The San Francisco call., 1898-01-30
VOCATIONAL
 EDUCATION A Necessary Supplement to a General Culture
 Course.
Professor Brown Discusses an Interesting Pedagogical
 Problem.
The Need of Improving Presen Methods of Teaching Reading
 Emphasized.

 partment of Pedagogy at the Univers- ity of California, in the third of a series of talks on secondary education yester- day, emphasized the need of course of vocational training to supplement and round out college course in gen eral culture In his remarks, Profes- sor Brown said:
 Tn a strictly unified educational system all the work of the grammar school would lead directly to the high school, and all the work of the high school would lead directly to the uni versity. Is such a system possible? In early secondary schools there was common foundation in the elementary school. The high school offered several different courses-one, the classical, leading to the university, and the others ending with the secondary schools. A question that is being asked now is, Should every high school course have a university course cor related to it and a continuation of it?' At present a larger part of the high school courses than formerly reach to the college. To have a fully unified system, a university course correspond ing to each high school course. the col lege entrance requirements must be broadened and the weak high school courses strengthened. The question whether there should be a university course corresponding to each high school course is an important and un- settled pedagogical question. Should there be a college course, for instance corresponding to the present high school commercial course? The mis- understandings that have arisen in dis cussing the problem are due In large measure to the failure properly to dis tinguish between vocational and gen. eral culture education. Our colleges of letters and social science are properly colleges of general culture. Our courses in agriculture, chemistry, engineering and medicine are essentially vocational The Lick School and the Commercial High School of San Francisco are ex- amples of vocational secondary schools
 Too little importance Is at present attached to vocational education. We have been afraid of substituting vo- cational learning for general culture, and this fear is we'll grounded But there is an absolute and pressing need of training every individual for some vocation, For the vast majority of people the course of education is not
 
 with strictly vocational training
 Below the high-school grade voca- tfonal education is not desirable If all children were able to go beyond the high school, I would be opposed to vo- cational training in the high school. But many cannot go beyond or even through the high school, and hence the necessity for vo- cational training in the high school.
 "A good commercial college is need ed in the community. although I be- lieve the course of such a college should be strengthened"
 Professor Brown resumed his histor- ical survey of secondary education in America, tracing its evolution from its first form the Colonial grammar school, into it's secondary and transi- tonal form, the academy of the early part of the present century
 MT. T. L. Heaton continued his crit icisms upon reading as at present taught in the public schools He said among other things:
 The work of the first two years at school should consist largely of read ing. At present too much time is spent In reading subjects which children do not understand. It is not sufficient that the child should be given practice merely in articulation and pronuncla- tion-he should read understandingly Ihere IS such thing as reading arith- IhetlC, IedolnS an example. The read ing of an example should not be a mere mumbling of words, but there should be emphasis. intelligently placed upon the important things in the example, the things given and the thing or things to be determined So it is with geography, history and grammar; until the pupil can read well he cannot un- derstand well. It is of the utmost i'm portance, therefore. that reading should be thoroughly taught in the lower grades. in order that other stu dies may be intelligently studied In the grades above
 Punctuation marks are not pauses In reading, as many still think. The punctuation marks indicate grammati- cal relations, and, while these gram matlcal pauses often coincide with the pauses in the reading, teachers sbouId be careful not to allow pupils to pause Tn the reading every time they encoun- ter a punctuation mark. To assist tba pupils of the lower grades in learning to pronounce letters and sylIables tbe letters should be marked phoneticaIlv and the children made familiar with these phonetic marks"