HANDBOOK OF VOCATIONAL

EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I. Equal Opportunities for All. One of the fundamental principles underlying a public school system is that it shall offer equal opportunities for all. The American public school boasts of this as one of its characteristic merits. An examination of the facts shows the claim to be unfounded. The opportunities are equal only in the sense that all classes may freely partake of the common training given in the elementary school. Beyond that there is no longer even a pretense of maintaining equality of opportunity. For the fortunate few whose ambition and economic condition impel them to prepare for a profession, the state has opened high schools leading to colleges and professional schools. Colleges are often free to this class of students.

Teachers are everywhere trained in tax-supported institutions. But the boy who is obliged for whatever reason to become a wage earner at fourteen is not so fortunate. In New York the law compels him, if he is not a graduate of the elementary school, to attend an evening school, there to pore over books after a day's labor. But it seldom offers him preparation for the kind of work he is doing. The girl who leaves at fourteen is no better off. She is, so far as the State is concerned, allowed to shift for herself. There is no further assistance from the school, unless she voluntarily goes to an evening school. Even then she is fortunate if she finds anything that will make her more efficient as a wage earner or helper in the home. In short, the few receive preparation for life's duties at public expense; the many are turned out of the schools without such preparation. The enlightened nations of Europe have closed up the gap between school and industry. By a system of special schools and governmentregulated apprenticeships, school and vocation interlock, so that no time is wasted in the new adjustment. In our country this gap is wide open. The pupil leaves the school and then gropes around to find life's work. It may take him years to do it;

and he may never drift into the particular thing for which he is best adapted. The years between fourteen and sixteen are largely wasted, because

RELATION OF SCHOOL TO INDUSTRY.1

what was learned in the elementary school is soon forgotten, and no new form of instruction is provided to supplement it. There is no supervised apprenticeship system which insures thorough training in a vocation. In this condition we find the majority

1 The author cannot vouch for the accuracy of this diagram; but there is no doubt in his mind that the facts correspond in a general way with the graphic representation, which is taken with permission from Hodge's Association Educational Work.

of the male youth of our land, who are soon to become the governing class. The illustration on page 3 is a graphic representation of the relation of the school training of males and their vocations. It is based on census and other government reports. The verticals a and b show the number of boys in school at the ages of ten and fifteen in North America and Germany. The verticals c, d, and e show the number of males as wage earners. Line b is the significant feature of the graph. Note the difference between this line in the two diagrams. In America the boy wastes his precious years between fourteen and sixteen in idleness or unskilled and uneducative employment. In Germany he transfers from the public day school to an apprenticeship regulated by the government, with supplementary technical training in a compulsory continuation school. In this way the gap shown in the American curve has been almost entirely removed from the German curve.

In a recent address before the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, Professor Carver of Harvard University said:

"In the present conservation movement it is highly important that we realize two things: first, that our most valu

able resources are our people, and second, that we are wasting people more than we are wasting anything else. . . . If one will look carefully about he will see, in any community, so many ways in which labor-power is being wasted. . . . There are, first, the army of the unemployed, or the involuntarily idle; second, the imperfectly employed, or the untrained; third, the improperly employed, or the acquisitively rather than productively employed; and fourth, the voluntarily idle, commonly known as the leisure class."

II. Training for Citizenship. - The State cannot continue to spend vast sums on high schools and universities and neglect vocational training without repudiating the reasons usually given for maintaining schools of any sort as a public charge. Self-preservation by training future citizens is the justification of the State for spending money on schools. We have come to a point where the State must enter the field of industrial education, and thus give equal opportunity to artisan, farmer, merchant, and professional man. Justice to the individual and the welfare of the State both demand this

course.

There is sound psychology and profound philosophy in the saying, "Nothing succeeds like success." The man who is riding on the tide of success sees rainbows on every leaden sky. He