Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1917-09-23
America Feels Lack Of Vocational Education in Crisis
  Training, Says Specialist

Not long ago, James Parton Haney,
 one of the best known educators in the
 East, made tho following statement: I"We are endeavoring to make our courses efficient in thu sense that the time of the pupil shall not be wasted; that he shall be taught the mastery of himself as well as of his material;
 that he shall not be taught some
 thing merely because it has tradition
 behind it, but he shall be given an education thoroughly practical and ad justed to the needs of modern. bus
 mess life and technical proficiency" Everywhere we find this striving for greater industrial productive eff ficiency inaugurated. Productive ef- ficiency has become the slogan of mod e1n organization.
 It is true, the United States is great industrial nation, one of the
 great industrial nations of the world, but it's position is largely based on it's wonderful natural resources, rather than on it's organized energy. The in-. evitabld result is that the markets of the world except with her raw prod ucts. The situation is one of pro- found economic importance and con- cerns every manufacturer and every laboring man in the United States. How can tho schools help in this campaign for better industrial train ing, is one of the leading questions of today. The solution is not so diff ficult as it might seem at first; it is
 comparatively simple, although it takes time and patience. The main thing is to train the workers towards their jobs and not away from them. Academic school work has to be com plemented by practical industrial
 work.
 The spirit of social welfare must
 rermeate the whole school system. As tho welfare of the state-of all
 considerations the most important
 does not depend on the welfare of the
 few, but on the welfare of the mass
 es, the nation must fit it's youth into
 the complicated social and economic
 machinery of his age, it must prepare
 each child for self support, and thus
 make every school a place for life
 preparation. If we inspect the statis-
 tlcal reports of our educational de-
 partment in Washington, we will find
 that scarcely 10fs of the high school pupils attend any college, that means
 that about 90% of our children get all
 the education in the common pub
 lie schools.
 At the beginning of our school sys-,
 tenn the curriculum of studies laid down at that time suited the conditions of the past, but by not keeping pace
 with expanding activities of life, by clinging too long to fixed standards, our educational progress was greatly
 retarded. and our schools failed most
 strikingly in that particular phase, that they neglected the education of the masses for the benefit of the few entering the higher professions.
 Being no longer satisfied with half trained doctors, lawyers, ministers and other professional men, we have erected colleges and universities and higher technical schools for profess sicnal careers. On the other hand our large industries, our manifold manufactorics throughout the land have to be content with untaught men, because the schools do not give the children entering industrial pursuits | directly from school the appropriate | training.
 The waste of vitality, of misdirect- ed energy, and of lives, through lack | of dlrectness into the right work is deplorable. We must not only conserve our forests, our minerals and oils, we ! must learn first of all to conserve our human resources, the lives of our youth by transforming unskilled minds and hands into skilled ones, by not forcing the children into so-called jobs.
 When Judge Lindsay of Denver was judge of the Denver juvenile court he was asked by school teacher: Judge, why don't you send this boy to the reform school so he can learn a trader"
 "Why don't you school people make such provision that a boy can get an industrial education without going to a reform school?" the judge replied. This man struck the nail on the head The school teacher had evident " no sense whatever of the obligation that rests upon every community to provide practical and industrial train ing to those of it's children who need it. ''N -0~
 As most of the boys and girls do I not go to college, but enter directly :. 2 productive occupation, it is without question that the future of industrial education lies in the hands of the public schools. It is unfortunate nat good many people still cling Q the lcea: "The less usable the study ne moro honorable it is!" But this