Editorial Notes: Industrial Education and Trade Schools[1]
Demands of Industry upon the Schools Comparable to Those Made upon the Universities
It is with a real relief that those interested in the problem of our common-school education must recognize the new factor which is making itself evident in public consciousness: industrial education and trade schools. On the one hand our school systems have become so huge that educational measures can hardly command consideration upon their merits nor a field with which they can try themselves out, because the administrative problems have become too enormous and too immediately pressing to allow room for much besides themselves. And on the other hand educational reform has been prone to back up its programme by an appeal to the reality of the life outside the schoolroom, which it has never yet been able to bring inside. The mere fact that vast industrial interests demand trade schools to supply them with the skilled labor of which they are in need, indicates the presence of as real a problem in elementary and
(403) secondary education as the professional school has brought with it into the college and the university. Just as the demands of the community have increased upon its professional men, calling for skill that can only come with extended and directed training so our manufactories are calling for the skill, the competence, the ability to take responsibility which is born only of conscious technical skill and intelligently organized habits. The demand is in no small degree an admission that the specialized factory work does not train its own foremen and mechanics. Identification with specific pieces of machinery till the workman almost becomes a part of the mechanism, and the morale of the factory which is reduced to "speeding up," build up neither mind nor character. Foremen have been sought among those trained in the smaller country shops where varied occupation and responsibility for a whole product have produced the mechanic.
There is little reason to doubt that our manufacturers, with the recognition of the need, and with the example of other countries in meeting it by trade schools, will by themselves if necessary supply their own demands for skilled men. Not a few concerns have already their own schools, and with the advantages that follow from these instances others will arise, but the educational value of this sort of schooling and the necessity of fitting it into the educational system of the country inevitably will bring it within the domain of the present common schools.
Problems Involved For Secondary and Elementary Schools
There arise at once two questions. How will these technical schools fit into the secondary school? And what is to be their relation to the elementary schools? It is not difficult to conceive of a secondary-school system which shall make these trade schools a part of itself, which will carry theoretical studies along with the practice in the shops, thus giving double value to each. Such a system in connection with the University of Cincinnati already exists in a trade school inaugurated by a manufactory in that city. The value of the shop work for study has shown itself in no uncertain way. The situation presents
(404) no problem here that is in principle difficult of solution. The relation of this industrial training on the other hand to the elementary schools is by no means clear.
It is possible that they should have no relation, except that of preparation. In the elementary school the boy or girl might gain simply the control over language and number, the historical and scientific information which such schools are supposed to give, and await the secondary period to come into touch with industrial training. There are two reasons why this should and probably will not be the outcome. In the first place there will be an added advantage for the child who is going into trade schools, if he has had training of this industrial character, even before he is able to enter the trade schools themselves in the secondary period. Something of the nature of manual training extended all through the elementary period would fit the child for the later handling of tools, would give the education of muscles, of motor centers that is too precious to be lost, especially when the period of education is so restricted at best. The industrial school of the secondary period will inevitably extend its influence into earlier training, just as the medical and law schools have indicated premedical and prelegal courses in the university.
Value of Industrial Training for the Schools
On the other hand the school itself is in need of just the reality, the relationship which the occupations of the community gives, to give it a hold a hold upon its pupils, and to give the pupils a hold upon what they study. The discipline of doing something and making something that is real, that is demanded by the great world into which the child longs to go, is the ideal that we look for in vain. It is inconceivable that in the end this all-important means of developing mind and character should not be taken possession of by the elementary school.
The profoundest problem arises at this point for both the secondary- and the elementary-school systems. Will trade schools develop into class schools? Will they become as narrow as the specific skill which they inculcate? Will the democratic conception which has pervaded our common schools be lost? When all the children of the community are gathered together to learn
(405) what it is essential that all should acquire, a democratic spirit is aroused that will be lost if the child is as early as possible drafted into a school which trains with an eye single to the occupation he is to follow in later years.
Interpretation of Industry by the Use of the Historical Method
The problem of meeting a narrow class attitude with a broad democratic spirit and at the same time making use of the sense of reality, which comes with constructive work as the trade school inculcates it, is the problem of interpreting the industrial activities of the community. It is the problem which in simpler forms of society has been solved by the introduction of the child into the religious and other social institutions and practices of the community. It is the problem upon which our schools have made a beginning of attack in the use of the historical presentation of social origins, of industries, and commerce. History in the common schools has suffered still more than in our colleges and universities from its exclusively political interests. It is beginning to face about toward the industrial development of the community, and in doing so comes for the first time into contact with the real problems of daily life of the majority of its citizens. The great difficulty which such a use of historical method meets is the lack of immediate contact with life which would lift the child out of story-telling into actual interpretation. How much this difficulty would be lightened if the child were actually at work in a trade, or were preparing consciously for such work within the school system is at once evident. A moment's review of the broadening effect of the sweep of industrial and commercial effort and growth into the study of our political history will make it evident that, especially for children, this point of view will enlarge rather than narrow the value of history in the curriculum. The great defect of the study of social beginnings and growth in the common schools has been that they have been presented from a literary point of view. And this has been largely necessary because only in literature could a point of departure within the child's ken be found. If this point of departure could be found in the actual instruction
(406) in trade schools, the grip gained upon subject-matter and its history would be enormous.
Learning a Trade Could Be Made the Basis of the Best Schooling
It used to be an ideal of the community that every child should learn a trade, an ideal which curiously enough finds one of its actualizations in the training of the children of the house of the Hohenzollerns. It has never been demonstrated that the best education which any child could get in the common-school period would not be gathered about the learning of a trade, in a school which could give not only the specific skill but also the interpretation thereof in the history of our industrial community, and would be able to associate the child's expression in language, and problems in number, about such a reality. These ideas are very much in the air. They are supposed to exist largely in the minds and writings of educators who are considered visionary; but any careful study of them will show that they are quite consonant with the development of the social sciences and professional schools in our universities, that the obstacles which stand in the way of their realization are either those of an unwitting class distinction, which has placed bookish learning above manual skill, even when intelligently informed. It is a sign of good omen for the future that in the place of the school reaching out somewhat helpless hands toward the realities of the life that lies around it, we should find industrial society knocking at the doors of the schoolhouse seeking admittance.
