the united states started its national existence with an out-of-doors people. until comparatively recent years, the cities were small, and the great bulk of the inhabitants lived from the natural resources of the country, that is to say, from the raw products of the mines and the forests, and the crops grown upon the plains by a most primitive and wasteful system of agriculture. but the days have forever gone when a living can be snatched, so to speak, from the land in any of these ways. the easily gotten stores of the mines and forests are exhausted; the soil over many millions of acres has been robbed of its fertility. the nation is now engaged in reckoning up what is left in the treasury of its natural resources, estimating how best to conserve and make profitable use of what is left.
the nation might have done this sooner, but there was in the west always fresh land to open up and in the east, after a time, a new source of income in the factory industries, that were more and more profitably absorbing capital and labor. so that although pioneer conditions gradually passed away, and it became less easy to wrest a living from plain or mountain or mine, the idea of finding out what was wrong, improving methods of agriculture, conserving the forest wealth by continual replanting or working the less rich mines at a profit through new processes, or the utilization of by-products, did not at first suggest itself.
when, on the other hand, we turn to the manufacturing occupations, we find that they have followed an analogous, though not precisely similar, course of evolution. certainly from the first the manufacturers showed themselves far ahead of their fellows in the economical management of the raw material, in the adoption of every kind of labor and time-saving device and in the disposal of refuse. but in their way they have been just as short-sighted. they carried with them into the new occupations the very same careless habits of national extravagance. they, too, went ahead in a similar hustling fashion. this time the resources that were used up so recklessly were human resources, the strength and vitality of the mature man, the flesh and blood of little children, their stores of energy and youthful joy and hope. by overwork or accident, the father was cut off in his strong manhood, the boy was early worn out, and the young girl's prospects of happy motherhood were forever quenched.
there are now signs of a blessed reaction setting in here, too, and it is largely owing to the efforts of organized labor. the principles of conservation and of a wise economy, which are re-creating the plains of the west and which will once more clothe with forests the slopes of the mountains, are at work in the realm of industry. not a year passes but that some state or another does not limit anew the hours during which children may work, or insist upon shorter hours for women, or the better protection from dangerous machinery, or the safeguarding of the worker in unhealthy occupations. organized labor, ever running ahead of legislation in its standards of hours and sanitary conditions, provides a school of education and experiment for the whole community, by procuring for trade unionists working conditions which afterwards serve as the model for enlightened employers, and as a standard that the community in the end must exact for the whole body of workers.
but more must be done than merely keeping our people alive, by insisting they shall not be killed in the earning of their bread. leaders of thought and many captains of industry have at last grasped the fact that the worker, uneducated and not trained in any true sense, is at once a poor tool and a most costly one. other countries add their quota of experience, to back up public opinion and legislative action. hence the demand heard from one end of the land to the other for industrial training. the public everywhere after a century of modern factory industry are at length beginning to have some definite ideas regarding industrial training for boys who are to supply the human element in the factory scheme. (regarding girls, they still grope in outer darkness.)
for many years economists were accustomed to express nothing but satisfaction over the ever-advancing specialization of industry. they saw only the cheapening of the product, the vast increase in the total amount produced, and the piling up of profits, and they beheld in all three results nothing but social advantage. verily both manufacturer and consumer were benefited. when the more thoughtful turned their attention to the actual makers through whose labors the cloth and the shoes and the pins of specialized industry were produced, they satisfied themselves that the worker must also be a sharer in the benefits of the new system; for, said they, everyone who is a worker is also a consumer. even though the worker who is making shoes has to turn out twenty times as much work for the same wages, still as a consumer he shares in the all-round cheapening of manufactured articles, and is able to buy clothes and shoes and pins so much the cheaper. that the cost of living on the whole might be greater, that the wage of the worker might be too low to permit of his purchasing the very articles into the making of which his own labor had gone, did not occur to these à priori reasoners. it has taken a whole century of incredibly swift mechanical advance, associated at the same time with the most blind, cruel, and brutal waste of child life and adult life, to arrive at the beginning of an adjustment between the demands of machine-driven industry and the needs and the just claims of the human workers. we have only just recovered from the dazed sense of wonderment and pride of achievement into which modern discoveries and inventions, with the resultant enormous increase of commerce and material wealth, plunged the whole civilized world. we are but beginning to realize, what we had well-nigh totally overlooked, that even machine-driven industry with all that it connotes, enormously increased production of manufactured goods, and the spread of physical comfort to a degree unknown before among great numbers, is not the whole of national well-being; that by itself, unbalanced by justice to the workers, it is not even an unmixed boon.
i have tried to follow up the evolution of our present industrial society on several parallel lines: how industry itself has developed, how immigration affects the labor problem as regards the woman worker, and the relation of women to the vocations in the modern world. let us now glance at our educational systems and see how they fit in to the needs of the workers, especially of the working-women. for our present purpose i will not touch on education as we find it in our most backward states, but rather as it is in the most advanced, since it is from improvement in these that we may expect to produce the best results for the whole nation.
free and compulsory public education was established to supply literary and cultural training at a time when children still enjoyed opportunities of learning in the home, and later in small shops something of the trades they were to practice when grown-up. i know of a master plumber, who twenty years ago, as a child of eleven, made friends with the blacksmith and the tinsmith in the little village where he lived, and taught himself the elements of his trade at the blacksmith's anvil and with the tinsmith's tools. at fourteen that boy knew practically a great deal about the properties of metals, could handle simple tools deftly, and was well prepared to learn his trade readily when the time came.
as the most intelligent city parents cannot as individuals furnish their children with similar chances today, we must look to the public schools, which all citizens alike support, to take up the matter, and supply methodically and deliberately, that training of the eye and hand, and later that instruction in wage-earning occupations which in former days, as in the case quoted, the child obtained incidentally, as it were, in the mere course of growing up.
on the literary side, it is true, schools are improving all the time. history is now taught by lantern slides, showing the people's lives, instead of by a list of dates in a catechism. geography is illustrated in the garden plot of the school playground. but in responding to the new claims which a new age and a changed world are making upon them, schools and teachers are only beginning to wake up. the manual training gradually being introduced is a hopeful beginning, but nothing more. the most valuable and important work of this kind is reserved for the upper grades of the grammar schools and for certain high schools, and the children who are able to make use of it are for the most part the offspring of comfortably off parents, enjoying all sorts of educational privileges already. education, publicly provided, free and compulsory, therefore presumably universal, was established primarily for the benefit of the workers' children, yet of all children it is they who are at this moment receiving the least benefit from it. many circumstances combine to produce this unfortunate result. the chief direct cause is poverty in the home. so many families have to live on such poor wages—five and six hundred dollars a year—that the children have neither the health to profit by the schooling nor the books nor the chance to read books at home when the home is one or perhaps two rooms. the curse of homework in cities ties the children down to willowing feathers or picking nuts or sewing on buttons, or carrying parcels to and from the shop that gives out the work, deprives them of both sleep and play, makes their attendance at school irregular, and dulls their brains during the hours they are with the teacher. in the country the frequently short period of school attendance during the year and the daily out-of-school work forced from young children by poverty-harassed parents has similar disastrous results.
even in those states which have compulsory attendance up to fourteen, many children who are quite normal are yet very backward at that age. the child of a foreign-speaking parent, for instance, who never hears english spoken at home, needs a longer time to reach the eighth grade than the child of english-speaking parents.
chicago is fairly typical of a large industrial city, and there the city club found after investigation that forty-three per cent. of the pupils who enter the first grade do not reach the eighth grade; forty-nine per cent. do not go through the eighth grade; eleven per cent. do not reach the sixth grade, and sixteen per cent. more do not go through the sixth grade.
a child who goes through the eighth grade has some sort of an equipment (on the literary side at least) with which to set out in life. he has learned how to read a book or a newspaper intelligently, and how to express himself in writing. if he is an average child he has acquired a good deal of useful information. he will remember much of what he has learned, and can turn what knowledge he has to some account. but the child who leaves school in the fifth or sixth grade, or, perhaps, even earlier, is apt to have no hold on what he has been taught, and it all too soon passes from his memory, especially if he has in his home surroundings no stimulus to mental activity. poor little thing! what a mockery to call this education, so little as it has fitted him to understand life and its problems! what he has learned out of school, meanwhile, as often as not, is harmful rather than beneficial.
the school door closes and the factory gate stands open wide. the children get their working papers, and slip out of the one, and through the other. at once, as we arrange matters, begins the fatal effect of handing over children, body and soul, into the control of industry. after a few days or weeks of wrapping candy, or carrying bundles or drawing out bastings, the work, whatever it is, becomes but a mere mechanical repetition. a few of the muscles only, and none of the higher faculties of observation, inquiry and judgment come into play at all, until, at the end of two years the brightest school-children have perceptibly lost ground in all these directions.
two of the most precious years of life are gone. the little workers are not promoted from performing one process to another more difficult. they are as far as ever from any prospect of learning a trade in any intelligent fashion. the slack season comes on. the little fingers, the quick feet are not required any longer. once more there is a scurrying round to look for a job, less cheerfully this time, the same haphazard applying at another factory for some other job, that like the first needs no training, like the first, leads nowhere, but also like the first, brings in three or four dollars a week, perhaps less. a teacher at a public-school social center inquired of a group of fifty girls, cracker-packers, garment-workers and bindery girls, how long each had been in her present situation. only one had held hers eighteen months. no other had reached a year in the same place. the average appeared to be about three or four months.
worse still is another class of blind-alley occupation. these are the street trades. the newsboy, the messenger and the telegraph boy often make good money to begin with. girls, too, are being employed by some of the messenger companies. these are all trades, that apart from the many dangers inseparable from their pursuit, spell dismissal after two or three years at most, or as soon as the boy reaches the awkward age. the experience gained is of no use in any other employment, and the unusual freedom makes the messenger who has outgrown his calling averse to the discipline of more regular occupations.
what a normal vocational education can be, and a normal development of occupation, is seen in the professions, such as law and medicine. the lawyer and the doctor are, it is true, confining themselves more and more to particular branches of their respective callings, and more and more are they becoming experts in the branch of law or medicine selected. the lawyer specializes in criminal cases or in damage suits, in commercial or constitutional law; he is a pleader or a consultant. the doctor may decide to be a surgeon, or an oculist, an anesthetist or a laboratory worker. and the public reap the benefit in more expert advice and treatment. but the likeness between such professional specialization and the dehumanizing and brain-deadening industrial specialization, which is the outgrowth of the factory system, is one in name only as was admirably put by samuel gompers, when presiding over the convention of the american federation of labor at toronto in 1909.
"it must be recognized that specialists in industry are vastly different from specialists in the professions. in the professions, specialists develop from all the elements of the science of the profession. specialists in industry are those who know but one part of a trade, and absolutely nothing of any other part of it. in the professions specialists are possessed of all the learning of their art; in industry they are denied the opportunity of learning the commonest elementary rudiments of industry other than the same infinitesimal part performed by them perhaps thousands of times over each day."
when the speaker emphasized these points of unlikeness, he was at the same time, and in the same breath, pointing out the direction in which industry must be transformed. training in the whole occupation must precede the exercise of the specialty. furthermore, as all professional training has its cultural side, as well as its strictly professional side, so the cultural training of the worker must ever keep step with his vocational training.
the motto of the school should be, "we are for all," for it is what teachers and the community are forever forgetting. think of the innumerable foundations in the countries of the old world, intended for poor boys, which have been gradually appropriated by the rich. of others again, supposed to be for both boys and girls, from which the girls have long been excluded. the splendid technical schools of this country, nominally open to all boys, at least, are by their very terms closed to the poor boy, however gifted. to give to him that hath is the tendency against which we must ever guard in planning and administering systems of public education. with many, perhaps most, educational institutions, as they grow older, more and more do they incline to improve the standards of their work, technically speaking, but to bestow their benefits upon comparatively fewer and fewer recipients.
i would not be understood to deprecate original research, or the training of expert professional workers in any field, still less as undervaluing thoroughness in any department of teaching. but i plead for a sense of proportion, that as long as the world is either so poor or its wealth and opportunities so unequally distributed, a certain minimum of vocational training shall be insured to all.
we recognize the need for thorough training in the case of the coming original investigator, and the expert professional, and they form the minority. we do not recognize the at least equally pressing need for the thorough training of the whole working population, and these make up the vast majority. in so far as the pre-vocational work in primary schools, the manual work and technical training in high schools, the short courses, the extension lectures and the correspondence instruction of universities are meeting this urgent popular need, just so far are they raising all work to a professional standard, just so far are they bringing down to the whole nation the gifts of culture and expert training that have hitherto been the privilege of the few.
i have often noticed college professors, in turning over the leaves of a university calendar or syllabus of lectures, pass lightly over the pages recounting the provision made for short courses, summer schools, extension or correspondence work, and linger lovingly over the fuller and more satisfactory program outlined for the teacher or the professional worker. the latter is only apparently the more interesting. take wisconsin's college of agriculture, for example. it sends forth yearly teachers and original investigators, but quite as great and important a product are the hundreds of farmers and farmers' sons who come fresh from field and dairy to take their six weeks' training in the management of cattle or of crops, and to field and dairy return, carrying away with them the garnered experience of others, as well as increased intelligence and self-reliance in handling the problems of their daily toil.
anna garlin spencer, in her "woman and social culture," points out how our much-lauded schools of domestic economy fail to benefit the schoolgirl, through this very overthoroughness and expensiveness how they are narrowed down to the turning out of teachers of domestic economy and dietitians and other institutional workers. domestic economy as a wage-earning vocation cannot be taught too thoroughly, but what every girl is entitled to have from the public school during her school years is a "short course" in the simple elements of domestic economy, with opportunity for practice. it is nothing so very elaborate that girls need, but that little they need so badly. such a course has in view the girl as a homemaker, and is quite apart from her training as a wage-earner.
when again we turn to that side, matters are not any more promising. if the boy of the working classes is badly off for industrial training, his sister is in far worse case. some provision is already made for the boy, and more is coming his way presently, but of training for the girl, which shall be adequate to fit her for self-support, we hear hardly anything. we have noted that women are already in most of the trades followed by men, and that the number of this army of working, wage-earning women is legion; that they are not trained at all, and are so badly paid that as underbidders they perpetually cut the wages of men. nay, the young working-girl is even "her own worst competitor—the competitor against her own future home, and as wife and mother she may have to live on the wage she herself has cheapened."
and to face a situation like this are we making any adequate preparation? with how little we are satisfied, let me illustrate. in the address of mrs. raymond robins as president of the national women's trade union league of america before their fourth biennial convention in st. louis, in june, 1913, she told how "in a curriculum of industrial education we find that under the heading 'science' boys study elementary physics, mechanics and electricity, and girls the action of alkalies, and the removal of stains. while under 'drawing' we read, 'for boys the drawing will consist of the practical application of mechanical and free-hand work to parts of machinery, house plans, and so forth. emphasis will be placed upon the reading of drawings, making sketches of machine parts quickly and accurately. for the girls the drawing will attempt to apply the simple principles of design and color to the work. the girls will design and stencil curtains for the dining-and sewing-rooms and will make designs for doilies for the table. they will plan attractive spacing for tucks, ruffles and embroidery for underwear.' women have entered nearly three hundred different occupations and trades in america within the past quarter of a century, three hundred trades and occupations, and they are to qualify for these by learning to space tucks attractively."
in the very valuable twenty-fifth annual report of the commissioner of labor, published in 1910, which is devoted to industrial education, there is but one chapter dealing with girls' industrial schools, in itself a commentary upon the backwardness of the movement for industrial education where girls are affected. it is true that the schools included under this heading do not account for all the school trade-training given to girls in this country, for the classification of industrial schools, where there is no general system, is very difficult, and under no plan of tabulation can there be an all-inclusive heading for any one type. for instance a school for colored girls might be classified either as a school for negroes or as a school for girls, as a public school, a philanthropic school, or an evening school, and a school giving trade-training to boys might also include girls. the writer of this most exhaustive report, however, states definitely that "trade schools for girls are rare, and even schools offering them industrial courses as a part of their work are not common."
it is impossible to consider vocational training without bearing in mind the example of germany. germany has been the pioneer in this work and has laid down for the rest of us certain broad principles, even if there are in the german systems some elements which are unsuitable to this country. these general principles are most clearly exemplified in the schools of the city of munich. indeed, when people talk of the german plan, they nearly always mean the munich plan. what it aims at is:
1. to deal in a more satisfactory way with the eighty or ninety per cent. of children who leave school for work at fourteen, and to bridge over with profit alike to the child, the employer and the community the gap between fourteen and sixteen which is the unsolved riddle of educators everywhere today.
2. to retain the best elements of the old apprenticeship system, though in form so unlike it. the boy (for it mainly touches boys) is learning his trade and he is also working at his trade, and he has cultural as well as industrial training, and this teaching he receives during his working hours and in his employer's time.
3. to provide teachers who combine ability to teach, with technical skill.
4. to insure, through joint boards on which both employers and workmen are represented, even if these boards are generally advisory, only an interlocking of the technical class and the factory, without which any system of vocational instruction must fall down.[a]
[footnote a: as to how far this is the case, there is a difference of opinion among authorities. professor f.w. roman, who has made so exhaustive a comparative study of vocational training in the united states and germany, writes: "in germany, there is very little local control of schools, or anything else. the authority in all lines is highly centralized." (the industrial and commercial schools of the united states and germany, 1915, p. 324.) dr. kerchensteiner is quoted by the commercial club of chicago as saying, in a letter to mr. edwin g. cooley, that the separate administrative school-boards of munich form an essential part of the city's school-system.]
5. to maintain a system which shall reach that vast bulk of the population, who, because they need technical training most urgently, are usually the last to receive it.
many of the most advanced educators in this country join issue with the usual german practice on some most important points. these consider that it is not sufficient that there be a close interlocking of the technical school and class and the factory. it is equally essential that vocational education, supported by public funds, shall be an integral part of the public-school system, of which it is indeed but a normal development, and therefore that we must have a unit and not a dual system. only thus can we insure that vocational education will remain education at all and not just provide a training-school for docile labor as an annex and a convenient entrance hall to the factory system. only thus can we insure democracy in the control of this new branch of public activity. only thus can the primary schools be kept in touch with the advanced classes, so that the teacher, from the very kindergarten up, may feel that she is a part of a complete whole. then indeed will all teachers begin to echo the cry of one whom i heard say: "you ask us to fit the children for the industries. let us see if the industries are fit for the children."
another point in which we must somewhat modify any european model is in the limited training provided for girls. a country which is frankly coeducational in its public schools, state universities and professional colleges, must continue to be so when installing a new educational department to meet the changed and changing conditions of our time.
the parliament of organized labor in the united states has taken a liberal view and laid down an advanced program on the subject of vocational training. in 1908 the american federation of labor appointed a committee on industrial education consisting of nineteen members, of whom two were women, agnes nestor, international secretary of the glove workers' union, and mrs. raymond robins, president of the national women's trade union league of america. its very first report, made in 1909, recommended that the federation should request the united states department of commerce and labor to investigate the subject of industrial education in this country and abroad.
the report of the american federation of labor itself, includes a digest of the united states bureau of labor's report, and was published as senate document no. 936. it is called "the report of the committee on industrial education of the american federation of labor, compiled and edited by charles h. winslow."
whatever narrowness and inconsistency individual trade unionists may be charged with regarding industrial education, the leaders of the labor movement give it their endorsement in the clearest terms. for instance, this very report, comments those international unions which have already established supplemental trade courses, such as the typographical union, the printing pressmen's union, and the photo engravers' union, and other local efforts, such as the school for carpenters and bricklayers in chicago and the school for carriage, wagon, and automobile workers of new york city. all trade unions which have not adopted a scheme of technical education are advised to take the matter up.
on the question of public-school training, the american federation of labor is no less explicit and emphatic, favoring the establishment of schools in connection with the public-school system in which pupils between fourteen and sixteen may be taught the principles of the trades, with local advisory boards, on which both employers and organized labor should have seats. but by far the most fundamental proposal is the following. after outlining the general instruction on accepted lines, they proceed as follows:
"the shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that trade, and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the philosophy of collective bargaining."
the general introduction of such a plan of training would mean that the young worker would start out on his wage-earning career with an intelligent understanding of the modern world, and of his relations to his employer and to his fellow-laborers, instead of, as at present, setting forth with no knowledge of the world he is entering, and moreover, with his mind clogged with a number of utterly out-of-date ideas, as to his individual power of control over wages and working conditions.[a]
[footnote a: history, as it is usually taught, is not considered from the industrial viewpoint, nor in the giving of a history lesson are there inferences drawn from it that would throw light upon the practical problems that are with us today, or that are fast advancing to meet us. when a teacher gives a lesson on the history of the united states, there is great stress laid upon the part played by individual effort. all through personal achievements are emphasized. the instructor ends here, on the high note that personal exertion is the supreme factor of success in life, failing unfortunately to point out how circumstances have changed, and that even personal effort may have to take other directions. of the boys and girls in the schools of the united states today between nine and fourteen years of age, over eight millions in 1910, how many will leave school knowing the important facts that land is no longer free, and that the tools of industry are no more, as they once were, at the disposal of the most willing-worker? and that therefore (oh, most important therefore!) the workers must work in co?peration if they are to retain the rights of the human being, and the status signified by that proud name, an american citizen.]
if we wish to know the special demands of working-women there is no way so certain as to consult the organized women. they alone are at liberty to express their views, while the education they have had in their unions in handling questions vital to their interests as wage-earners, and as leaders of other women gives clearness and definiteness to the expression of those views.
if organized women can best represent the wage-earners of their sex, we can gain the best collective statement of their wishes through them. at the last convention of the national women's trade union league in june, 1913, the subject of industrial education received very close attention. the importance of continuation schools after wage-earning days have commenced was not overlooked. an abstract of the discussion and the chief resolutions can be found in the issue of life and labor for august, 1913.
after endorsing the position taken up by the american federation of labor, the women went on to urge educational authorities to arm the children, while yet at school, with a knowledge of the state and federal laws enacted for their protection, and asked also "that such a course shall be of a nature to equip the boy and girl with a full sense of his or her responsibility for seeing that the laws are enforced," the reason being that the yearly influx of young boys and girls into the industrial world in entire ignorance of their own state laws is one of the most menacing facts we have to face, as their ignorance and inexperience make exploitation easy, and weaken the force of such protective legislation as we have.
yet another suggestion was that "no working certificates be issued to a boy or girl unless he or she has passed a satisfactory examination in the laws which have been enacted by the state for their protection."
in making these claims, organized working-women are keeping themselves well in line with the splendid statement of principles enunciated by that great educator, john dewey:
the ethical responsibility of the school on the social side must be interpreted in the broadest and freest spirit; it is equivalent to that training of the child which will give him such possession of himself that he may take charge of himself; may not only adapt himself to the changes that are going on, but have power to shape and direct them.
when we ask for coeducation on vocational lines, the question is sure to come up: for how long is a girl likely to use her training in a wage-earning occupation? it is continually asserted and assumed she will on the average remain in industry but a few years. the mature woman as a wage-earner, say the woman over twenty-five, we have been pleased to term and to treat as an exception which may be ignored in great general plans. especially has this been so in laying out schemes for vocational training, and we find the girl being ignored, not only on the usual ground that she is a girl, but for the additional, and not-to-be-questioned reason that it will not pay to give her instruction in any variety of skilled trades, because she will be but a short time in any occupation of the sort. hence this serves to increase the already undue emphasis placed upon domestic training as all that a girl needs, and all that her parents or the community ought to expect her to have. this is only one of the many cases when we try to solve our new problems by reasoning based upon conditions that have passed or that are passing away.
in this connection some startling facts have been brought forward by dr. leonard p. ayres in the investigations conducted by him for the russell sage foundation. he tried to find the ages of all the women who are following seven selected occupations in cities of the united states of over 50,000 population. the occupations chosen were those in which the number of women workers exceeds one for every thousand of the population. the number of women covered was 857,743, and is just half of all the women engaged in gainful employment in those cities. the seven occupations listed are housekeeper, nursemaid, laundress, saleswoman, teacher, dressmaker and servant. no less than forty-four per cent. of the housekeepers are between twenty-five and forty-four. of dressmakers there are fifty-one per cent. between these two ages; of teachers fifty-eight per cent.; of laundresses forty-nine per cent., while the one occupation of which a little more than half are under twenty-five years is that of saleswoman, and even here there are barely sixty-one per cent., leaving the still considerable proportion of thirty-nine per cent. of saleswomen over the age of twenty-five. it is pretty certain that these mature women have given more than the favorite seven years to their trade. it is to be regretted that the investigation was not made on lines which would have included some of the factory occupations. it is difficult to see why it did not. under any broad classification there must be more garment-workers, for instance, in new york or chicago, than there are teachers. however, we have reason to be grateful for the fine piece of work which dr. ayres has done here.
the survey, in an editorial, also quotes in refutation of the seven-year theory, the findings of the commission which inquired into the pay of teachers in new york. the commissioners found that forty-four per cent. of the women teachers in the public schools had been in the service for ten years or more, and that only twenty-five per cent. of the men teachers had served as long a term.
it can hardly be doubted that the tendency is towards the lengthening of the wage-earning life of the working-woman. a number of factors affect the situation, about most of which we have as yet little definite information. there is first, the gradual passing of the household industries out of the home. those women, for whom the opportunity to be thus employed no longer is open, tend to take up or to remain longer in wage-earning occupations.
the changing status of the married woman, her increasing economic independence and its bearing upon her economic responsibility, are all facts having an influence upon woman as a wage-earning member of the community, but how, and in what degree, they affect her length of service, is still quite uncertain. it is probable too, that they affect the employment or non-employment of women very differently in different occupations, but how, and in what degree they do so is mere guess-work at present.
much pains has been expended in arguing that any system of vocational training should locally be co-related with the industries of the district. vain effort! for it appears that the workers of all ages are on the move all the time. out of 22,027 thirteen-year-old boys in the public schools of seventy-eight american cities, only 12,699, or a little more than half, were living in the places of their birth. and considering the wanderlust of the young in any case, is anything more probable than that the very first thing a big proportion of this advancing body of "vocationally trained" young men and women will want to do will be to try out their training in some other city? and why should they not?
if there has ever been voiced a tenderer plea for a universal education that shall pass by no child, boy or girl, than that of stitt wilson, former socialist mayor of berkeley, i do not know it. if there has ever been outlined a finer ideal of an education fitting the child, every child, to take his place and fill his place in the new world opening before him, i have not heard of it. he asks that we should submit ourselves to the leadership of the child—his needs, his capacities, his ideal hungers—and in so doing we shall answer many of the most disturbing and difficult problems that perplex our twentieth-century civilization. even in those states which make the best attempt at educating their children, from three-fourths to nine-tenths, according to the locality, leave the schools at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and the present quality of the education given from the age of twelve to sixteen is neither an enrichment in culture, nor a training for life and livelihood. it is too brief for culture, and is not intended for vocation.
mr. wilson makes no compromise with existing conditions; concedes not one point to the second-rate standards that we supinely accept; faces the question of cost, that basic difficulty which most theoretical educators waive aside, and which the public never dreams of trying to meet and overcome. here are some of his proposals.
the new education [he writes] will include training and experience in domestic science, cookery and home-making; agriculture and horticulture; pure and applied science, and mechanical and commercial activities with actual production, distribution and exchange of commodities. such training for three to six millions of both sexes from the age of twelve to twenty-one years will require land, tools, buildings of various types, machinery, factory sites by rail and water, timber, water and power sources.
as all civilization is built upon the back of labor, and as all culture and leisure rests upon labor, and is not possible otherwise, so all cultural and liberal education, as generally understood, shall be sequent to the productive and vocational. the higher intellectual education should grow out of and be earned by productive vocational training.
hence our schools should be surrounded by lands of the best quality obtainable, plots of 10, 50, 100 and more acres. these lands should be the scene of labor that would be actually productive and not mere play…. in such a school the moral elements of labor should be primary, viz.: joy to the producer, through industry and art; perfect honesty in quality of material and character of workmanship; social co?peration, mutualism, and fellowship among the workers or students; and last, but not least, justice—that is, the full product of labor being secured to the producer.
he plans to make the schools largely self-supporting, partly through land endowments easier to obtain under the system of taxation of land values that is possibly near at hand in the golden state, for which primarily the writer is planning. the other source of income would be from the well-directed labor of the students themselves, particularly the older ones. he quotes professor frank lawrence glynn, of the vocational school at albany, new york, as having found that the average youth can, not by working outside of school hours, but in the actual process of getting his own education, earn two dollars a week and upward. elsewhere, mr. wilson shows that the beginnings of such schools are to be found in operation today, in some of the best reform institutions of the country.
for all who desire university training, this would open the door. they would literally "work their way" through college. one university' president argues for some such means of helping students: "we need not so much an increase of beneficiary funds as an increase of the opportunities for students to earn their living." this is partly to enable them to pay; for their courses and thereby acquire an education, but chiefly because through supporting themselves they gain self-confidence and therefore the power of initiative.[a]
[footnote a: "the social and educational need for vocational training is equally urgent. widespread vocational training will democratize the education of the country: (1) by recognizing different tastes and abilities, and by giving an equal opportunity to all to prepare for their lifework; (2) by extending education through part-time and evening instruction to those who are at work in the shop or on the farm." report of the commission on national aid to vocational instruction, 1914, page 12.]
