Vocational education

Front matter

i^cto |9orfe

at Cornell ©niberstitp

Strata, M. S-

Preface

This book is devoted primarily to a discussion of current problems in vocational education. Space has not been given either to historical surveys or to descriptions of contemporary achievements. Vocational education as a conscious social enterprise constitutes, except in professional fields, a long new chapter in social and educational evolution. Its literature is still largely a Hterature of aspirations, of shadowy ideals, and of scattered and poorly supported experiments.

But the great social movements of our time have finally brought to us xmmistakable demands for democratic and efficient systems of vocational education. Heretofore such school vocational education as we have had has been aristocratic— "for the leaders" it was claimed; and non-school vocational education has been haphazard, unorganized, and deplorably lacking in efficiency.

What we call the "contemporary movement for vocational education" is in stark simplicity the result of an enormous social demand for schools for the vocational education of the rank and file of workers. Schools of professional education for the training of leaders we have long had ; but corporate effort has, imtil almost yesterday, balked at the problem of providing training schools for workers who toil in the unexalted callings of mine, farm, forest, shop, factory, shipboard, and home.

Hence the new movement must first of all be interpreted as an expansion — and a tremendous one — of the purposes of education by means of those specialized agencies which we collectively designate as schools. It may be that to the philosopher the shadowy ultimate objectives of education viii Preface

can be expressed by such " omnibus " terms as salvation, grace, moral perfection, physical fitness, social efficiency, the seK-realization of the individual, the strong servant of the commonwealth, and those other interchangeable terms which constitute the currency of vague, speculative thinking ; but the age is demanding more specific and more objective interpretations of the ends we seek.

As *we endeavor to translate aspirations into concrete ■ ideals and working programs endless problems arise. Some of these are problems of meaning; what, after all, do we actually mean and intend by vocational education? Under what conditions and to what extent is it different from non-vocational education ? Some are problems of aim ; is society expected to provide schools for all possible forms of vocational education? In the case of any given vocation what are desirable limits to school directed training, instruction, and idealization? Then there are fundamental problems of method and of administration; having once determined what we seek, how shall we proceed to reach our goals ?

As far as practicable, therefore, the writer has addressed his efforts primarily to analysis of these problems. He has deliberately minimized or omitted discussions of those matters as to which substantial agreements seem to have been reached. Critical readers may feel that he has over-emphasized con-

! troversial issues ; but the writer has believed such emphasis desirable at this time. In dealing with these issues he has

1 usually had two distinct ends in view ; first, to analyze the essential factors of the problem; and, second, to state his

*-own hypothetical surmises and conclusions.

' There can be no helpful vocational education that does not rest on a sound system of economics. The painful years are showing us how Uttle legislators, business men, labor leaders, and educators know of the enduriag laws of economics and how, out of the soil of this ignorance, rank poisonous plants of fantastic creed and malevolent purpose may

Preface ix

easily grow. The ignorance of the citizenry of to-day, confronted by the endless economic problems produced by modern conditions of production, is comparable to that of the primitive natives in Mediterranean countries and later in North America when the currents of commerce sowed wide the seeds of the bubonic and other plagues. But there are few current econoniic problems which do not intimately affect, and are not intimately affected by, vocational education. Man must produce economic goods if he is to live ; he must produce them well and efficiently if he is to live well and efficiently ; and he must be trained long and exactingly if he is to produce efficiently. As far as present conditions of thought permit, the writer has tried to hold up for consideration in the background the most pertinent of the economic problems underlying vocational education.

The conditions under which this book has been written have rendered unavoidable a few major, and a larger numbet of minor, repetitions. But it is expected that a considerable number of readers will not desire to follow the text as a whole, but instead, to study sections deahng with particular prob- \ lems. For them the repetition of certain fundamental con-' siderations may prove an advantage. The indulgence of the reader is asked also in the matter of bibliographical references. Of substantial bibliographical material in book form vocational education has little indeed. The bibliographies listed on pp. 5x3-14 are largely of articles and other materials of a more or less transient nature.

David Snedden.

Contents

CHAPTER FAOB

1/ I. The Meaning of Vocational Education . . . i

'^11. The Social Need for Better Vocational Education 30

Chapter I The Meaning Of Vocational Education I

Some Definitions Illustrated. — For the purposes of this book, the word " vocation " will be taken in the sense of " calling," " chief occupation," or primary " gainful pursuit." It can be assumed that every adult in possession of his natural powers renders to the world some form of service, in return for which he receives the services (or the" products of the service) of others. To the rendering of this service, each adult usually devotes definite portions of his time and energy. He tills the soil, weaves cloth, keeps books, commands soldiers, teaches, writes poetry, drives a locomotive, superintends a factory, digs coal, heals the sick, cleans the streets, or keeps a home. For the services thus rendered steadily in the one or the other of these fields his fellows pay him with portions of the results of their service, money, of course, serving only as a convenient measure and means of making such payment.^

1 The man who lives by purely predatory activities exacts goods from others without rendering an equivalent; but such conduct is, of course, under the ban of society. So is beggary and other forms of getting, without giving, service.

A man who owns capital and keeps it invested is thereby rendering a service to society, since most forms of production require capital. But a man owning much capital may elect to render no other service except

Any adult may have other occupations besides his vocation; but, commonly, he does not pursue these as primary means of obtaining a livelihood, or of producing sufficient " goods " wherewith he can purchase what he desires of the goods produced by others. These " side " occupations or avocations he may pursue for amusement, — they constitute often the play of men; or he may pursue them as a means of health; or he may discharge through them those non-vocational obligations which he owes to society, — that is, to the family, the church, the party, the state, the nation, — as parent, citizen, worshiper, defender. But in no case are these activities properly vocations; etymologically and logically they are avocations — to be pursued outside the hours customarily dedicated to his vocation. Hence, it is not consistent with the usage accepted in this book to speak of parenthood or citizenship or military reserve service or amateur sport as " vocations."

Kinds of Vocations. — Vocations, of course, may be manual or intellectual; the worker may be called chiefly to lead and to give orders, or to follow and to take orders.

through keeping his capital in active use. For convenience we may assume that his vocation is that of " investor."

In superficial writing it is sometimes assumed that only " labor " (meaning thereby, manual labor) is productive. This, of course, is playing with words. For our purposes, any human effort that results in " goods " valued for human utilization will be called productive service. Hence the soldier who defends the flag, the artist who paints an attractive scene, the explorer who reveals new regions, the enterpriser (or entrepreneur) who dares to start a new enterprise, the actor who entertains, the mother who gives her best effort to rearing children, and the banker who creates storage reservoirs and " canal " systems whereby capital can be gathered and set to work like irrigating water, are all contributing productive 'service no less than the farmer, the miner, and the factory operative.

In the sense used here children, as well as decrepit an.d defective adults, do not render productive service. They may, by their growth or presence, add to the spii-itual wealth of the community, but they do not have, usually, productive vocations and they therefore consume but do not add to economic wealth.

There are vocational classes in which the service rendered to society is frequently not to be measured by the material return which society or individuals within it give. We think of priests, teachers, artists, inventors, leaders of forlorn hopes, physicians, devoted soldiers, as all coming more or less within these classes. But the differences between highest and lowest workers is chiefly one of degree rather than of kind, as respects value of service rendered and the spirit in which it is rendered. We can distinguish vocational groups in which the workers are strongly actuated by devotion to the service of the larger human groups; others in which desire for gain and approval chiefly lead men on; and still others in which the primitive emotions of fear, — fear of hunger, fear of poverty, fear of the blows of the slave driver, — force men to work that is often irksome and repellent.

Superficially considered, some vocations seem to be " harder " than others, in the sense that fewer persons can be found willing to undertake or discharge them. We assume that only mature, well-selected, and well-trained men can be physicians, generals, locomotive engineers, writers, directors of enterprise. The differences between the high and low, the well rewarded and the poorly rewarded, vocations are in reality the products of social valuations of the service rendered. Intrinsically, it is probably no harder to try to heal the sick, paint pictures, lead a regiment, plan a house, or teach the young than to dig a ditch, sweep a street, operate a typewriter, or weed a garden; but the standards of service exacted by society differ in these fields so greatly that for certain kinds of healing, painting, commanding, planning, and teaching only the services of individuals of rare native ability and elaborate training are acceptable, whereas very ordinary persons, even if untrained, can render acceptable service in the other fields. Except, then, for certain specialized kinds of service, — e.g. invention, operatioh of complicated machinery, — where only the person of unusual gifts and training can accomplish anything at all, it can safely be assumed that the " difficulty " of a given vocation as currently conceived is largely a reflection of the valuations attached by society to the services rendered in and through it. These valuations change, of course. Teaching is frequently le'ft to those of least ability and preparation, but occasionally a man of trained talent is sought and rewarded grandly. Defenders, healers, cooks, painters of pictures, writers of verse, rearers of children — all these follow vocations which at certain times have been depreciated, despised, and given over to the weak and the untrained; while under other conditions they have been exalted and well rewarded, held as the prizes for the fortunate ones whom nature has gifted and society carefully prepared.

The Variability of Workers Men vary greatly in their

respective abilities to produce valuable service within each vocation. The causes of these variations, in so far as they are not due to external conditions, — character of tools used, supervision, etc. — are to be found in the native ability, experience,_training, -health, and- morals of each of the workers. The bases for all successful productive work, — hunting, defending, tilling, herding, fabricating, teaching, healing, leading, — are to be found, of course, in certain inherited qualities of nervous system, bone, muscle, and sense organs. These give valuable kinds of strength, endurance, agihty, sensitiveness, and a wide range of intellectual and moral powers and qualities.

The prolonged exercise of these qlialities, in the human, no less than in the animal, world, tends towards their improvement. Within limits, skill, technical knowledge, satisfaction with results of effort, and appreciation of the social significance of work done, grows with the prolonged exercise of native powers called for by a vocation.

The Meaning of Vocational Edtication 5

But to>this growth, due to practice and experience, must be added the equally important growth in vocational powers due to the worker's gradual absorption of the stored and communicated results of the experience of others — forerunners as well as contemporaries. It is in this respect peculiarly that, in the exercise of productive activities, man so immeasurably surpasses the animals. The success of the animal in the natural state depends upon inherited powers and individual experience alone, including instincts of cooperation, while the success of human beings is achieved largely, upon the basis of the individual experience of uncounted numbers of others, communicated by language and otherwise. Back of nearly every vocation as carried on to-day, is a vast social inheritance of discoveries, tested devices, organized technical knowledge, and methods of coordinating the efforts of many.

The Acquisition of the Social Inheritance belonging to any vocation may be, for a given individual, an unsystematized and accidental matter, or it may be definitely organized and regulated. Certain instincts, powerful in youth, and probably never wholly dormant, — curiosity, imitation, ownership, workmanship, competition for approval or ascendancy, as we may roughly name some of them, — impel the Worker to glean from all his associates and from the products of human effort which surround him, the available fragments of the social inheritance of vocational devices, customs, knowledges, and ideals. In more advanced stages he finds these compacted in books, models, diagrams, formulae, and the like.

The process of appropriating the social inheritance peculiar to a given vocation may consist, so far as a given learner is concerned, largely of the accidental or partial learning which takes place as an accompaniment to actual participation in work itself, in progression from its more elementary to its more advanced stages ; or it may be highly organized for a definite period. In the first case, the person (usually youth or young worker) is primarily engaged in productive work, and as a kind of by-product of that he accumulates, in addition to the results, which are due solely to his own enlarging experience, a large body of knowledge, devices, " tricks of the trade," etc. from his fellows and directors. In the second case, he is primarily engaged in learning how to become productive, his productive work being for the present a secondary consideration. There was a time when a boy became a physician by serving as an apprentice to a practitioner. Almost from the outset, the novice was expected primarily to make himself useful — to assist the healer; but, as a secondary object of both master and apprentice, he w^as expected to learn from the elder the " arts of healing," the secrets of materia medica. To-day, in the cab of the locomotive engineer, is found a helper whose chief duty is to feed the fires, but who is expected incidentally to learn the arts and to acquire the skill required to later become himself a locomotive engineer.

Direct Vocational Education for the Professions

Society has in large part substituted direct vocational education for the indirect education (by-education) of apprenticeship in the training of the physician; but it has done nothing of the kind yet in the training of the locomotive engineer. The youth, aspiring to the practice of medicine, now spends several years with the one object of mastering the accumulated knowledge and the arts of his proposed profession. He may, as interne in a hospital, still serve a period ' of quasi-apprenticeship ; but he does so only after he has equipped himself substantially to the point where he could enter upon productive work on his own account. It is clearly within the bounds of possibility that the locomotive engineer will yet be educated directly for his calling in specially equipped and stafifed schools, as are physicians, or in a more nearly related field, chauffeurs, to-day.

The foregoing review of some of the more elementary facts of social science has been essential to bring into relief certain fundamental conditions affecting vocational education. The relative productive capacity of individuals (their first measure of vocational success) has many sources among which the most distinguishable . and important are: .heredity; the nurturing effects of environment; the by-education of play, miscellaneous occupations and general education; the by-education of novice or apprenticeship 1 participation in the early stages of the vocation itself; and direct vocational education for a specific calling.

II

Vocational By-Education. — It is clear that all purposeful or partially purposeful processes by which one individual promotes the vocational capacity of another should be regarded as vocational education, broadly considered. LTsing the term in this sense, it is also evident that substantially all adijlt persons at all times have received some vocational education. We can, for any given vocation, in any given period, distinguish between different kinds of vocational education as: direct or indirect; good or bad; fragmentary or complete; concrete or abstract; publicly directed or left i ! I wholly to private effort ; and rationally conceived or resting wholly on custom.

Similarly, we mjust recognize that more or less good or bad vocational education has been involved in the cases of : the youth in primitive society learning the use of bow and arrow from uncle, father, or other (usually older) associate; the boy on shipboard "picking up" the arts of the sailor ; the farmer's boy learning through his tasks as helper to be in turn a farmer; the girl, assisting her mofffSr-^Q^ execute the numberless arts underlying preparation of food, clothing, and shelter ; the apprentice bound out to a master for a series of years " to learn a trade'"; the student in the college of law, medicine, or dentistry; the young man entering a bank " at the foot of the ladder," and by combination of direct practical experience and outside study fitting himself eventually for the presidency of the institution; the prospective teacher training for her work in a normal school; the teacher using his practical experience and supplemental study as a means of fitting himself for a superintendency; an immigrant, without knowledge of, or skill with, machinery, placed in a machine shop and directed by the boss in the operation of a particular machine towards the performance of particular processes; and the innumerable other forms of adjustment whereby at all times the immature, untaught, and unready are nevertheless led, helped, or forced on towards specialized forms of competency for productive work.

For the purposes of this book, a fundamental distinction must at once be made between direct and indirect vocational education. The latter form will usually be described as vocational by-education for the reason that such education is a by-product of activities designed primarily for other purposes. Direct vocational education obviously includes only those forms in which training for a specified vocation is the primary, central, and controlling purpose, and in which production, recreation, control, etc., are all regarded as secondary, minor, or incidental purposes. The student in the medical college is expected to devote his chief efforts, not to the productive practice of medicine, but to learning or otherwise preparing to practice medicine. The use made of his time, the exercises and studies he undertakes, the equipment placed at his disposal, are all designed primarily to accomplish definitely conceived purposes of vocational education.

; An agency for direct education of any sort is usually called a school. Farms, homes, shops, offices, boats, mines.

' and the like are primarily agencies for productive work and not for education. A vocational school may and should do productive work as a secondary objective, but such productive work is an incidental thing, a by-product; the other agencies named often produce education, but that is necessarily, for them, a by-product.

It is now clear that at all times in the past and even yet

(the great bulk of the world's vocational education has been, and is, essentially by-education. The learner has " learned to do by doing " and his doing has been addressed directly to the task of producing valuable service or goods. Even under the highly organized apprenticeship systems of the Middle Ages, the novice was, from the standpoint of his master, engaged primarily in producing. The apprentice, and particularly the father of the apprentice, who had, perhaps, paid a substantial indenture fee, probably conceived of the education to be received as the really valuable outcome ; but it remained true, nevertheless, that as regards the disposition of the learner's time, the use of equipment and materials by him, and the gradation of tasks assigned, production was the primary, and vocational education the secondary, end.

Ill

Direct Vocational Education. — In point of evolutionary development, the vocational school succeeds to processes of vocational by-education in home, shop, farm, office, shipboard, camp, and road as inevitably as does the school for literary, religious, artistic, civic, or physical education when unspecialized agencies, having these as secondary purposes, prove inadequate to the advancing needs of society. The home once taught reading and writing as by-products of its normal or primary activities (nurture and protection, so far as children were concerned). But the home was always a poor agency through which to insure the necessary minimum of reading and writing. First private schools, then endowed schools, and finally, public schools, came into existence to insure the effective teaching of these necessary branches.

Similarly, the methods of apprenticeship once apparently sufficed to give the instruction and training necessary to those who were to practice the arts of healing with their associated magic and other subsidiary arts. But it long ago became apparent that the methods of apprenticeship were insufficient to prepare healers of the kind sought or required by society under more advanced conditions. The need was first met by medical apprentices' courses of lectures in which successful practitioners expounded principles and imparted the information built up through experience. These were gradually succeeded by schools of ' medicine which presupposed no apprenticeship, but which, building on foundations of a prolonged general education, laid broad foundations of scientific knowledge and completed the structure of medical education by directed practical experience to be obtained through clinical demonstration and hospital practice supervised by experts.

Thus have come into existence vocational schools for the training of engineers, lawyers, teachers, priests, dentists, war leaders, architects, pharmacists, stenographers, bookkeepers, accountants, machinists, printers, cooks, barbers, and the like. Sometimes the occupation is so modern and technical that a state of apprenticeship has never developed, — e.g. stenography. Sometimes the methods of the vocational school in selecting talent and training it are from the outset so acceptable that apprenticeship quickly falls into disuse when the product of the vocational school becomes available, — e.g. the engineering professions in France, Germany, and America. In many cases, owing to poor educational methods in vocational schools or to the slow development of appreciation of their work outside, a long period intervenes between the establishment of voca-

The Meaning of Vocational Education ii

tional schools and th^ widespread acceptance of those trained in them as having superior qualifications. American normal schools have had to wage a long and hard campaign to have their product generally accepted even as of equal merit with persons just graduated from secondary schools of general education. Private trade schools have been repeatedly condemned because their graduates have, as alleged, not only not learned their trades properly, but have in serious respects been disqualified to learn them through the routine of apprenticeship subsequently. The extent to which American agricultural colleges have justified the investment made in them as respects the training of men to be successful farmers is still debated (it is not questioned that they have been successful in training agricultural investigators, soil analysts, and other specialists). Private so-called business and commercial schools for many years exploited the ambitions of young Americans to become successful. business leaders; and to-day literally hundreds of thousands of youths of both sexes are found in public and private commercial schools seeking what appeals to them as a valuable vocational education. That the instruction and training they receive actually functions profitably as vocational competency in any but one commercial calling, is openly questioned even by educators. But the success of these quasi- vocational or alleged vocational schools in attracting students is eloquent testimony of the prevailing popular belief, on the one hand, in the inadequacy of commercial by-education as received in commercial callings themselves, and on the other, of the possibilities of providing effective vocational schools for these fields.

Intermediate Forms. — It is clear that between direct vocational education and vocational by-education certain hybyd forms can be recognized. In a shop, for example, a foreman may for several days devote himself primarily to teaching a new recruit. During this time, production must be regarded as an incident to the teaching process. In factories or commercial estabUshments, a recently employed man may be required to serve a period without pay, it being assumed by both parties to the arrangement that the productive service rendered does not more than compensate for the education made available. Occasionally, novices will be found in the ofifices of architects, lawyers, and engineers, or in hospitals, who are contributing productive service indeed, but for whom the primary purpose is some form of vocational education.

Then, too, we must recognize the existence of numerous schools whose function is not to give the entire vocational education as required for the exercise of a calling, but to provide one necessary ingredient in it. A man seeking to qualify for the position of farm implement salesman in Brazil may obtain instruction in Portuguese in a school bf languages. An apprentice in a machine shop may obtain in evening school special technical training in some phase of drawing, mathematics, or mechanics.

These forms of vocational education, partially direct and partially indirect, require consideration in their individual forms. It is practically impossible to formulate generalizations regarding them. Usually they are in a state of flux. For example, short course instruction of telephone girls has been replaced in many cases by direct education in special schools for operatives, maintained by the telephone corporations. Evening technical instruction tends towards so-called " short unit " courses quite specifically integrated with the day experience and problems of the worker.

The first decade of the twentieth century has witnessed in America a rapidly growing interest in the possibilities of publicly supported vocational schools to serve prospective workers in the industries, agriculture, and home making. The sources and special manifestations of this interest will be discussed elsewhere. Here, it is only necessary to note that in general, outside the professions and stenography, vocational schools yet play an insignificant part in supplying the vocational training required by the three to five millions of persons who annually enter the r^ks of productive work in the shops, homes, offices, farms, camps, and railroads and ships of America. There are good reasons for believing that in many of the callings in these fields the efficacy of the by-education of apprenticeship or other participation is steadily diminishing, as a consequence of which there results a vast social wastage of human . energy, happiness, health, and life. To trust to by-education is peculiarly characteristic of an age and social order strongly influenced by the doctrines of individualism and laisses faire. The prolonged maintenance of professional schools, private, endowed, or public, represents in some , degree the outgrowth of beliefs in the desirability and pos- ; sible efficacy of, social or collective action. The spirit of; the age is clearly away from laisses faire and towards collective action in vocational education.

IV

Origins. — The coming of vocational education in schools for the rank and file of workers has been dependent in the first place upon a social conviction, held at least by the thinkers, that the historic forms of vocational by-education no longer sufficed for modern needs. This conviction rapidly developed during the closing decades of the 19th century in the industries when it was clearly seen how the prop;ress of manufacturing had broke.D_xLQ.wn..lradfi..appLeDticeship. It came when it was seen that in the agncultm:al occupations the old jcills andjcustoms must be replaced by new skills (the demands of machine farming among others) and scientific knowledge. In the commercial world it came when the rapid evolution of new processes and needs showed the utter futility of trying to develop apprenticeship training for ofifice and counting-house. And now, even in the elemental and primitive field of home making, the same conviction is growing, namely, that direct school I training for this vocation will, in the long run, prove more effective and economical than the hit-and-miss processes of ■ the by-education of the home itself.

Thpre could, of course, be no genuine vocational education offered through Schools until the public believed such schools to be practicable. It has taken nearly a century of blind experimentation, false starts, the pioneering efforts of philanthropists, and the speculations of educators and social workers to give us even our present body of imperfectly tested knowledge and theory as to the ways and means of training in, or under the direction of, special schools for even a few of the thousands of occupations that men and women — and even adolescent boys and girls, the juvenile workers — must follow.