Part 81 (1/2)

Wherever the term ”vocational education” is used in this _Report_, it will mean, unless otherwise explained, that for of a secondary grade to persons over fourteen years of age, for increased efficiency in useful ericulture, in cos based upon a knowledge of home economics The occupations included under these are almost endless in number and variety

THE NEED FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION Used in this sense vocational education is an application of technical knowledge, worked out in the higher schools, to the ordinary vocations of a modern industrial world As such it is a product of the Industrial Revolution and the breakdown of the age- old syste, [13] and represents another of the ies to the masses of the people who labor with their hands to earn their daily bread

Besides further dees to those ork in the shop and the office and on the farm, vocational education tends to correct many of the evils of modern industrial life It puts the worker in possession of a great body of scientific knowledge relating to his hich shops and offices cannot give, and it keeps hie earner and at a very i care of the school

It thus tends ”to counteract the specialization and routine of the workshop, which wears out his body before nature has coence which the school had tried to awaken, shrivels up his heart and iination, and destroys his spirit of work”

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES For al nations of western Europe, in an effort to readjust their age-old apprenticeshi+p syste to modern conditions of th, have given careful attention to the education of such of their children as were destined for the vocations of the industrial world Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France have been leaders, with Gerreat progressworld-wide trade, [15] before the World War, was due to the extensive and thorough system of vocational education worked out for German youths (R 371) In commercial education, too, the Germans, up to 1914, led the world Even roup which had doneNext to Gerress of Switzerland during the past quarter-century has likewise been due in large part to that type of education which would enable her, by skillful artisanshi+p, to make the reatly, during the past half-century also, froriculture and industrial art In Denricultural education has remade the nation (R 370), since the days of its huland, though keenly sensitive to German trade competition, made only very moderate efforts in the direction of vocational education until Gered the world in war in an effort more quickly to dominate commercially Now, in the Fisher Education Act of 1918 (p 649), England has t last laid foundations for a great national systee plans for a national syste

[Illustration: FIG 233 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRADES IN MODERN INDUSTRY Under the old conditions of apprenticeshi+p a boy learned all the processes and beca factory, thirty-nine different persons perform different specialized operations in the manufacture of a coat]

In the United States but little attention was given to educating young people for the vocations of life until about 1905-10, though ely destroyed the old apprenticeshi+p type of training Endoith enor pressed for thepopulation on a limited land area; able to draw on Europe for both cheap ely isolated and self- sufficient as a nation; lacking athrown into severe competition for international trade; and able to sell its products [16] to nations anxious to buy the to come for them in their own shi+ps; the people of the United States did not, up to recently, feel any particular need for anything other than a good coh-school education for their workers The co schools and courses, and so and creative art were felt to be about all that it was necessary to provide

THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON VOCATIONAL EDUCATION Largely since 1910, due in part to expanding world co competition in world trade; in part to a national realization that the battles of the future are to be largely co upon the Aht out and put into practice by Imperial Gern trade, with all that such triumph means to-day in terms of the happiness and welfare of its citizenshi+p (R 372), which puts the greatest amount of skill and brains into what it produces and sells

After a number of sporadic efforts in different parts of the country, [17]

and the introduction of a nue, the favorite English plan was followed and a Presidential Commission was appointed (1913) to inquire into the matter, and to report on the desirability and feasibility of some form of national aid to stimulate the development of vocational education The Coradually increasing national aid to the States to assist the ill virtually becoricultural, trade, commercial, and home-economics education

THE COMMISSION'S FINDINGS The Commission found that there were, in 1910, in round nuriculture in the United States, of whom not over one per cent had had any adequate preparation for fared inand mechanical pursuits, not one per cent of who [18] In the whole United States there were fewer trade schools, of all kinds, than existed in the little Gerdom of Bavaria, a State about the size of South Carolina; while the one Bavarian city of Munich, a city about the size of Pittsburgh, had er cities of the United States, put together The Commission further found that there were 25,000,000 persons in the nation, eighteen years of age or over, engaged in far, and mechanical pursuits, and in trade and transportation, and of these the _Report_ said:

If we assuh the years of the past, would have increased the wage-earning capacity of each of these persons to the extent of only ten cents a day, this would have roup of 2,500,000 a day, or 750,000,000 a year, with all that this would mean to the wealth and life of the nation

This is a very moderate estimate, and the facts would probably show a difference between the earning power of the vocationally trained and the vocationally untrained of at least twenty-five cents a day This would indicate a waste of wages, through lack of training, a to 6,250,000 every day, or 1,875,000,000 for the year

[Illustration: FIG 234 SCHOOL ATTENDANCE OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, FOURTEEN TO TWENTY YEARS or AGE Based on an estimate made by the United States Bureau of Education in 1907 (Bulletin No 1, p 29), and based on conditions then existing, but probably still approxi schools all classes were counted--public, private, YMCA, YWCA, etc Public and private day schools, both elementary and secondary, also were counted]

The Co people were required annually by our industries, and that it would need three years of vocational education, beyond the elee, to prepare them for efficient service This would require that three e be continually enrolled in schools offering so This was approxi people then enrolled in all public and private high schools in the United States, and following any kind of a course of study In addition, the untrained adult workers then in far and industry also needed some form of adult or extension education to enable them to do more effective work The Commission further pointed out that there were in the United States, in 1910, 7,220,298 young people between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years, only 1,032,461 of ere enrolled in a high school of any type, public or private, day or evening (Fig 234), and few of those enrolled were pursuing studies of a technical type

AMERICAN BEGINNINGS; MEANING OF THE WORK In 1917 the As of what is destined to develop rapidly into a truly national systeirls of secondary-school age in the United States This new addition to the systems of public instruction now provided is one which in ti returns out of all proportion to its costs Without it the national prosperity and happiness would be at stake, and the position the United States has attained in the markets of the world could not possibly be islation is based on the best continental European experience, and is soislation for si for agriculture, the trades and industries, commerce, and home economics [19]

A certain portion of the overn in studies and investigations as to needs and courses in agriculture, home econoiven in the public schools; e and of less than college grade; andto enter or who have entered (part-time classes) a trade or a useful industrial pursuit

As nation after nation becomes industrialized, as all except the smallest and poorest nations are bound to become in time, vocational education for its workers in the field, shop, and office will be found to be another state necessity Only the State can adequately provide this, for only the State can finance or properly organize and integrate the work of so large and so ih costly, this new extension of state educational effort will be found to be a wise business investment for every industrial and commercial nation Considered nationally, the workers of any nation not provided with vocational education will find themselves unable to compete with the workers of other nations which do provide such specialized training

IV SOCIOLOGICAL

A NEW ESTIMATE AS TO THE VALUE OF CHILD LIFE Asin chapter XVIII, which described the opportunities for and the kind of schooling developed up to the hteenth century, but little of what may be called forreat ressive nations We also noted the extreme brutality of the school Such was the history of childhood, so far as it may be said to have had a history at all, up to the rise of the great hulect, abuse, mutilation, excessive labor, heavy punishments, and often virtual slavery awaited children everywhere up to recent tis of childhood at home were added to by others in the school (p 455) for such as frequented these institutions

After the co the lot of children became, for a time, worse than before The de of children to the factories to tend machines, instead of to a master to learn a trade, and there they became virtual slaves and their treatland than elsewhere, not because the English were more brutal than the French or the Geran earlier in England and before the rise of hu nation decades before France, and longer still before Gerricultural to anation (after 1871), the new humanitarianism and new economic conditions had placed a new value on child life and child welfare

Since about 1850 an entirely new estimate has come to be placed on the ih the beginnings of the change date back an to care for the children of its poor In the Poor-Relief and Apprenticeshi+p Law of 1601 (R 174) England organized into law the growing practice of a century (p 326) and laid the basis for islation, as we have seen, the foundations of the Massachusetts school law of 1642 were laid In the Virginia laws of 1643 and 1646 (R 200 a) and the Massachusetts law of 1660, providing for the apprenticeshi+p of orphans and hos of child- welfare work in the Aious orders in Europe had for long cared for and brought up poor and neglected children, and in 1729 the first private orphanage in the neorld was established by the Ursulines (p 346) in New Orleans The first public orphanage in America was established in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1790; the first in England at Bire was founded The latter was the forerunner of the juvenile reformatory institutions established later by practically all of the American States These have developed chiefly since 1850 To-day overnments in lected children, where they are clothed, fed, cared for, educated, and trained for some useful employment

CHILD-LABOR LEGISLATION One of the best evidences of the new nineteenth- century hue aely after 1850, and which has been particularly proricultural conditions and the restricted demand for education for ordinary life needs, child labor was not especially harood health conditions With the co of the factory systeestion of population, and other evils connected with the Industrial Revolution, the whole situation was changed Huislation to restrict the evils that had arisen This deland, and resulted in the earliest legislation there

The year 1802 is important in the history of child-welfare work for the enactulate the employment of children in factories This was known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act (R 373) This Act, though largely ineffectual at the time, ordered important reforms which aroused public opinion and which later bore important fruit By it the employment of work-house orphans was limited; it forbade the labor of children under twelve, for ht labor of children should be discontinued, after 1804; ordered that the children so e, be instructed in religion one hour a week, be taken to church every Sunday, and be given one new suit of clothes a year; ordered separate sleeping apartments for the two sexes, and not over two children to a bed; and provided for the registration and inspection of factories This law represents the beginnings of islation It was 1843 before any further child-labor legislation of importance was enacted, and 1878 before a comprehensive child-labor bill was finally passed In the United States the first laws regulating the e for their school attendance were enacted by Rhode Island in 1840, and Massachusetts in 1842 Factory legislation in other countries has been a product of more recent forces and tiislation has been enacted by all progressive nations, and the leading world nations have taken advanced ground on the question All recent thinking is opposed to children engaging in productive labor With the rise of organized labor, and the extension of the suffrage to the laboring man, he has joined the hu permitted to labor From an economic point of view also, all recent studies have shown the unprofitableness of child labor and the large ood education As a result of itation and the spread of popular education, it has at last coenerally accepted principle (R 374) that it is better for children and better for society that they should ree, and be specially trained for some useful type of work Shown to be econosuperseded by suitable education and the vocational training and guidance of youth in all progressive nations