schools, representing nearly all the States, in which manual or technical training is given to 27,178 boys, 15,948 girls, a total of 43,126 students. He reports also 287 manual, industrial, and technical schools, in which 17,907 pupils receive instruction in elementary academic studies, 61,296 pupils receive instruction in ordinary high school studies, and 108,209 pupils receive manual and industrial training. The typical manual training high school is a school of secondary grade in which a greater or less amount of handwork is included in the curriculum and in which the greater part of the academic instruction is similar to that found in other high schools. Neither the manual nor the academic instruction is especially planned to be of direct vocational service. The technical high school is a school of secondary grade having the distinct purpose of preparing its pupils for industrial leadership. In such schools the instruction deals not only with the important manual operations, but also with those principles of science and mathematics, and their direct applications to industrial work, which will prepare the student for mastering the fundamental processes and problems of the industries. In secondary, as well as in elementary, education, manual training as hitherto taught has not proved its value by its work. The N. E. A. Committee,1 after thorough investigation, says that, with a few notable exceptions, practically all of the 425 public industrial and technical high schools should be classified as manual training high schools. They differ in no important educational particular from regular academic high schools. Very few of their graduates are directed toward industrial life and fitted for any specific science. "The committee has obtained from a great variety of sources what appears to it almost overwhelming evidence of the . . . imperative need of both secondary technical schools and trade and preparatory trade schools, if all of the youth of the land are to be served with anything approaching equal educational opportunities." These technical high schools should prepare pupils definitely for industrial efficiency. The opinion that the scope and purpose of the manual training high school should be changed, is not confined to men directly interested in the technical side of education, as is evident from the following excerpt of a letter from Dr. Thomas M. Balliet, of New York University : 1 The Place of Industries in Public Education, N. E. A., 1910, p. 81. "As for a manual-training high school, which differs only from the literary commercial high schools in that it has somewhat more shopwork and perhaps more mechanical drawing and a literary course less extensive than the first, and perhaps a less specialized literary course than the second, I confess I see no use for it in the future. It has no distinctive aim and character. In such a school there is so great a lack of correlation between the academic studies and the shopwork that boys and girls recite together in their academic work and separately only in their strictly technical work. Such a school is simply a literary high school with a somewhat narrow academic course and with a little more shopwork. The problem before us is to transform all such manual-training high schools into technical high schools. The manual training of a technical high school is likely to be fully as good, and I should say, better, than the manual training in a so-called manual-training high school of the type here described. Manual training does not lose its general educational value, but distinctly gains by being given a more definite industrial bent than it has had in the past." 1 In New York City thirty-seven per cent of the population are engaged in industrial and mechanical work; thirty-seven per cent in business; nineteen per cent in domestic service; and five per cent in the learned professions. We have many schools to prepare for the professions, but we have, aside from engineering schools of college grade, only a few 1 The Place of Industries in Public Education, N. E. A., 1910, p. 92. schools giving thorough vocational training for the seventy-four per cent engaged in commerce and industry. The result is that our skilled artisans are nearly all foreign-born and foreign-trained. Our boys and girls drift into offices and stores as messengers and low-grade helpers. Many of them fail to find congenial and remunerative employment, and soon join the ranks of criminals. Statistics show that most of the crime in New York is com mitted by young men. The Massachusetts Commission discovered that 25,000 children from fourteen to sixteen years of age, in that state alone, are out of school and unemployed. Common observation is enough to verify the inference that similar conditions exist in other states. The corner loafer and the criminal gangster are evidences of the evil of youthful idleness. If all young people were trained for some specific vocation, as is the case, for example, in Wurttemberg, where education is compulsory up to the age of eighteen, these idlers that now infest our streets and prey upon honest people would be employed at some useful occupation. From the point of view of the individual and of society, vocational education, extension of the compulsory period, and the more thorough enforce |