The Washington herald., 1914-07-02
The Mortality Of the Public Schools.
BY WILLIAM WRIT Mills.

Mayor Mitchell has written into his public school
policy two phrases that will go far toward carrying
through his plans for the greater usefulness of the
system that now costs New York City $4oooo,ooo
annually.
"The mortality of the public school system of this
city" is phrase that sticks and rankesthat will help
to compel cure. The mayor shows that while $1,000
pupils enter the schools in year only 5000 graduate
from the elementary system; 1900 of these qualify
but only 5000 actually enter high school, and only
1000 reach graduation.
Where do they go?" he asks
Most of them go to work, equipped only % begin
at the bottom of the ladder and to stay on the lower
rungs Many of them drop out of school to help
meet the necessities of their families, most % them
because the school system, if pursued to the end
leads nowhere except into the rapks of the great army
of boys and girls who are fitted for nothing better
than cerkships of sort or another. 1t is army
so oversuppled with applicants that enlistment is
difficult, returns small, and promotions slow
Moreover, the only work for which the average
high school graduate fitted is equally open to the
pupil who has completed the elementary course, and
by dropping studies for work at fifteen the lad girl
gets four-year start on classmates who go through
to graduation.
Instead of perfunctory routine of studies equip
ping youth to occupy the throne at the door Of
Office and take in the cards of visitors there is
earnest and rising demand for school system, 1ex-
ible and practical, that will be the mayor phrases
it, "a door of opportunity"
Instead of chute delivering boys and girls the
lower level of unpreparedness leaving them there to
struggle for living in an overcrowded sphere the
school system should be series of steps, broad and
solid leading up up to higher opportunities to wider
fields and secure livelihood than be had
without these years of preparation.
Commencement would become indeed door of
opportunity when the courses provided in the public
schools qualified the graduates to do some definite
work that the world wants done
This is the object of introducing the workshop and
the laboratory into the public school system of pro-
yiding vocational technical and continuation training
1t is proposed to fit the boy and the girl into
the industrial and commercial life of this great work
shop that call New York and TO play part in that
life instead OF sitting by the door unqualified
in.
1t is this, the mayor points out. that is needed
well that cultural training that may ornament its
possessor, but that does open the door of prac
tical opportunity.
America presents the anomaly OF an industrial ma
ton in which the children of wellpad artisans are
underpaid clerks Where fathers are skilled in the
useful arts, unskilled knowing not how to
use their hands in the productive trades.
Formerly fathers taught their sons their own
trades; they them the public schools
and the years that might bring manual skill are spent
cultural studies that do not command mans
wage in the practical world that lies the other side
OF high school.
This condemns American boys to tarry the low
wage plane OF the unSkilled while the migrant lads
who learned productive trades from their artisan
fathers in the Older countries come here by the ship
load and get the places in the industries for which our
American lads are untitled
1t is economic question affecting the country
at large. and the city of New York in particular as
well social question affecting the status in the
community Of the American boys and girls who
committed to the unpreparing system OF the public
schools
New York City has been cropping of the dark
of static school system that purely pedagogic
seeking to construct system that is practical-one
in which the furnishing OF the mind will go along with
the training of the fingers
The school system is not door OF opportunity
when it graduates only office boys. clerks and day
laborers 1t will fulfill its budget only when it dis
covers the bent OF each individual pupil and fits him
or her to compete with the world in that line OF effort
or production.
Education in mass has made America dependent
upon Europe for skilled workers Education of the
individual pupil, OF his fingers well as his head,
will give the American boy the advantage to which he
is entitled and will furnish America with the work
men it needs