The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-16
TEACH THEM A TRADE.
Hetter to Keep the Boy From Being . Had Than to Save Him Afterward.

Lexington (Ky) Herald. The notion is almost universal that
 when boy goes wrong the way to
 set him right, If there Is any, is to teach him trade. In every reform
 school in the country this principle IS put into execution, until the most usual term for correctional institute Tor boys has come to be Industrial school. And yet how painfully slow we are to see that if the teaching of trade. the training of the hands
 along with the brain, is a means to setting boy right who has already gone wrong. it would be still more enective as means of keeping the boy straight who has never gone
 wrong. If we could learn to do in our public schools for the good boy the things that we now do for our
 bad boys, there would be fewer of the
 latter We remember how forcibly
 this was borne in upon us some years
 ago on visit to the State Reform
 School. Manual training was then be-
 ing given to the children there, and ! there had been erected a handsome
 Manual Training building temporarily being used as a dormitory-with the intention of at once increasing the opportunities of the children for learn ing trades. And at the time, in the county in which we had this object
 lessen before our eyes, not one of the public schools, city or rural, was Siy- Ing any sort of manual training to its pupils. We saw that training in the use of tools. the teaching of a trade, was safeguard to boys and yet we made no effort to introduce 1t into our schools, and even now we
 are but talking of doing 1t. With a
 few notable exceptions the same thing Is true of all the other public schools | over the State of Kentucky Is 1t any
 wonder. one feels tempted to exclaim. with the failure to take this simple
 precaution in keeping boys good, that
 the bad boys in the State have con- stantly increased. that the reform
 school Is overrun, and that after all these years the management Is still froced though several other dormito-
 ries have been built, to utilize the
 larger part of the manual training building as a dormitory. cutting off
 any increased possibilities of trade teaching.
 In an article in Leslie's Magazine
 for June on The Bad Boy; How to
 Save Him." Judge Lindsey of the Ju- venile Court of Denver expresses very strikingly his convictions on this sub
 ject.
 The chance to learn a trade" says Judge Lindsey, "may be the needed factor in the boys proper develop ment. I have often had boys to ask me to commit them to the industrial school in order that they might be taught some useful trade, and in one case knew a lad to violate a petty law In order to be sent up for the purpose.
 Let me interject rfgnt here on be- half of the boys in whom I have been interested, and others similarly placed an earnest plea for greater opportuni- ties of learning useful trades. Under our school system trades are only taught in reform schools. Here only Is 1t recognized as the best system to fit boys to meet the industrial ac- tivities of life. A boy must commit & crime in order to gain the opportu- nifty to learn a trade. likeness breeds crime, but boys are often idle because our system of public education never fitted them for useful. joyful, prac- tical work rather than because of any inherent unwlllingness to work. It may be the school system and not the boy that fails. Ninety per cent of our boys are forced to go 70 work without even a high school education. This sudden transition from school to work takes thousands to the messenger ser vice and the street. because they have never been taught to do anything we'll. There Is plenty of work for the skilled hand, but the boy lacks equipment to be obtained from a proper train ing. It is the duty of the school to supply the child with a chance to be- come . worker with his hands. Get