The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-07-03
EDUCATION and THE SOCIAL PROBLEM

womanhood."
Even the most cursory investigation
reveals the fact that children leaving /
school to go to work at fourteen drift /
into blind alley jobs, positions which
have no future,-no opportunity for
development. Typical of these posi- |
tions are those of delivery boys and
messenger boys who have learned all
they need to know when they can find
their way around town. After that
their education proceeds chiefly in the
direction of dishonesty and vice. In
other words, by failing to provide in
dustrial training for the youth in our
cities we are manufacturing hoboes on
commercial scale.
We need not merely trade schools
and technical school but even more we
need continuation schools where boys
and girls who have secured positions
in the industrial world may come for
one or two hours day and receive an
education along the lines of their vo-
cation. Night schools will not supply
the need. The attempt to supplement-
the work of children in the shop with
evening school instruction is not suc-
cessful. For children between IA and
10 the strain is too great for them to
bear. 1t has been the Geman ex-
perience that the boy whose energies
have been exhausted by hard days
toll suffered in health from the added
strain imposed by the evening school
and accomplished little or nothing
there. Whatever advantage night
schools have for adults, they are not
desirable for children.
Who is not aware of the temptation
which surround the boy from IA to Is
years when the will and character
are only in process of development,
when the guidance and stimulation of
crime is full of examples of these
adolescents who gradually from lack
of moral support, good instruction
and inspiring work have lost all no.
ton of good and all taste for work
and finally enroll themselves in the
army of the precociously idle; always
on the watch for mischief and crime.
The continuation school provides a
means for continuing the moral and
4 religious training of the child as well
as his vocational and cultural educa-
ton. What pastor in large city will
say that boys leaving the parish school
at IA do not gradually slip away from
religious influence? No opportunity is
provided for meeting them; they are
never seen except at Mass on Sunday.
To return to the point from which
we departed. Industrial changes have
given rise to grave social problems
J which the educator must help to solve.
chief solutions of our most pressing
; industrial reimbursement. Heretofore
America has been huge StevedOre, a
mighty longshoreman, bearing down to
the ships of the sea, crude and semi
7 crude materials for the employment
of the capital, labor and intellect of
foreign nations. But the limit of ex-
} ploitation of our natural resources
has been reached and our unframed
workmen are marching unemployed
: and empty handed and sullen within
, the gates of every American city from
Seattle to Baltimore. The magnitude
and the character of the problem of
4 unemployment confronting us is cal
4 culated to make the eyes start from
} their very sockets. A partial remedy
r is to employ our own labor to fabri.
: cate our raw materials into finished
products.
: We must use every effort to send
f our products abroad ready for con
: sumption carrying the maximum and
:, not the minimum of American labor
:. and skill. We ship our cotton abroad
Y raw at ID cents per pound. We buy
Y some of it back in fine handkerchief
: from the thrifty Swiss at $40 pei
+ pound, all labor. The exports of Eng
g land, Germany and France are finished
e products, mostly labor; most of ours
e carry only enough labor to make them
) fit for ships cargo. If we are to solve
S the problem of unemployment and
q save this country from disaster we
J. must train a generation of skilled
n workmen by vocational education
S Nor can this be accomplished by any
e petty or parsimonious policy. 1t will
+; not be effected by erecting technical
d school here and an agricultural col
r lege there. 1t must be nationwide and
k thorough going. 1t must provide in
n dustrial, civic and moral training fol-
d the large percentage of our children
r who are now turned out of the ele
r mentary schools to battle against
y heavy odds. 1t must check at the
|. source that unfortunate stream of un
i skilled boys who enter into blind alley
jobs and who after years of occa
!. sional employment and enforced idle
:. ness graduate into the professional
!. hobo and the unemployable.
America is confronted with an un
4 precedented crisis and an unparalleled
i opportunity Vocational training fol
the multitude will spell the conserva
!, ton of the human resources of the
: nation. 1t Is measure second in
q Importance only to that of religion!
!. training and as practical program il
. largely insepafable from it.
e