial branches.
Panama also has a vocational school for girls in which a year’s
instruction is given in telegraphy, one in laundry work, two in
dressmaking and embroidery, two in shorthand, two in cooking, two in
millinery and flower work.
It has likewise a school of agriculture, in which is given a three
years’ course, for which the Government offers 30 scholarships to
youths approved by local authorities. The Government has also founded
from time to time specialized schools in the interior, with the object
of encouraging agriculture or some other industry, such as that of the
manufacture of Panama hats. Like Honduras, Panama devotes the greatest
attention to special industrial schools.
For the furtherance of commercial education in Central and South
America a Pan American College of Commerce, to be located at the City
of Panama, is projected, under the joint auspices of the Southern
Commercial Congress of the United States and the Government of the
Republic of Panama. The active support of the countries of the two
Americas is to be sought, and it is hoped that it may be opened on
January 1, 1921, the quadricentennial year of the City of Panama,
the first city to be founded by Europeans in the Western Hemisphere.
The college is designed to train the youth of the two continents in
practical courses of commerce, shipping, banking, and international
trade relations generally.