Industrial Education

THIS paper contends that an efficient public-school system must include adequate provision for vocational training for persons of both sexes over fourteen years of age.

Two important phases of the subject under discussion cannot be treated specifically in this paper, and one closely related phase of education, equally important, cannot be discussed at all. I shall be able to refer only incidentally to industrial education for girls, and to agricultural education for boys and girls; and I shall have to omit all discussion of commercial education. I need all the space at my disposal for the discussion of the general problem of industrial education, with special reference to the training of recruits for our leading mechanical industries.

Heretofore we have planned the work of our public schools almost entirely with reference to “culture;” we have done very little to stimulate a vocational purpose, and less still to provide for the realization of that purpose. In other words, while the schools have laid stress on culture as the end of education, they have laid almost no stress on preparation for a vocation. We may go farther, and say that, not infrequently, the schools have even disparaged vocational purposes in the training they give. They have been afraid of “utilitarian” aims, and, sometimes, by a curiously inadequate conception of their real function, they have even measured their own usefulness by the extent to which they have kept the distinctly useful out of their work.

By way of illustration I need only cite the difficulty we have had in getting manual training for boys, and sewing and cooking for girls, recognized as appropriate school subjects or activities. Manual training is not vocational training, to be sure, as will be shown later on; but, whatever manual training may be, its bearing on such training is clear. And it was this obvious bearing on preparation for the vocation of the artisan and the engineer that caused the first advocates of manual training after our Centennial Exposition to urge its claims on the attention of the schools. But so strong was the opposition to teaching a utilitarian subject in the public schools that the claims of manual training for recognition have been based, until quite recently, chiefly on its “psychological” value. I do not wish to belittle the psychological value of manual training, but the strongest reason for giving it a place in our scheme of public education is that it introduces our youth to a sympathetic understanding of the constructive activities which constitute so important a part of contemporary life. It has not been entirely possible to rob manual training of its distinctly useful quality in public elementary and secondary education, although the attempt has sometimes been made. Nevertheless, in many schools it has been pretty thoroughly academicized. This is one reason why so few of the pupils and graduates of our manual training schools become craftsmen. The manual training, like other school activities, has been used largely as a means of “general education” regarded as an end in itself or as preparation for further (usually technical) education. As for sewing and cooking, they too have been urged for their “psychological” value. But there has been more speedy recognition of the weightiest reason for giving them a place in the schools, — namely, their supreme usefulness, in view of contemporary social conditions and of our enormous and increasing immigrant population.

It is strange that we should be so reluctant to admit the distinctly useful into our scheme of public elementary and secondary education — that is, to admit that one of the functions of the public schools is to recognize the claims of elementary vocational training as entirely legitimate and desirable. For the principle of vocational training at the public expense has long been recognized in the field of higher education. The state normal schools of the country have educated teachers since 1839; the state universities have educated teachers, lawyers, doctors, druggists, and engineers, and they continue to do so; and the state agricultural colleges give training in agriculture, and often in engineering. Massachusetts, though without a state university, has long aided technical education by scholarships in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and the Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, and by direct grants of money to those institutions. Massachusetts also maintains, partly at public expense, three textile schools for the training of textile workers who desire to rise in their calling.

Our elementary schools and our high schools together constitute, theoretically at least, one continuous educational scheme through which a youth, whatever his circumstances in early life may be, may secure the elements of general culture; and through which, if his circumstances permit, he may attain, on the basis of the preparation secured in school, a college education, or enter at once on professional study in nearly all the professional schools of the country. We have thus planned our educational scheme primarily in the interests of those who have a long educational career ahead of them, and who need not therefore give any immediate attention to preparation for a life pursuit.

Nevertheless, it is well known that the greater mass of our children and youth are obliged to leave school at the end of the grammar-school period, or when they have attained the upper limit of the compulsory school age — fourteen years, in most states. That is to say, the publicschool system in which we take a just pride, as now planned, does not reach the great majority of our youth during the critical period of adolescence. This is the period when life aims begin to have a serious and lasting importance; when the child becomes a youth; when the habits formed rapidly acquire permanence; when the plasticity of earlier years gives place to stability. And because this is so, what happens to him then is likely to permanently shape his future. Yet during this period we send the great majority of our youth into the world without further systematic educational influence, and usually without any comprehension of the serious purposes of life, or training in the endeavor to realize them.

The question which we have to answer is: What becomes of the great majority of these young people who enter their active life work at the early age of fourteen, with no preparation save that offered by the general education of the elementary schools ? Some inquiry was made into this question in Massachusetts two years ago, and it was found that there are probably no less than twenty-five thousand boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen who are not in school. They are at work in various kinds of juvenile occupations, or they are idle. The boys become elevator boys, errand boys, office boys, they drive a wagon, or do other work in which they learn nothing, in which no demand is made on them for the application of what they learned in school; and consequently, by the time they are seventeen, eighteen, twenty or more years of age they have an earning capacity but little greater than that which they had when they first left school. And a similar fate overtakes the girls. Moreover, the unfortunate education of shifting experience and environment during these years does much to destroy both the substance and the spirit of the education which they received when in school. The result is that at the threshold of citizenship the great majority of these young people are actually more ignorant than they were when they left school. They are sophisticated, to be sure; but they have seldom acquired the characteristics of substantial manhood and womanhood; and, as I have just said, economically they are but little more valuable than they were when they began to work. They have not become increasingly valuable “economic units.” And the reason, of course, is that in the unskilled pursuits which they have followed it was impossible to acquire the character, knowledge, and skill which would give them an earning capacity proportionate to their years.

A striking illustration of what I am saying was offered by the elevator boy in a Boston building, last spring. This boy said, “Can’t you find me a job that would pay me better? ” “How old are you ? ” he was asked. “Twenty-one.” “What can you do?” “Well, you see, I left school at fifteen; I have drifted about from one thing to another since; recently my father died, and I find it necessary to earn more in order to help myself and my family.” Here was a youth twenty-one years of age, with no capacity to do anything that is worth paying more for than the sum paid for the juvenile services that he had been engaged in since he was fifteen years old. This case is probably typical of the great majority of the twentyfive thousand young people in Massachusetts to whom I have referred. And it is only too probable that what is true of Massachusetts is true of other states. The investigation referred to also revealed the fact that a large proportion — the majority—of these children would be in school between the ages of fourteen and sixteen if the school afforded a training that promised increased earning capacity. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that the present condition of many young workers, typified by our elevator boy, is preventable.

Moreover, it is clear that the most valuable resources which any state has are its young men (and young women). It is clear that the greatest waste is the waste of these resources. The failure to develop them to their fullest capacity is an irredeemable failure. Boys are not wanted in the industries until they are sixteen years of age, and in some industries they are not wanted until they are past seventeen. If, therefore, between the ages of fourteen and seventeen these boys are allowed to drift, if they go about from one occupation to another in which they do not develop such capacity for mechanical pursuits as they have, or if they remain in school and the academic traditions prevalent there turn them away from the trades, as is not uncommon, they too commonly go to swell the ranks of the unskilled; and as they grow older, of the dissatisfied, the stranded, and the dependent.

Although boys are not wanted in the industries until they are sixteen years of age, the years from fourteen to sixteen are, nevertheless, exceedingly valuable years for education — an education that teaches them the significance of a skilled vocation, and that helps them to explore their capacities and their tastes for the vocations in which skilled labor is needed. These years are, therefore, extremely valuable for purposes of industrial education. What the nature of that education might be I shall describe later on. I shall first sketch the difficulty which boys now find in learning a trade without special preparation for it.

Under the specialized condition of modern industry it is usually exceedingly difficult for a man to learn his trade in the shop, and sometimes impossible. The old apprenticeship system, which enabled a man to learn the whole of a trade, is dead. It is well known that to-day the man in the shop works at a part of the product with a given machine, and knows little of what is done toward the completion of that product by other men and other machines. He is a narrow specialist, working day by day at the same kind of work under precisely the same conditions, the machine requiring but little exercise of thought or ingenuity. Usually he knows little or nothing about the machine itself. The shop has machinists who repair the machines. Under such circumstances a man loses the habit of thinking, since no demand is made on him for thought. It is true that all men have not “all the conveniences for thinking,” even if they were called upon to think, but under the exigencies of the modern shop the habit of thinking is rarely developed. This specialization in modern industry is, however, highly profitable to the manufacturer. It is one of the reasons why goods can be produced so quickly and so cheaply. It is, therefore, like other modern developments, a condition which will survive.

In a shop if a man wishes to learn his trade, he has, as I said a moment ago, great difficulty in attaining his end. What happens is usually something like this. A youth applies for work in a shop. He is put, let us say, on a milling machine. He learns in the course of a few weeks to run that machine. Meanwhile, of course, he spoils more or less material. The machine is subject to his ignorant handling and necessarily gets more or less out of repair; the product which he turns out is more or less imperfect in quality; and the total result is, temporarily at least, a loss to the manufacturer.

If the youth is ambitious, he naturally desires to learn to run the other machines of the shop; but when he asks the foreman to be transferred to another machine, he will be told, “You are doing well enough where you are.” The reason, of course, is plain. Every time he is transferred to a new machine the process previously described is repeated. If there are one hundred or five hundred raw men in a shop, the loss to the manufacturer is considerable. The shop exists for turning out products, and not for teaching men how to turn out products. In the shop, therefore, no one has the time, and very often no one has the inclination, to help a man to learn his trade. That is n’t what the shop is for.

What happens, then, to our ambitious young man who persists in his intention to learn his trade ? He quits, and applies for work at another shop, asking for work at another machine, saying that he is, let us say, a lathe hand. Meanwhile, he has naturally become somewhat familiar with a lathe and knows something about the working of it. Shortly after he begins his work as a lathe hand, the foreman comes around to see how he is getting along, looks at the work, and says, “You can’t do this work; you can go.” Naturally the man has to go to another shop, and there the process is repeated with the possibility, however, of a longer stay. This procedure an ambitious man will continue until he has made himself, by repeated changes and brief periods of practice, a lathe hand and can do satisfactory work. I have heard of one man who repeated this process nineteen times in his endeavor to learn his trade. It won’t do to talk to such a man about the dignity of labor. By such a procedure a man may require six or seven years to learn his trade; and even then he commonly learns only the processes of the trade and not the theoretical foundations of it. The mathematics, drawing, science, and the rest, applicable to his particular trade, are inaccessible to him. He has little opportunity to develop “industrial intelligence” and the “shop and business ethics ” that grow out of insight into and consequent interest in his work, and the sense of responsibility born of conscious resources as a workman and a man. Consequently, although he is better equipped for steady work and for possible promotion to a foremanship than the ordinary specialist, his further progress is obstructed, if not prevented, just at the point where he could become most valuable to himself and to his employer.

It must be remembered that the great mass of young workmen are not ambitious and persistent enough to follow so difficult a road in learning their trades. The result is that most of them fall by the way; they become narrow workmen who can handle a single machine only, and whose prospects of an upward career in their trades are consequently very meagre.

Now let us follow the body of ambitious workmen whom I have described as persisting against tremendous odds in learning their trades so that they can be useful in any part of the shop, and, if possible, rise to the grade of foreman. Such men constitute an army of workers who are going from one factory to another, “stealing their trades,” as the phrase is. These men spend too many of the most valuable years of their lives in overcoming obstacles to a career of usefulness — years that should represent steady progress in that career. Moreover, they cannot become attached to a locality, and the steadying and inspiring sense of usefulness to a single employer or manufacturing concern cannot be realized.

Many manufacturers have encouraged their employees to seek instruction by correspondence, and the extent to which our artisans avail themselves of such instruction is remarkable. For example, out of seventeen hundred employees in a well-known establishment, three hundred were, last year, enrolled in correspondence courses. This is decidedly creditable to American workmen, and it is not discreditable to the correspondence schools. But the disadvantages of instruction by correspondence only are great and obvious. Moreover, since a considerable number of those who enroll in correspondence courses do not, for various reasons, continue them, a considerable part of the money paid for such courses is wasted. They do, however, afford the sole available means to many persistent and ambitious men, to secure the theoretical instruction on which their upward career depends. Besides the correspondence schools, the Y. M. C. A. and other philanthropies offer some opportunities for industrial education to men already employed in the trades. Public schools for trade instruction, aside from the public evening drawing-schools, are very rare.

It may seem odd that under such circumstances the manufacturers themselves have not more frequently established schools in connection with their establishments for the training of apprentices. But it is clear that such schools are expensive, if they are in the interests of the workmen as well as of the employer. And hence only the largest manufacturers can undertake such apprentice schools anyway. There are a few such schools; but generally the manufacturer prefers to employ the man who already knows one machine. He gets his foremen from other shops, or from Europe; or he may try to train the foremen he needs in his own shop, usually with many disappointing experiences.

Nothing is clearer, however, than that the means hitherto employed are inadequate to meet the demand for skilled labor. Manufacturers in all parts of the country declare that if they could find the skilled help which they need, they could double their plants and hence largely increase or double their output, and that they never have as many foremen as they need. On every hand the need of skilled labor is deplored, and yet we have done and are doing comparatively little to meet this need.

There is a specious American complacency which stands in the way of the proper development of our industry and commerce. This was clearly exemplified at the exposition in St. Louis. It is well known that the Germans who visited that exposition went away much impressed by the magnitude of American industrial and commercial enterprises, and the enormous wealth which resulted therefrom. But they told their fellows on their return to the Fatherland that they had nothing to fear from the American people so long as our complacency prevented us from seeing that it was only the abundance of raw material and the extraordinary ingenuity displayed in our industrial and commercial combinations which led to our success. As a nation we had yet scarcely begun to realize the importance of quality in our output, and of the trained workman in making the most of our resources; and until we did, it was not likely that a nation like Germany which emphasizes such training and the quality of its output had anything to fear from the competition of the United States.¹

Such comments, by thoughtful observers, contain a lesson that Americans should heed. Not long ago Mr. Vanderlip of New York expressed himself, in substance, as follows: The remarkable prosperity of the United States is due chiefly to three causes: the great abundance of our raw materials, our ingenuity in the invention of machinery, and our genius for commercial combinations. Not one of these three causes, however, can be looked upon as a permanent cause of success. Great inroads are being made on our raw materials, and some of them are even now fairly well used up. Labor-saving machinery and cheap production cannot be a monopoly of the United States, for this machinery is obtainable the world over. American commercial combinations are being imitated everywhere. It has never yet been shown that the cause of American success in foreign markets was due to the quality of the goods produced. In that respect we have not yet made much progress, and until we do we are, of course, at the mercy of those who are able to use all the resources which we possess and, in addition, to use them to better advantage.² So far Mr. Vanderlip.

Germany is the classical example of a nation that has not neglected the development of all its resources, men included. For example, in one city — Munich — there are forty different kinds of industrial continuation schools — schools for chimney-sweeps, coachmen, hotel and restaurant waiters, jewelers, shoemakers, carpenters, machinists, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, printers and bookbinders, and the rest. The name continuation school — Fortbildungsschude— is chosen advisedly, for every youth who graduates only from an elementary school is obliged by law to continue his education in some continuation school during the period of his apprenticeship to his trade; and each youth finds a continuation school appropriate to his calling. Employers are by law required to give their employees the time to attend these schools — from six to twelve hours a week, depending on the trade, for from three to five years. These continuation schools are not evening schools; because it is well known that boys fourteen to fifteen years of age, after a hard day’s work in a shop or factory or on a building are unable to profit by evening instruction to the extent to which they could profit by the same instruction if it were given in the daytime. Moreover, it is clear that forced school work at the end of an arduous day is unhygienic.

In these continuation schools one of the most suggestive arrangements is the close correlation of the theoretical foundations of each trade with the instruction in the processes of the trade. That is to say, the mathematics of the school is the mathematics of the shop, whether it is jewelry or shoemaking or carpentry. The same is true of the machinist’s mathematics. Similarly the drawing of the school is the drawing of the shop. The problems which the boy finds in the shop to-day are dwelt upon at length in the school to-morrow. In the same way the closest possible relation of the sciences, physical or biological, to the trade concerned are maintained. The youth learns also the history of his trade, and civics, and the proper use of his mother tongue in relation to his trade.

From the continuation school the youth at eighteen or nineteen enters the army, where for at least two years more he is under systematic educational influence. That is to say, the German nation has been unwilling, for more than a generation, that a youth after he leaves the elementary school should be without systematic educational influence until he reaches the age of citizenship; while, in this country, we are just beginning to realize our responsibilities in this respect.

The effect of the extraordinary scheme of technical education of all grades, not only the elementary technical education which has just, been sketched, but of all higher grades of technical education, on the progress of German industry and commerce is well known. Before the Franco-Prussian war Germany was, industrially and commercially, rather an unimportant nation. Immediately after the Franco-Prussian war, after German unity had been accomplished, the nation devoted itself to the development of its educational system and to the development of industry and commerce; and it has become, as is also well known, one of the most important manufacturing and commercial nations of the world — a tremendous rival in that respect of other progressive nations. While Germany’s educational system is not the sole cause of this extraordinary prosperity, it is, nevertheless, one of the most important causes, and by the Germans themselves is regarded as the most important.

Now while it would be undesirable and impossible to transplant any German institution to this country just as it exists in Germany, it is, nevertheless, clear that this particular German institution offers most valuable suggestions for America. We flatter ourselves that in our democratic society we provide equal opportunities for all through education. That is to say, we claim to provide educational opportunities that will enable a man to make the most of his capacity, his industry, and his character, whatever his original station in life may be. And yet we have failed to provide such an opportunity for that great mass of our population who must face the most serious problem of life—self-support and the means of progressive well-being — at an early age.

Thus far, I have endeavored to show that there is a great need of industrial education. The manufacturer needs skilled labor. The workman needs an opportunity to develop “industrial intelligence” and skill, and a sense of responsibility. I have also endeavored to show that while we have developed with much industry and enterprise the material resources which we possess, we have done little, if anything, to promote the development of the most important resource we have, namely, the great majority of our wage-earning men (and women). I have endeavored to show also that, while the effect of this neglect is to deprive the employer of the industrial intelligence and skill that he needs, it also deprives the wage-earner of the greatest blessing which any man on earth can have — the prospect of a steady job, and an increasing wage based on progressive efficiency and responsibility. And, therefore, that there is here an educational need for which we have not yet provided an educational institution. This institution is the school of mechanical industries.³ And it remains to sketch in briefest outline the nature of this school. Such a sketch is suggested only as a basis for intelligent experimenting. It is thought to be definite enough, however, to serve as a possible guide in planning industrial schools, and flexible enough to permit adaptation to local conditions and local needs.

Each school should receive boys (and girls) fourteen years of age and upwards who express their intention to learn a trade. When these schools are fully established, they would require four years of day instruction. The first two years would include much shop instruction, greater in amount and much closer to the trades than the shop instruction of most of the manual training schools now in existence; together with related mathematics, natural science, drawing, the history of industry and commerce, civics treated as concretely as possible, and shop and business English. These two years would serve first of all to direct the attention of boys and girls to a trade, would develop in them the vocational purpose, would explore their several capacities; and should enable them, with the help of their teachers, to select that trade for which they are best fitted by natural taste and capacity.

The last two years would include specialized instruction in the trades appropriate to a given locality, and the theoretical foundations of each trade — drawing, mathematics, natural science, and also the history of that trade, shop and business English, and civics, as before. These last two years could be completed in that time by pupils who are able to attend the school continuously, or in a longer time by pupils who are obliged to work a part of the time; or the work could be done by such pupils in the evening. Some manufacturers believe that some kind of part-time scheme — that is, part of the time in school and part of the time in the factory — is possible for some industries; whereas for other industries the further education of the pupil would have to be undertaken in the evening. Evening instruction for persons already employed in the trades would, of course, be an important part of every school.

In every community that has a manual training school the plan just outlined for the industrial school could be easily carried out. At this point a brief digression seems desirable. It seems worth while to indicate in a few sentences the difference between manual training and industrial training. Manual training is a means of general education just as history or chemistry or language is a means of general education. It has materials of its own and a method of its own, and hence the result is a peculiar kind of knowledge and power due to the nature of the subject and the method that it demands. That is to say, each subject of instruction is a means of general education because it supplies a peculiar kind of knowledge and develops a peculiar kind of power. Each of these subjects, therefore, possesses an educational value not shared by other studies. The peculiar educational value of manual training is that it gives a knowledge of our constructive activities and a sympathetic appreciation of them which cannot be gained in any other way; and an incipient power to be useful in them, which similarly cannot be gained in any other way. It is, however, as now carried on, usually much too general to be comparable to industrial training. Manual training abstracts the principles of all trades and teaches them. It ought to make a pupil generally “handy.” It is, if properly carried on, an excellent preparation for industrial training. Industrial training goes farther. Besides teaching all the processes of a given trade from the first attack on the raw material to the last touches on the finished product, it teaches the theoretical foundations of that trade. Hence it gives the worker a technical knowledge of his trade, and begins the development of skill in the practice of it. It must not be inferred, however, from what has just been said that an industrial school can turn out a journeyman. The skill of the journeyman can be developed fully only in the factory.

Such schools as have been sketched should be independent schools parallel to the existing high schools. They should be independent schools, because the motive which dominates them determines the value of their work in every detail. It is clear from what has gone before that the theoretical instruction of the general high school is not adapted to specific instruction in a trade. In a general high school no specific application of the instruction is aimed at. In the industrial school everything has its specific application. Therein lies its value and its significance. While in training for a trade, or in the pursuit of that trade itself, there is constant opportunity for the application of all that the pupil has learned, and hence the possibility of progressive growth in thinking about his calling and in his command over it, not only in the processes of the trade, but in all that the trade means.

Under such circumstances the workman knows not merely the processes of his trade; he knows all of them as he cannot learn them in the factory, but he knows the principles of his trade as well. And he should be able to form a just estimate of his own value to himself and to the community.