The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-27
STRONG PLEA FOR
 TECHNICAL TRAINING
Secretary of State Educational Board Delivers Address Be-
 fore Board of Trade

OCtAVt0y VI OIOtO kNAIssAOhsAA
 Board Delivers Address Be-
 fore Board of Trade
 The increasing problem of the main tenance of trade schools under the su- pervision of the State Board of Edu- cation was discussed interestingly by Charles D. Hine, Secretary of the State Board. at the meeting of the Bridge port Board of Trade last evening.
 He pointed out the arguments ad- vanced both for and against the trade school, particularly discussing that phase of the question as to whether the trade school is not much better for many students than is the High school.
 Secretary Hine Incidentally spoke of the practicability of installing time clocks in public schools. Among other things, he said:
 'Money wisely spent on an education skillfullys adjusted to the needs of practical life will yield a large re- turn. The right kind of an educa- tion is not luxury but an invest ment which modern community is forced to make to maintain it's po- sition and to seize opportunities for increasing its prosperity. The de- velopment of applied science and a world-wire growth of commercial dIlQ 1uQuStIldl dClfiGcS udtC SIidn6Od the situation. We must provide our selves with forms of education which do not fail in respect of direct untility.
 'tIf we are to put our system or education on a rational and scientt- fic basis we must determine what are the essential changes to make and then make them. This is a question of grat moment and cannot be played with. So far we have done nohting but teInporize and tinker. We must reconstruct tho machine and not patch it.
 There is a premilminary and pertinent argument in favor of trade lesson learning and lesson hearing we ought to call on children to execute tasks under ski11ful and watchful but as far as possible individual guidance.
 School Figures.
 'The age of IA forms one of the few sharp divisions of education, be- ing that legislatively prescribed as the boundary of exemption from com. pulsory schooling. The children of the compulsory stage-seven to 14- numbering about 150.000 constitute one-seventh of our population. Those from IA to IS number 100000, pr one-tenth of the population. Of the latter class perhaps 10000 are in high elementary schools.
 
 dren, numbering about 80.000, a trade school is not only continua- ton school but introduction to wage earning. It is @ question worthy of serious consideration whether part of the money so lavishly bestowed tably diverted to trade training.
 "The object of this training is to offer to boys primarily and to girls when possible the opportunity to learn definite, specific wage earning trade. We have also in mind the needs of older persons who have missed the chance of learning trades earlier and by the evening classes we enable workmen to improve them selves in skill or to learn new occupa- tions. We have also opened the schools to apprentices in factories.
 "The shop has two very definite aims: CD to equip that large num- skilled trades with the primary es- sentials and practical principles of their trades; (2) to enlarge the in- dustria1 efficiency of the state as well as of individuals by promoting more thorough, general and progressive specialized industrial conditions.
 The shop has been in operation since August. We can say the de- mand for this education exceeds the facilities which we can at once pro- vide, the boys are trained to become of productive labor. There is rigid adherence to trades and as near as can be. real apprenticeship.
 The Turning Point.
 Speaking from observation and ac- cumulated evidence, .he ordinary fac- tory fails just where the schools failed that is in coming interest with labor and mixing pleasure with work. As school was thraldom, so work is drud- gery. What the children who leave school desire is wages, and as long as they get their wages 1t matters very little what they do to earn them. Their work is mechanical and thing of routine, and once they have got the knack they learn no more. Later, say in their seventeenth or eighteenth year, they begin to want more money and perhaps discover abruptly that they get no more, or very little more than they earned at first, because they are in fact worth no more. They can do their special bit of work and can new. Their experience of the previous three or four years neither flinders nol helps them in this. If they look fol something higher they face a great difficulty. They desire skilled work; they are not merely unskilled, but they have spent the most impressionable years of their life either at school ol in their first employment in such way that they are in some measure, per. haps in great measure, incapable O1 acquiring any skill which is more thar dexterity. Those who are most se rious often attempt to make good theil defects by joining evening classes ir which education is recommended ol supplanted by specialized instruction but here again they have no prepara. ton, and it is in evidence that boys and girls of this age and with the his tory above described, quickly. tire O. these schools. An evening school ma. be liberally equipped and munificent ly endowed and yet fail to serve tn, purposes for which it was established if the intelligence of the pupils hal not been somewhat developed by { wisely planned and carefully bestowed education before the pupils come ts the classes which such a school pro vides.
 ''If education in school be restricted to essential rudiments treated by skill full teachers a better result will be at tained than when time and energy O. teacher and pupil are distributed ant scattered over a wide range of sub jectS, most of which cannot be pur |. sued far enough either for their req interest or for any practical industria advantage.
 Prepare for Later Life. My contention is that school train !! ing should be made in a way whicl h ortn nj