Norwich bulletin., 1914-03-24

Conditions of special importance to the industrial and educational interests of Norwich are disclosed by a report of the division of education of the Rus sell Sage foundation which was made public Monday. During the past year the foundation has been conducting a CO., operative investigation with some TS cities with the object of securing a more adequate fact-baSis for dealing With the problesm of industrial educa- ton in American munici palit1eS. Many significant disclosures are brought to light. One is that in most American cities a majority of the school children have not made sufficient progress in their ordinary school work by the time they complete the compulsory attend ance period to enable them to take up trade or vocational courses advantage ously. Another condition found to be almost universal is that our cities are l largely made up of people who move 1 so frequently from one locality to an other as to render vocational education ! for the local industries exceedingly difficult and sometimes of doubtful 1 value
 1 The report covers information con l corning the fathers of school children 1 in the different cities studied. It was 1 found that only one-half of these men
 are engaged in industries of the build
 
 ] of them are engaged in the professions | than there are in uns1illed labor. The manual laborers make up less than l tWo-thirds of all the workers. while l the mental workers are more than one ! third. Foreign born fathers are rela- l lively more numerous among the 1 manual workers and Americans among l tha mental workers, but the diSprop DOT ! tion is not very great. 4 large prOpor- 1 ton of the workers are engaged in a IS.T1o olO<.t~ of hz l cupation employing the greatest num- | Der of people is retail trade, and in l this group more than one-half of all l the workers are proprietors,
 School Efficiency.
 1 When a boy is 13 years old he has ! reached the limit of the compulsory l attendance period, and in order to com l pare the success of the different city l school systems in carrying children 1 forward through the grades before the 1 law permits them to leave and go to 1 work, the Sage report shows the pro- l portion of the 13 year old boys in each city who are in or above the seventh 1 grade In this comparison Brockton, | Mass, stands a tthe head of the list i with TT per cent. of the 13 year old i boys in or above the seventh grade, | while Portsmouth, Va, is at the other ! end of the list with only 12 per cent. |, of the boys in or above the seventh | grade Among the 78 cities studied | Norwich is ranked in the 22d place ] with 50 per cent. of the 13 year old | boys in or above the seventh grade
 BirthpIaces of the Boys and Their Fathers.
 | The study shows that in the 78 cities
 only one father in six Is now loving in | the city of his birth and among the i boys only a few more than one half are now living where they were born. From the viewpoint of industrial edu- | cation these facts are significant. If 1 present conditions maintain in the fu- | ture, the great majority of adults are
 not going to work in the same com
 mupity in which they received their l schooling The proportion of fathers
 now living in cities where they were born varies from less than one per 1 cent. to more than 51 per cent. The | proportion of boys still living in the
 city of their birth varies from 21 per cent. to 78 per cent Among the IS cities studied Norwich ranks in the | 59th place with respect to the pro- portion of fathers born in the city and | in the 30th place with respect to the proportion of boys.
 Industries of Fathers.
 The report classifies the occupations
 of the fathers under five headings and 1 gives the per cent. engaged in each