Part 5 (1/2)

Most of the men who enroll in night school cla.s.ses need a course of at least two or three years. All but a few, however, insist on having their supplementary training in small doses. Frequently they want only specific instruction about a specific thing, such as how to lay out a certain piece of work or how to set up a particular machine tool. They want to secure this knowledge in the shortest possible time, and very few want the same thing. A course of two or three years does not appeal to them. Another difficulty is that their previous educational equipment varies widely, and some are not capable of a.s.similating even the specialized bit of trade knowledge they need without a preliminary course in arithmetic. As the personnel of the cla.s.ses changes to a marked degree from term to term, the courses undergo frequent modifications. Apparently the teachers and princ.i.p.als have made a sincere effort to adapt the instruction to the demands of the men who attend the schools, but the fact is that the difficulties inherent in such work make it impossible to organize the cla.s.ses on any basis except that of subject matter, which means fitting students into courses, rather than adapting courses to the needs of particular groups of workers.

The enrollment is far below what should be expected in a city of nearly three-quarters of a million inhabitants. The total number of journeymen, apprentices, and helpers from the skilled manual occupations, receiving trade instruction in the night schools, is considerably less than one per cent of the total number in the city.

A large enrollment is necessary for efficient administration. Success in specializing courses in night schools, as in day schools, requires a large administrative unit. The possible variety of courses is in direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a cla.s.s of 200 carpenters there would probably be, for example, 10 or 15 men who need specialized instruction in stair-building. On the basis of the present enrollment of 40 or 50 carpenters the cla.s.s would dwindle to three or four, with the result that the per capita teaching cost becomes prohibitive.

The relatively small result now obtained is not the fault of the schools, but is due princ.i.p.ally to the fact that the great field of evening vocational instruction is treated by the school system as a mere side line of the technical high schools. The evening cla.s.ses are taught by teachers who have already given their best in the day cla.s.ses. The enrollment cannot be greatly increased so long as this type of education is handled as one of the marginal activities of the school system, manned by tired teachers and directed by tired princ.i.p.als. It is a totally different kind of job from regular day instruction and requires a different administrative organization, with a responsible head vested with sufficient authority to meet quickly and effectively the widely varying demands of its students. This will require the speeding-up of administrative methods in the establishment of courses and the employment of teachers, a freer hand for the princ.i.p.als as regards both expenditures and policy, and most important of all, the organization of all forms of continuation and night school instruction under a separate department.

A COMBINED PROGRAM OF CONTINUATION AND TRADE-EXTENSION TRAINING

In considering the general conclusions of the survey as to what should be done in the matter of trade preparatory and trade-extension training in both day and night schools, it must be borne in mind that these two types of vocational training are still in the experimental stage. Their future development will probably involve a wide departure from conventional school methods and the evolution of a special technique through trial and experiment. At the present time we can only formulate certain of the main conditions to which future advance in these fields must conform.

First of all, it must be recognized that such work is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to teach, but who possess a firm conviction of the value and utility of this kind of instruction. In the hands of teachers who bring to it only the margin of interest and energy remaining after a hard day's work in the high school, or who are unable to comprehend the radical difference between teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a week and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or evening cla.s.s, the full measure of success cannot be expected. The employment of day teachers for night school work has never been other than a makes.h.i.+ft, and the insignificant results attained in night schools throughout the country have been due in great measure to this cause.

Apart from the fact that the interests of adolescent workers imperatively demand the establishment of day continuation schools, an additional argument in favor of such schools is that they would provide a means for making the night trade-extension work effective, through the use of continuation day school teachers for night school work. Such a plan would mean that teachers employed on this basis would have charge of a day continuation cla.s.s during one session of four hours, and a night cla.s.s of two hours, making a total of six hours' work per day. A plan of this kind would make possible the establishment of the fundamental conditions for successful trade--preparatory and trade-extension training in the night schools.

The present system is unjust to both teachers and students;--to the students because the man or boy who sacrifices his recreation time to attend night school has a right to the best the schools can give; to the teachers because no teacher can work a two-hour night s.h.i.+ft in addition to seven or eight hours in the technical high school without seriously impairing his efficiency.

The development of this plan would necessitate the establishment of two centers, one located in the eastern and one in the western section of the city. In these centers should be housed the day vocational school, the day continuation cla.s.ses, and the night vocational cla.s.ses. This would relieve the technical high schools of a task which does not belong to them, and which by overloading the teachers seriously interferes with the work they were originally employed to do. At present a considerable number of the technical high school teachers are devoting from one-fifth to one-fourth of their total working day to elementary teaching, as most of the work in the night schools is below high school grade.

By bringing together all the trade preparatory and trade-extension work under one roof, it is possible to secure the highest efficiency in the use of equipment. Expensive shops can be justified only on the basis of constant use. If the suggestion for the establishment of a vocational school is acted upon, such future contingencies as the continuation school should be borne in mind in planning the buildings and equipment, so as to permit of extensions as they may be required.

It is practically certain that universal continuation training for young workers up to the age of 17 or 18 will be made compulsory in all the progressive states of the country within the next decade. The Ohio school authorities should get ready to handle the continuation school problem before the example of other states and the overwhelming pressure of public opinion forces it upon them.

CHAPTER IX

VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS

The discussions in the preceding chapters have been limited intentionally to a consideration of the needs and possibilities of training for wage-earning pursuits in which men predominate. The conditions which surround vocational training for girls are so fundamentally unlike those encountered in the vocational training of boys that a combined treatment leads to needless complexity and confusion.

Cleveland uses a relatively smaller amount of woman labor than most other large cities. In only one of the 10 largest cities in the country--Pittsburgh--is the proportion of women and girls at work smaller as compared with the total number of persons in gainful occupations than in Cleveland. In 1900, 20.4 per cent of the workers in the city were women; by 1910 the proportion of women workers had increased to 22 per cent, a s.h.i.+ft of less than two per cent for the decade.

A consideration of the occupational future of boys and girls shows at once how widely their problems differ. The typical boy in Cleveland attends school until he reaches the age of 15 or 16. About this period he becomes a wage-earner and for the next 30 or 40 years devotes most of his time and energy to making a living. The typical girl leaves school about the same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years, then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping house and rearing children. To the man wage-earning is the real business of life. To the woman it is a means for filling in the gap between school and marriage, a little journey into the world previous to settling down to her main job.

The most radical and important difference between the two s.e.xes with respect to wage-earning is found in the length of the working life.

The transitory character of the wage-earning phase in the life of most women is clearly seen in the contrasted age distribution shown in Table 13.

TABLE 13.--PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE PERIODS

----------------------+-------------+------------+ Age period

Women

Men

----------------------+-------------+------------+ 16 to 21

60

85

21 to 45

26

98

45 and over