Prevocational education in the public schools

Front matter

Class J.

Book

Copyright^.

Preface

During the past five years considerable interest has been developed in the problem of securing a better adjustment of our educational methods and ideals to the needs of those who, though they form the vast majority of our children, are, for one reason or another, deriving the least benefit from the present school system, and are leaving its care altogether before reaching the age of sixteen or seventeen years.

Such school systems as have done experimental work looking to the solution of this problem are constantly receiving requests for information relating to the purpose of the work, the methods which are being employed, and the results realized or expected.

It is believed that school administrators and school-teachers in general will find something of interest and value in the information presented in this volume regarding one important branch of this experimental work, namely pre vocational education.

For the purpose of collecting and of organizing such information the University of Chicago has conducted, during the past three years, an experimental industrial class. Instruction both in shopwork and in the book subjects has been given very largely by graduate students in the Department of Education, mature men and women sincerely interested in the larger aspects of the problem presented.

The Albert G. Lane Technical High School of Chicago includes among its many departments one of special iv PREFACE

interest, consisting of so-called prevocational classes and providing for over-aged boys from grades six, seven, and eight of the elementary schools.

The authors of this book, having access as they do to the resources of these two institutions, have been enabled to collect and to organize the material presented herewith. They have also studied the prevocational work in other cities by personal inspection of the schools and by examination of their courses of study. It is believed that the facts presented will be valuable not only to instructors of prevocational classes, but as well to teachers in those elementary schools where no special provisions are made for the pupils who are failing in the usual school work, or who are apparently hopelessly behind grade or are certainly out of harmony with the aims and methods of so-called "general education." Since prevocational work is almost invariably given for the benefit of such children, doubtless 1 many teachers in the elementary schools will be glad to learn of some of the concrete material which the special schools are utilizing in teaching the regular school subjects; as, for example, reading, history, civics, hygiene, elementary science, arithmetic, shopwork, and drawing.

It is the purpose of this book to present in detail some of the school subjects, setting forth the methods which have been found to be measurably successful, the objects which have been paramount in presenting the subjects, some of the concrete material which has been used, and references to sources of other similar material.

This presentation of concrete material will be preceded by a discussion of the need of prevocational work

PREFACE V

as an essential part of the American public school system, and of the present development of the movement.

The discussion deals largely with the work which has been developed for boys. It is believed, however, that the principles apply also in the field of girls' work, and it is hoped that this somewhat neglected side may receive some stimulus from this presentation.

Grateful acknowledgment is made of valuable assistance received from various sources. Members of the Graduate Department of the University of Chicago have cooperated in collecting suitable material for courses of study and in presenting such material experimentally to the industrial classes. Prominent among these graduate students are Miss Miriam Besley, Miss L. Grace Huff, Mr. L. A. P. Harms and Mr. L. V. Koos.

Thanks are due the following school officials for preparing, especially for this volume, detailed information regarding the prevocational work in their several cities : Mr. John C. Brodhead, Associate Director of Manual Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Mr. Ben W. Johnson, Director of Industrial Education, Seattle, Washington; Mr. J. C. Wright, Director of Vocational and Manual Training Instruction, Kansas City, Missouri; Miss Ethel M. Lovell, Prevocational School, Louisville, Kentucky (now Principal of the Sewing Trades School, Cincinnati, Ohio) ; and Mr. Charles F. Perry, Supervisor of Industrial Education, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Especial acknowledgment is made of the generous spirit of cooperation shown by the Principal of the Albert G. Lane Technical High School, Chicago, Mr. William J. Bogan, whose sympathy and courage have made possible the remarkable exemplification of prevocational work to be found in that institution.

Contents

I. The Nature and Purpose of Prevocational

Education 1

II. Prevocational Education a Natural Development of the School System .... 13

Chapter I The Nature And Purpose Of Prevocational Education

The genuine public and professional interest in vocational education, which has developed such proportions during the past decade, has resulted in many modifications of, and additions to, public-school functions and practices. Perhaps none of these is more far-reaching in its import than the development of prevocational work and all that it represents in our public-school systems.

Several cities have developed prevocational work, and, while such work varies in organization and content, a common purpose and similar methods are found in all these examples. The term "prevocational" has been employed in this book in the commonly accepted meaning which these cities give it, but it is desirable, at the outset, to discuss in a general way the meaning of this term; the purpose of establishing such work; and the more important characteristics of the pupils to whom the work is given.

That the term " prevocational" needs some explanation is evidenced by the fact that it is used in so many different ways. In common with the names affixed to many other plans of action, the term does not fully and accurately describe the procedure which it serves to denominate. It is impossible to find a name which will accurately describe or define the characteristics of the school work which is now being done under the term in question, but the characteristics themselves will be revealed throughout this volume. It is desirable in this connection, however, to trace the evolution of the word during the five or six years of its existence, in order to determine what the term really denotes.

A clear understanding of the term may be gained by reflecting on the nature of a pre-legal or a pre-medical course as offered in a university. Such courses are intended to be as cultural as any other college work, but they are intended to give the kind of cultural training which will furnish the best foundation for the subsequent legal or medical course. Such courses are made up of regular college subjects so grouped that they will fulfill all academic requirements for a degree. It is not contemplated that any important subdivision of human knowledge included in the degree course — as, for example, history — shall be omitted entirely, but it is suggested that certain subjects be emphasized more than others, and especially that intelligent selection of material be made from the many possibilities afforded by the different required subjects. Here is recognition of the fact that of two subjects which are equally cultural, one may have more practical value than the other for certain individuals.

In the same way prevocational work is intended to be as cultural and as inspirational as any of the regular school work for the children to whom it is given, but it is more valuable than the regular work as a preparation for the subsequent occupational experiences of these children, most of whom enter "vocations" at an early age, and it is a better and more attractive preparation for the vocational courses higher up than is the regular course for which it is substituted.

It is necessary, at this point, to note the modern educational significance of the term "vocational education." While it is evident that professional education is "vocational education," the word "vocational," as it is commonly used, refers to the education which prepares somewhat specifically for the humbler occupations, those which require a preparation of less than college grade, and which, therefore, are not reached by way of the university. The first occupations for which this humbler or non-professional vocational training was given were industrial in their nature. For this reason "industrial education" was the term first used to designate all kinds of practical education for those who could not have or did not want a professional training, but who, nevertheless, needed a purposeful preparation for the work which they would be called upon to do. The term " vocational education" came into prominence only after the term "industrial education" was seen to be too narrow to cover all the school activities conducted under that name.

Thus "vocational education" refers to educational programs which contemplate school training of less than college grade, and which relate to the humbler vocations or occupations. Such training is, furthermore, intended for pupils fourteen years of age or over.

With this conception of the meaning of the term "vocational," it becomes clear that " pre vocational" simply means the type of general education which will lay a better foundation for vocational courses than is commonly laid by the regular school work.

It is sometimes urged that the term "pre vocational' ' is misleading and likely to deceive the public, since it carries the suggestion of specific preparation for a vocation when, in reality, it does not necessarily give such preparation. To this objection it should be said that the training given is preparatory for vocational education rather than for a vocation itself. It cannot be denied successfully that the traditional work of the elementary school is preparatory for a higher school which, in its turn, is preparatory for a still higher education. To the pre vocational type of child, the practical application of it all seems to be postponed indefinitely. The prevocational course, therefore, seeks to prepare for final vocational courses which reveal clearly their immediate articulation with the work of the world. Consequently the prevocational course gives, in a very genuine sense, quite as definite a preparation for vocational life as its name would seem to imply.

While the term has sometimes been loosely used and has been made to apply to widely different courses of study, there can be no doubt that in recent years it has come to have a commonly accepted place in educational nomenclature. The work which is done under this name in a number of the large cities makes it evident that a prevocational course is an attempt to modify the work commonly found in grades seven and eight, or possibly six, seven, and eight, in order to motivate that work for those pupils who have been seriously retarded and are hopelessly behind grade because they need the stimulation which comes from concrete doing, or because of pronounced irregularity in attendance resulting from peculiar home conditions or from illness. While these pupils vary in their characteristics, they are alike in this, that they are predisposed to leave school at an early age. Again, while they are thus disposed for a variety of reasons, one reason is practically common to all, namely, a distaste for school work as they know it, and a consequent inclination to substitute vocational for educational life. Pre vocational work, therefore, has come to have a clearly defined purpose, namely, to secure an adjustment of the "system" to these vocationally minded pupils. They need the fundamental book subjects as much as the others, and if the "bookish" way of teaching does not make its appeal strongly to them, the problem is to vitalize such work by devising other methods and by accepting different, though not necessarily lower, standards of attainment than those by which school work is usually measured. The prevocational course, therefore, may appear to be only a modified form of general education, and it may be asked why it should not be so designated and be recommended for adoption for all elementary school pupils. The reply is that it is not necessary to make such substitution for work which has been conducted so successfully with thousands upon thousands of children. It is neither desirable nor necessary to relinquish traditional practices which are contributing so surely to the progress of many school children, but it is quite another matter to urge the adoption of different courses and new methods for that considerable group of children who do not succeed with the traditional work. The prevocational experiments, however, have important lessons for the traditional schools, and, since retarded children are to be found in nearly all elementary schools, grade teachers everywhere will be benefited greatly by studying the methods of prevocational education.

Whether these retarded children of thirteen to fifteen years of age are in the grades or in special prevocational classes, it is not so important that they learn certain prescribed facts as it is that they gain a desire to learn something. What that something is does not matter so much in the beginning as that more attention be given to developing pronounced individual differences. It is not necessary that all become interested in the same studies, but it is fundamentally important that each becomes intellectually active, — vitally and dynamically interested in some school work, — so much interested that the whole scheme of education takes on a new meaning and becomes a genuine pleasure.

In a certain prevocational class the boys attended school during the whole summer, seven and one half hours daily. Some of the parents expressed a doubt as to whether the work could be really valuable, because the boys liked it so much. It must be confessed that many teachers hold the opinion that school work should be filled with hard, unpleasant drudgery if it is to be truly educational, a belief which is evidently shared by children of the prevocational type and one which has led most of them to decide that school is to be avoided and attendance to be discontinued as early as possible. It would be interesting to speculate upon the effect of this belief upon American education.

It is amusing — or it would be if it were not so serious — how many teachers to-day believe that the greatest intellectual benefit comes to the pupil from the work which he finds most disagreeable, but which, nevertheless, he prosecutes with great diligence and from a sense of duty. Much of the high-school Latin and mathematics has been justified for most pupils and held to be all but indispensable to their education, on the ground that, because of its difficulty, it exacts a type and intensity of intellectual effort sure to be of great benefit in developing the mental powers of the pupils wholly regardless of its practical or utilitarian value. That much of the work could not reveal its true worth and beauty until many years of diligent study had been given to it was considered to enhance the educational value of the effort expended upon it.

Because boys of the prevocational type are predisposed to seek early employment, such pedagogical motives for "getting an education" are discarded, and an attempt is made to utilize the incentives common to the workaday world. There is no reliance on the preposterous proposition that an education will enable one to earn his living without laborious work, but rather there is an attempt to show the necessity for hard work and especially the rewards and the satisfactions which it brings.

Most of the world's knowledge has been acquired through the unremitting, painstaking efforts of patient, energetic, steadfast souls, working toward some goal, which, for one reason or another, assumed an interest greater than all else to that particular individual. Mere toil has done much for the world, especially when carried on under wise leadership, but toil inspired by an ideal, until toil itself becomes a joy, has worked the world's wonders and brought its blessings.

Educational literature reveals many attempts to improve pedagogical methods through the appeal to direct, immediate interest in work as well as in study, yet even down to our own times the rod has generally been the emblem of the schoolmaster and compulsion has been his method. Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel have all preached the doctrine of joy in educational effort of all kinds, but our methods of study and recitation, of rewards and punishments, of the selection of the "fit" and the elimination of the "slow" and "stupid," have remained strangely stationary amid the change of subject-matter, schoolroom surroundings, and student body. There seems to have been little credence given to the opinion that "the world is to be saved by the laughter of the school children."

Within the past ten years, however, there has come a considerable change in this matter so far as it relates to the pupils whom we are considering in this volume — the pre vocational type.

These children, usually found stranded or progressing but slowly in the upper elementary grades, have been unwilling or unable to apply themselves, and have resisted the attempts of others to drive them to the lifeless task of reading and memorizing a mass of literary material which some one else assures them will do them great ultimate good, but which, so far as they can see, is unrelated to anything in their own lives past, present, or to come. They have finally rebelled, or have acquired a refractory exterior which effectually protects them against the persuasions of their longsuffering teachers.

Now, these children, for their own benefit and for the sake of society, must be "educated." How shall it be accomplished? If being "educated" means "successfully completing a required course of study" and in a given way and at a given time, the task is well-nigh hopeless and may as well be abandoned, as long experience has evidenced. But if it can be conceded that education may come from action and from thinking about that action with the view of determining subsequent procedure, and if it be acknowledged that such thinking may be rationalized by what others have done and thought before, then we have the basis for a new educational program.

Prevocational children are permitted to do things peculiarly adapted to their individual fitness, and to think, talk, write, and figure about the things which they have done. Action may be widely varied; thinking about a certain action may impel to more of the same thing or to a great range of similar or related activity, and both may be radically affected by reading about what mankind has done along this line and related lines. It is in this relation that the study of books becomes effective for prevocational children. It is useless to try to educate these or any other children without liberal use of books. In fact, the most important part of the prevocational course is what is usually referred to as "the related academic work," and the most important part of the program consists in motivating this book work by correlating it with some concrete, constructive work with a vocational content which the children genuinely enjoy and at which they will work vigorously.

Most of that which has been written about "joy in work" has referred to some kind of laborious, manual work. It should be remembered that, for many individuals, intellectual work is laborious and that it is quite necessary to find some way of making it joyous, — in other words, of "motivating education." Indeed the worker in every field of human endeavor, even the highest, needs the stimulus which comes from joy in anticipated achievement that he may despise and endure the stress and strain "for the joy that is set before him." The new educational program provides for the bringing together in actual realization the necessity for hard work and the joy in its accomplishment.

This is a program which has proved highly effective in stimulating the children in prevocational classes, for while it can be said truly that such pupils are "concrete-minded," "seriously retarded," or "anti-book," they have two characteristics even more pronounced than these. First, they are physically active, and secondly, they are strongly individualistic and can never be grouped successfully under any narrowly limiting classifications. Above all they must not be considered "stupid" because they are behind their fellows in grade, and only rarely have they been found to be "subnormal." May it not be, after all, that our school system appeals in the main to one rather commonplace type of mind, albeit a type which is wholly praiseworthy and of immense value to society in that it can be counted upon to react in a particular way to any given set of conditions or experiences, and that the boys of whom we are speaking, being active and strongly individualistic, are nevertheless quite as normal, even more interesting and possibly of even greater potential value to society at large if their energies are directed into the proper channels? It is our purpose in a later chapter to set forth as vividly as may be the charming, lovable, human characteristics of prevocational boys in such a way as to show that no reasonable effort on the part of society to save them for years of subsequent training and education is too great in the light of their potential worth.

From the foregoing it will be seen that the establishment of prevocational work is essentially one of the features of the great social movement toward universal education. Perhaps the final outcome of this movement may result in the opening of our palatial high schools throughout the country, not only to the small minority who are now receiving the benefits of the many opportunities there afforded, but to the vast majority of boys and girls of high-school age, many of whom are hopelessly stranded in the grades. It may be that we shall come to see that what we have considered our high standards, as regards admission to the people's high schools, are really evidences of the relentlessness with which we have excluded from the beneficent influences of these institutions the very children who need them most. When our high schools shall become thoroughly democratized, and when "secondary education" shall mean education appropriate for any and all normal children between twelve and eighteen years of age, it may well be that prevocational work will pass off the stage and that the term will no longer have any significance. For the present, however, "prevocational" must stand for the symbol of liberality in providing, either in our upper elementary grades or in our high schools, appropriate types of educational activities for all children and for a promise that such work will be administered in the spirit of justice and impartial sympathy. Such a procedure will be of untold benefit to the future industrial workers of the country and to the industries which their labor makes possible, and when we shall have ceased to prate of the dignity of labor, and shall have made provisions for dignifying the workers by giving them an honored place in a truly democratic school system, we shall have done much more than advance the industrial interests of the United States. We shall have helped to make our schools, what they can never be under the conditions which obtain very largely to-day, dynamic agencies for social betterment.

Chapter II Prevocational Education A Natural Devel- Opment Of The School System

In view of the fact that the vocational education movement is but a phase of the progress of the nation toward universal education, it is important to consider certain recurrent questions relating to education in general, questions which never have been, perhaps never can be, permanently answered. Due consideration of these questions is indispensable to a comprehension of the real significance of the development of vocational and prevocational work in the history of American education.

The more important and pertinent of these recurrent questions are: To whom shall education be given? Who shall give the education? Why shall it be given? Of what shall it consist?

One who thinks deeply regarding these questions will be convinced that the subject is a complicated one. Little by little it will appear that there are two conflicting points of view. The first is that the individual is to be educated for his own benefit; the second, that he is to be educated for the benefit of society.

Comenius was perhaps the first of modern educators to state, as he did, about 1630, the principle of parental responsibility for the education of the child. It would seem natural that education resulting from such responsibility would have in mind chiefly the well-being of the individual. It might, and under some conditions actually does, so equip the individual that he can get more than his share of the good things of life.

But another principle has been advanced, namely, the responsibility of the State. The State is held somewhat responsible both for furnishing the education and for requiring the individual to submit himself to the process of being educated.

Another fact must be noted at this point. There is to-day, and always has been, a difference of opinion as to just what experiences, educational and occupational, for youths between twelve and eighteen, will be to the best ultimate advantage of the individual. It happens, therefore, that the position and progress of the youth between twelve and eighteen are the resultant of two forces, one tending to hold him in school, the other tending to draw him into occupational life.

Each of these forces is complex and deserves at least a brief analysis.

Among the most important influences tending to hold the individual in school until his eighteenth or twentieth year may be mentioned the following : —

Tradition in this country confers a certain distinction on those people who have had extended connection with educational institutions. The professional man, or even the college graduate just because he is a college graduate, is looked upon as in a sense superior to, or distinguished from, all others.

Then there are various and genuine personal advantages which come with traditional education. These advantages are comprehensible to, and highly prized by, the true educator. In proportion as he is impressed with the value of personal culture and literary learning, he sincerely desires it for all those who come under his care, and he conscientiously and persistently influences all his pupils to secure this prolonged period of schooling.

Another factor which must be reckoned with is that the school affords an asylum for those youths who are disinclined to take up the real burdens of the work of the world, and also for those parents who, being too busy to decide for themselves the best means of educating their children, hand them over to the care of some educational institution as the easiest way, whether that institution is equipped to develop the particular individual or not.

In opposition to these influences are to be noted certain others which tend to draw children or youths away from school. There is a constant demand on the part of industry for the labor of children and young people. Part of this demand comes from the desire to secure labor at a cost which is less than its real value, and part of it arises because certain industrial processes can be learned more readily by children than by adults.

Then there is a genuine need that some children contribute to their own support as early in life as possible. Under the present economic system it is not probable that all children can be maintained in idleness until eighteen years of age without charity or a considerable extension of socialistic ideals.

Again there are types of young people who respond much more quickly to the educational opportunities of real work than to the stimuli of school conditions and requirements. While there are educators who extol the training which comes through work, and while many attempts have been made to secure these advantages for the school curriculum, the general lack of concrete work in the schools drives many youths early into occupations.

As noted above, we have here two groups of forces which are determining the amount of school training which each individual receives.

Society is coming to see that there are certain dangers which will arise, if the second group of influences becomes too strong. It is futile to continue to turn a stream of child workers into occupations which are paying adults less than a living wage, thus necessitating the consignment of their children to industry at the earliest possible age.

Even some of our far-sighted employers believe that the future of industry stands in doubt if we are continually to recruit its ranks only from those consigned to it by poverty, inexperience, and lack of personal initiative. Instead society must see to it that at least a saving minority shall enter industry because they choose to do so, and then enter it only when properly equipped to cope with the difficulties presented by our complex industrial system, difficulties technical, social, and personal.

The phenomenon which we call the demand for industrial education is a sincere attempt to hold true the balance between the two groups of forces described above, and this result will be obtained most effectively where industrial training is given in close proximity to other types of school work.

Let us make no mistake. No education has ever been given which has not contained elements of both general and specific training, of both liberal and vocational education. Even the most specialized form of industrial training has invariably carried with it some general, intellectual development. Work given as "industrial education" which leaves the worker with the same mental equipment he possessed at the beginning cannot be classified as "education" at all. In other words, industrial education has always given a considerable degree of general training. Its tendency, therefore, is to ally itself with the group of influences which holds the youth in school. To the question, " Shall this youth be educated ? " the promoter of industrial education answers, "Yes."