The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1914-09-11
VOCATIONAL TRAINING A
NECESSARY PART OF SCHOOL SYSTEM
MODERN THOUGHT GIVES TO INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION ITS
RIGHTFUL PLACE IN SCHOOL LIFE-AN ARGUMENT FOR
INDUSTRIAL TRAINING OF OUR CHILDREN.
(By e. p. MARSH.)

MARSH)
one of the "plodders" of the profess
sion, or, worse still, after spending
years acquiring technical knowledge,
became disheartened at the fierceness
of the competitive struggle and joined
the ranks of the bread-winners who
have no ambition but to get along
somehow" l have met scores of uni
versity men at the prosaic occupations
Of mill hands, clerks, and the like
men who started out to be doctors and
lawyers and dentists, 1t must always
be borne in mind that our problems
are not with the boys and girls Of ex-
ceptional capacity or exceptional de-
termination but with the average boys
and girls.
And the boy who showed a mechani-
cal turn of mind-what became of
him? At the age of fourteen or there
about he quit school or was taken out
of school and apprenticed to some
trade. There was a period in the in
dustrial development of this country
when the boy apprenticed to a trade
graduated from his apprenticeship into
the ranks of the journeyman with
thorough knowledge of that trade.
The journeyman craftsman was more
than laborer, he was a creator with
the creators JOY in his handiwork.
The apprentice placed under him was
trial development with it's speeding
up process has changed that to a large
degree. In our great industries men
now work by the clock. A certain
piece of work must be turned out in a
specified time determined by the fast
est workmen as the standard of pro-
duction. If your journeyman does not
complete his job within specified
time there is a reckoning with the
foreman of the plant The conse-
quence is that the apprentice is left
largely to his own devices. If he is
extraordinarily bright or ambitious he
picks up his trade. The average ap-
prentice today does not master his
trade. He finds he must supplement
his shop work and you find in your
night schools, electricians eagerly TAX
ing a supplementary course to make
of themselves better workmen. A
days hard labor at the trade and then
several hours instruction in night
school. Result, bodily WEAKNESS and
brain fag. Several of the trade or
ganiZations have found it necessary to
establish trade schools to supplement
the knowledge gained during appren-
tice years. Notable among those Or
ganiZations is the Pressmen's Union,
which has expended $4,000 at their
national headquarters at Tennessee in
equipment and buildings for practical
teaching Of the pressmen's trade.
This supplementary teaching for
craftsmen, whether in trade schools
or in public schools is splendid thing
but why should the boy spend several
years of his life when he might be a
producing factor in society, at school?
Let me quote from VIM. c. Redfield,
when a member of congress, appear
ing before a congressional committee
having under consideration the subject
of industrial training:
''If I were the son of a mechanic
and wished to follow my fathers
trade, l should be obliged to pick up
from my father what l could for l
might be unable to find a place in any
one Of the mechanical institutes or in
one of the manual training schools.
If | were able to get in
might add little of theoretical train
ing to what my father could teach me
and then l would have to go into a
shop and take a subordinate job, prob
ably as helper way down the line at
stage just above the laborer, and
little by little l would have to learn
from the men above me and from what
the foreman had cnance TO teach me.
BY the time | had spent four or five
years, at a great loss to myself in
wage, at loss to my employer in re-
duced product and at a great loss for
the things I spoiled, the tools I hurt,
might, at the end of five or six
years, come out and call myself
lathe hand planer hand, or vice hand.
And then going from that shop into
another one I would speedily find
that I had to unlearn practically all
that | had learned, because their tools
were different their methods were
novel, and their ways were strange to
me, the superintendent would not like
the things I had learned and | would