Industrial education : its problems, methods and dangers

Front matter

Class LL-\AA

Book.- > L_i_

Copyright N^.

Preface

This series of books owes its existence to the generosity of Messrs. Hart, Schaffner & Marx, of Chicago, who have shown a special interest in trying to draw the attention of American youth to the study of economic and commercial subjects. For this purpose they have delegated to the undersigned committee the task of selecting or approving of topics, making announcements, and awarding prizes annually for those who wish to compete.

For the year ending June 1, 1912, there were offered: —

In Class A, which included any American without restriction, a first prize of $1000, and a second prize of $500.

In Class B, which included any who were at the time undergraduates of an American college, a first prize of $300, and a second prize of $200.

Any essay submitted in Class B, if deemed of suflScient merit, could receive a prize in Class A.

The present volume, submitted in Class A, was awarded the first prize in that class.

J. Laurence Laughlin, Chairman, University of Chicago,

J. B. Clabe,

Columbia University,

Henry C. Adams,

New York City,

Edwin F. Gay,

Harvard University,

PART I. THE PROBLEMS I. mXRODUCTION

Antiquity of the subject. — 1645, Plans of the Marquis of Worcester.

— 1676, "How to Outdo the Dutch without Fighting." — 1691, Plans of President Leonard Hoar of Cambridge. — Locke's plan to counteract the spread of pauperism. — 1796, Pitt's bills to the same effect. — Present-day discussions and publications. — Indefinite idea of terms used. — Time to take stock. — Every man considers himself a competent critic of educational affairs. — Industrial education a popular subject. — Ephemeral character of educational propaganda. — Investigations and commissions. — Need for definiteness. — Economic losses. — Education not democratic. — Various problems on which silence is maintained.

— The problem of the unskilled worker. — The problem of the small town. — Lack of parental influence and guidance. — Popular conception of industry shown by the use of the term "industrial." — Definitions 3

II. THE PROBLEM IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS

Ranks of artisans recruited from the elementary schools. — Attendance at schools. — Compulsion. — Raising the age. — Money spent. — Reasons for pupils not entering the high schools. — Unfinished product. — "Repeaters" and their cause. — Obstacles in the way of dismissing inefficient teachers. — Scarcity of men teachers. — Reducing the supply of adolescent labor. — Industrial education has its roots in the primary schools. — Manual training never given a fair chance. — Art and drawing in the schools. — Household science. — Evening schools. — Limited use of educational equipment. — Three classes of towns to be provided for. — Parents' dislike of industrial occupations for their boys. — Indifference of the average parent. — Who decides whether a boy shall leave school? — Lack of parental authority. — The boy's ideas regarding industry. — Reasons for leaving school. — Juvenile delinquents. — The drifting of Adolescents. — Decline and revival of apprenticeship. — The work of the elementary schools could be done in one less year. — Haphazard choice of occupations. — Investigations and commissions. — Aims of industrial education.

— The different phases of the question stated 12 viii CONTENTS

Part II. The Methods

III. THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND THEIR REVITALIZATION

Putting the schools on a business basis in order that the greatest possible return may be secured from the investment. — Tests to be applied. — Reorganization of the course of study with a view of giving a direct industrial trend both to the instruction given and to the mind of the boy. — School and work are not synonymous terms. — All difficulties are carefully removed. — Wheedling the child into knowledge. — A race incapable of doing disagreeable things. — Time available. — Extension of the school day. — Secret of European success. — Industrial method applied to various subjects; reading, writing, composition, arithmetic, science, geography, history. — Work outside school. — Changes in methods arising out of the revised curriculum. — Handwork. — Library. — Trade information. — Continued education and choice of trade. — Visits to factories and industrial schools. — Freedom to local authorities. — Visual instruction. — Moving pictures. — Vital statistics. — Training teachers. — Foundation for vocational training. — Compulsion 43

IV. MANUAL TRAINING: ITS SUCCESSES, ITS FAILURES,

AND ITS REORGANIZATION IN RESPONSE

TO PRESENT CONDITIONS

Unsuitability and indefiniteness of the name. — Many kinds of hand training. — Manual training high schools. — Exaggerated ideas.

— Not taken seriously by the people. — Grounds of its advocacy.

— Manual and industrial training. — Cultural and practical value of manual training. — Educational tradition and opposition.

— Never an integral part of the curriculum. — Unreal and restricted character of the work. — Development of the manual training course of study. — Too much restricted to work in wood.

— Ability of the teachers employed. — Ontario regulations for training teachers. — Claims failed to materialize. — Indifference of the grade teachers. — Value of time and material. — Differences between school and shop. — Dollars and cents. — A cost check. — Cooperative or community work. — Industrial education reacting on manual training. — Household science. — Housewifery. — More practical methods 59

CONTENTS ix

V. SOME NEW TYPES OF SCHOOLS, AND PRINCIPLES

UNDERLYING THEIR ORGANIZATION

AND MANAGEMENT

Modernizing existing types and building on the achievements of the past. — A good citizen must be able to earn a living. — "How to live" and "How to make a living" intimately related. — Present high schools do not meet the needs of eighty per cent of the children leaving the elementary schools. — Objections to grading or sorting children. — General and special industrial school. — Rochester Factory School. — Industrial method of treatment of subjects. — Length of school day increased to eight hours. — Taking boys into works before conclusion of the course. — Approval of the American Federation of Labor of such a school. — Specialization in the third year. — These schools not to be regarded as "cities of refuge." — Compulsion necessary. — Scholarship and maintenance allowances of the London County Council. — Disposal of product. — The plan followed in the Rochester Factory School and the Newton Independent Industrial School. — Cooperation of all interests. — Cost. — Obligations of the State. — Amount spent in luxuries. — Assistance by Federal Governments. — The public will have these schools when they are willing to pay for them 75

VI. VARIOUS PROBLEMS RELATING TO SUPPLEMEN- TARY EDUCATION IN DAY AND EVENING CONTINUATION SCHOOLS

Self-deception in regard to evening schools. — Fascination of numbers. — Attendance. — Defects of evening schools. — Defects can be remedied. — Compulsory continuation schools. — The eight-hour day. — The student. — Letter sent to pupils on leaving the elementary school (Rochdale). — Employers required to report the employment of adolescents. — Attitude of employer. — Expert guidance as to courses to be taken. — Classification. — Curriculum. — Method of subject treatment. — Reasons for discontinuance of attendance. — Lack of elementary knowledge. — Diverse conditions to be taken into account. — Demand for subjects that cannot be obtained in the shops. — The teacher. — Academic and industrial teaching. — The teacher from the shop. — Normal schools for training industrial teachers. — Advertising. — Fees. — Why only open for six months. — Social as well as educational centres. — Small classes. — Individual instruction. — Looking after absentees. — Printed notes of lessons. — Textbooks. — The one industry town. — Small towns with a large number of industries: Montrose. — The large city: Leeds dnd Manchester. — Advisory

X CONTENTS

committees. — Two aspects of the education given. — Members of trustee boards not educational experts. — Correspondence schools: University of Wisconsin, National Typographical Union.

— Cooperation between small towns. — Traveling schools. — Schools for those unemployed during the winter. — Trade and industrial museums. — A problem with no single solution . . 93

VII. APPRENTICESHIP

Apprenticeship said to be dead. — Only partially true. — Apprenticeship under the guilds. — The revival of guilds in Germany and Austria. — Trade unionists should be expert craftsmen. — Functions of guilds. — Regulations for apprentices. — Fortunate for the worker that the old system has passed. — Inadequacy of old instruction. — Reasons for its decline: growth of population, development of machinery, subdivision of labor, disinclination of employers and journeymen to take and teach apprentices. — Disinclination of boy to be bound. — Length of time required. — Stealing a trade. — Trades in which apprenticeship cannot be adopted.

— Skilled labor nearly superfluous. — Instruction for the oneprocess man. — Apprenticeship for the "specialist." — Status of the apprentice. — An efficient system of apprenticeship distinguished by careful selection of apprentices, the trade to be the free choice of the apprentice, wages paid to be mutually satisfactory, adequate instruction given, length of period just sufficient to accomplish the end desired, regular progress through the shop, a matter of Government regulation: Germany, Switzerland, Wisconsin. — Control of apprentices outside working hours. — Government aid to approved schools ........ 127

VIII. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Success of industrial education depends on a wise choice of occupation. — Two types of organizations, "Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Associations" and "Vocation Bureaus." — Plan of the English organization. — Supervision outside working hours.

— Inquiry into prospects and conditions of different trades. National Conference on Vocational Guidance. — The plan in New York high schools. — The system needed in the elementary schools. — Organization in Boston. — Specimen of bulletin issued on "The Machinist." — Record cards. — Report of Boston School Committee. — Present status of the movement . . , . 149

IX. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Education of the parent necessary. -^ Interests of employers in industrial education suspected by organized labor. — Age of six-

CONTENTS xi

teen for entry into industry questioned. — Choice of a trade should be made earlier. — Being too prosperous. — Increased earning capacity arising from industrial training: Baron de Hirsch Trade School. — School of Printing, Boston. — Mutual duties of employer and employee. — Economic losses arising from ineflSciency.

— More stability required in the boy. — Industrial elasticity.

— Skilled labor essential 163

Part III. The Dangers

X. DANGERS ARISING FROM THE MISINTERPRETATION OF FOREIGN SYSTEMS, AND OTHER CAUSES

Elaborate buildings and costly equipment. — Universal use of Germany as an illustration. — German view of educational systems. — Mistakes and misconceptions. — American trade schools and German trade schools not the same. — The German State does not teach trades. — Schools for apprentices. — Schools for journeymen. — Purpose of each. — Specimen courses of study. — Preparatory courses. — Handwerkerschule not a school where handwork is taught. — Apprenticeship system largely the secret of German success. — No attempt to teach skill.— German criticisms of their own system. — The American is not German 175

APPENDIX A. Resolutions adopted by the National Association OP Manufacturers op the United States op America, May 21, 1912 . . .193

APPENDIX B. List op Authorities Consulted .... 196 INDEX . 199

Part I The Problems Its Problems, Methods And Dangers

No matter how far back we go in educational history and literature, it is impossible to find a period when the problems of industrial education were not with us. True the subject did not always appear under that special name, nor did it wear the clothes in which it is garbed to-day, but it was there nevertheless.

In 1645, the Marquis of Worcester, while imprisoned in the Tower of London and working on his steam and water engines, saw a vacant lot, from the window, and gave instructions to his agent for its purchase, intending, as soon as he was set at liberty, "to erect a school wherein boys might learn something of the principles of the mechanic arts." Unfortunately the opportunity was never given to him to put his plans into operation.

In 1676, there was published in England a book entitled "How to Outdo the Dutch without Fighting," by Andrew Yarranton. The author says: —

Inasmuch as we cannot fight on the seas as our boats are inferior to those of the Dutch, if we are to exist at all we must sharpen the wits of our people.

He points out that " Mechanics Universities " had existed for many years in Germany and Holland, and counsels the securing of teachers from those countries.

Get a good man from Freiburg to put us in the way of making tapes, and bring over two engines, one for narrow and one for broad tapes with wheels to spin. Send for one man to Dort in Holland to put us in the way of treating the fine threads, and for a spinning mistress from Germany to govern the little maids, and instruct them in the art of spinning, for a man from Haarlem in Holland to whiten your tapes and threads ; and if you do this you will become masters of it as Manchester is in all the things it trades in.

In the same year Chief Justice Hale recommended to Parliament the establishment of an industrial school in every parish.

President Leonard Hoar, of Cambridge, in a letter to Robert Boyle, who died in 1691, said: —

I would have a large, well-sheltered garden and orchard for students addicted to planting; an ergasterium for mechanical fancies, and a laboratory chemical for those philosophers that by their senses would cultivate their understanding, for the students to spend their times of recreation at them; for reading or notions are but husky provender.

Two centuries afterwards came the Lawrence Scientific School of Arts and Sciences in connection with Harvard University (1847).

In 1705, Locke laid before the English Parliament a plan to counteract the spread of pauperism by the establishment of labor schools in each parish. The bill failed, as did one to the same effect proposed by Pitt in 1796.

The wave of discussion which passed over the educational world twenty-five or thirty years ago is as applicable to-day as it was then, if we substitute the term "industrial education" for "manual training." During the past ten years particularly, the subject seems to have been discussed from all points of view, in the press, on the platform, and even in those pulpits which do not usually concern themselves with the things of this world.

A large number of books have been issued and the available literature is constantly growing, but unfortunately the discussions and publications do not reach those to whom they are calculated to be of most benefit. They are read and discussed only by students of education, and those who are already convinced of the necessity of the adoption of some adequate form of industrial training — a case very largely of preaching to the converted.

In this flood of discussion we are in danger of losing sight of the possible and the practical and are getting perilously close to theories and schemes which if not checked and turned will lead to disaster rather than to success.

In spite of the widespread propaganda, few have any distinct idea of what they mean when they use the term "industrial education" or "technical education," or any definite opinion as to those who are to be chiefly benefited by it, or when it ought to be acquired, or how it can be introduced.

In the public consideration of any question the trend of thought seems to revolve around a central point, and there comes a time when it is niecessary to call a halt and take stock of the situation. Certain aspects are always being insisted upon, and others equally or more important are ignored. Incorrect estimates are made, wrong views are taken, and the resulting action is foredoomed to failure and great economic waste.

Education is a peculiar business, and every man considers himself an authority and perfectly capable of saying how schools of all kinds should be conducted. In allowing the weight we do to these often ill-formed and immature opinions, we are apt to forget that the best in our educational systems has developed out of experience and not out of mere discussion. It is true that the man in the street provides the wherewithal for carrying on the work. It is also a recognized principle that "the man who pays the piper calls the tune." We have also the right to choose our physician; but not many men have the temerity to dictate to him the treatment he shall prescribe or how it shall be administered.

The attitude of the public controls to a very large extent the management and, through the management, the curriculum, work, and organization of our schools, and only when our people have been forced to the conclusion that they are not all born experts on educational affairs, may the teacher hope for freedom from ignorant and captious criticism. Let us take Germany as an illustration of a country having a sane public attitude towards educational affairs. Public opinion there is very much like public opinion in America, but with a vital difference — the German workman is fair enough to believe that some men know more about education than he does, while the American workman thinks he knows more about it than even those who have made it the business of their lives.

Industrial education is a popular subject, and it is now the predominant custom for all educationists to advocate it whether they know anything about it or not. "Assume a virtue if you have it not" seems to be the guiding principle, and many men who have accomplished little or nothing in other fields of educational effort are achieving publicity and popularity in advocating this new or rather re-born movement.

Educational propaganda seems to run in streaks. " Physical drill," "kindergarten," "art," "manual training," "religious education," "household science," "sex hygiene," "school cadets," and now " industrial education." Each is advocated strongly for a time, occupies the centre of the stage in the full glare of the limelight, and long before its full fruition is achieved some new candidate for popular favor appears on the scene, and the same process is repeated. It is earnestly to be hoped that industrial education will share a better fate and that the serious efforts now being put forth will not be relaxed until a general system of industrial education, suitable to all classes and each locality, is achieved.

Investigations and commissions to inquire into industrial education are becoming quite chronic, and no State or Province is considered to be in the direct line of educational progress that does not initiate one of them. As a matter of fact, we knew the salient features almost twenty-five years ago, and already have much more information than is being utilized. If any more investigations are to be conducted or commissions issued, they should be first from within and not from without; that is, they should concern themselves with conditions that have to be met locally and not those that exist in some country three or four thousand miles off. If ever industrial training is to be economically justifiable and educationally beneficial, we must come down from the clouds, be more definite in our aims, accept conditions as they are, while working to improve them, and take the individual locality as the point of attack.

The great problem of the twentieth century is the problem of reducing or eliminating waste — waste of time, effort, money, and lives. Economic losses through industrial inefficiency and incapacity are beyond calculation. But probably in no other phase of our present-day civilization is there more direct waste and extravagance than in our educational systems. If a factory were definitely designed to turn out a certain article and eighty or ninety per cent of its product fell short of completion, that institution would speedily go to the wall, and cease to exist as a commercial factor.

It is pleasant to hoodwink ourselves, but very far from being profitable, and we have been engaged in this hoodwinking process in regard to education for many years. The people of Canada, and still more those of the United States, have long flattered themselves that their educational systems are democratic, and this flattering unction has been like charity in that it covered a multitude of sins.

We have been told that everybody can get an education, and that the child of the Prime Minister or President sits on the same bench as the child of the laborer. As a matter of fact, our educational systems are, and always have been, aristocratic in the highest degree. A democratic system of education would provide for the effective instruction of the eighty or ninety per cent of the people, as economic units, and not only for the ten or twenty per cent who proceed to high schools and universities, as at present.

There are many questions in connection with the subject, on which there seems to be, by tacit consent, a conspiracy of silence, but this conspiracy cannot be maintained much longer and these questions will have to be faced. Among them are, the lack of parental influence, guidance, and control; the power of the boy to do as he pleases in everything, particularly as to deciding when he shall leave school and the choice of an occupation; the necessity for a total reorganization of the elementary school course of study; the need or otherwise of industrial training for the so-called unskilled workers — those performing operations learned in a week and doing them as skillfully then as they would with months of training. What can we do for these boys or girls?

Some time ago I was passing through a button factory and saw a girl seated in front of a small machine. On one side of her machine was a box full of bone button blanks. She took one of the blanks with her left hand, placed it on the plate of the machine and deposited the pierced button in a box on her right. Her actions became as automatic as the machine itself. She was able to talk, stare from the window, and do her work without the slightest thought being devoted to it. Nine hours a day ! The employer was asked what could be done to make that girl of more use to him. He answered, "Nothing."

I saw a boy in a biscuit factory, seated on a box beside a traveling canvas platform on which were placed biscuits in transit from the ovens to the cooling-room. He held, with two hands, a flat wooden mallet and jerked the platform up and down, ever without ceasing, in order to prevent the biscuits sticking. Again nine hours a day! The same question was asked and the same reply received. The reader will notice that the question was not what could be done to make the boy or girl of more use to themselves. It had to be put purely from the employer's point of view. There are hundreds and thousands of such occupations, and those who are engaged in them form a large and most diflScult part of our problem.

Social and educational workers like to denounce the modern factory system and the subdivision of labor, but it is wasted effort. They are both here to stay, and [the sooner we cease to rail, and begin to recognize the conditions that exist, rather than attempt to legislate for conditions that we would like to exist, the sooner we shall accomplish something educationally beneficial and economically sound.

Both foreign and home investigators are too apt to concern themselves with the large cities, but the problem is not primarily one of the big city. If ever it is to be worked out satisfactorily the small town and isolated community must receive much more consideration. A writer on "Apprenticeship" in 1882 says: —

Small villages, country cross-roads and " corners " I thought might present favorable conditions [for apprenticeship systems], but they seemed at first hardly worth considering. I examined the census returns, however, and found that of the 50,000,000 inhabitants of the United States, 9,000,000 only reside in cities and towns of 20,000 inhabitants and over 41,000,000 have their homes in the smaller towns and in the country.

The present situation, according to the United States Census of 1910, is as follows : Out of a population of 91,972,- 266, an aggregate of 34,153,014 live in cities with populations of 10,000 and over. This means that nearly 63 per cent of the people of the United States live in the smaller towns and in the country. According to the last Canadian census, 75.6 per cent of the population live in communities of less than 5000 inhabitants. From these figures it will be evident that if the bulk of the people is to be educated, the smaller towns and villages must receive ample consideration. Though, perhaps, in a number of these smaller towns agriculture is the main industry, yet a number of manufactures are carried on, in some cases under most favorable conditions ; and though * * Keep the boys on the farm " is a popular cry, yet it is doubtful if that is altogether just to the boy with a taste for purely mechanical pursuits.

There is a prejudice against working in the industries. The boy will not go into a shop where he has to don overalls and soil his hands, if he can help it. Both parents and teachers are largely to blame for this by directing the thoughts of the boy to "white shirt and black coat jobs," which strangely enough in a democratic country are supposed to confer a higher social status.

The term "industrial," as used until very recently, shows the popular conception. It was, and in some cases still is, applied in a narrow, limited, and degraded sense to schools for moral delinquents, as though industrial pursuits were to be engaged in only by those who had broken the laws of the country. Indeed, some American critics have said that if a boy wished to secure education for industry, he must be either a negro, an Indian, or a criminal.

Throughout the following pages the term "America" will be taken to include both Canada and the United States — neither country having the exclusive right to its use. The term "industrial" will apply to that form of instruction which is designed and calculated to benefit the rank and file — the large majority who will work at the bench and machine, and not the select few who are being trained in higher institutions for directive and managerial positions. The proper name for such higher instruction is "technical."

It is the purpose of this essay to discuss the problems of industrial education with suggestions for their solution.

and to point out methods by which the enormous economic waste now prevalent in the practical administration and organization of educational affairs may be eliminated, and adequate returns secured — in the shape of the "fitted product" — for the vast expenditure that is being incurred and which will be largely increased in the future.

II

At present the ranks of artisans and mechanics, both skilled and unskilled, are recruited almost entirely from the elementary schools. Unfortunately they are not entirely composed of those who finish even that course, but contain in addition many who leave before reaching the highest grades. Here is the statement of a manufacturer quoted in Mr. Arthur Dean's " The Worker and the State " : —

I have made enquiry of over a hundred workmen in my employ, machinists largely, hence representing a trade of an intelligence higher than the average. The enquiry developed two facts, first, out of lt)2 men there was not to be found a single graduate of a high school or a person who ever attended as a pupil in a high school course. Second, out of 102 men I found only seven pupils who had completed the course in the grammar (elementary) schools. From this it appears that the education of all these mechanics is limited to such instruction as is furnished by the grammar schools and that ninety-three per cent of them belong to the class of pupils that drop out of school before completing the grammar school course.

General investigation and experience show that this is typical of all large industrial concerns, and surely prove the absolute necessity of establishing at least the beginnings of industrial training in the elementary schools, especially as some measure of that evanescent and elusive quality known as "culture" can be imparted at the same time. This reaches the heart of the matter, which cannot be said of other suggested remedies.

For example, there is a movement now on foot to raise the minimum age for school exemption from fourteen to sixteen, and also to make attendance at evening continuation schools compulsory up to the age of seventeen or eighteen, for those not otherwise receiving instruction. These are both consummations devoutly to be wished, but should not something else be done first? Consider the following facts from "Education for Industrial Purposes," by Dr. John Seath, Superintendent of Education for Ontario : — -

As to the primary schools : Out of an estimated total population in the Province of 2,687,861 there were enrolled in the public (elementary) schools 401,268, with an average daily attendance of 240,008 — that is 59.81 per cent of the enrolment, and in the separate schools (elementary Catholic), 55,034, with an average daily attendance of 34,553, — that is 62.78 per cent. Of these 239,331 (125,210 boys and 114,121 girls) were enrolled in rural and 216,971 (10,966 boys and 107,305 girls) in urban schools. Of the foregoing it is estimated that about 1070 girls and 1030 boys in rural and 970 girls and 930 boys in urban localities — a total of 4000 — leave school from the third form; and about 9190 boys and 8810 girls in rural and 10,750 boys and 10,250 girls in urban localities — a total of 39,000 — from the fourth form. Accordingly, as far as attendance at our Provincial schools is concerned, a grand total of about 43,000 end their education in the third and fourth forms : those from the third form leaving generally at from ten to twelve years of age, and those from the fourth form at from thirteen to fifteen.