The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-12-05
THE TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
lNFORMATTDN BUREAU
By FREDERIC J. HAsKIN, Director.
Washington, D. c.
LEARNING TO WORK.

trai d man for Wien the government
has a most pressing need right now
is tho experienced driver of auto
trucks. The truck has displaced the
army rule wherever there are ROADS
and in many places where there are
not Food and ammunition go 1or-
ward on trucks from the base TO the
fighting line.
1t is not always the case that the
man who has spent a few months or
years driving = delivery truck over
asphalt streets. with a traffic cop 10
tell him what to do, is qualified Tor
this war work At the front the prob
lem is more apt to be that of directing
his machine across roadlesS piece OF
country, plowed up by shells, uttered
18th shattered equipment and shredss
of barbed wire ENHANCEMENT, unit
save by the occasional flash and glare
of bursting shrapnel. And If this war
driver fails to deliver his goods at the
proper time, it will be good deal
|: ore serious than the irritation OF
some customer, for the success of an
attack. the lives OF men, may depend
upon that delivery.
Truck Drivers Needed.
When the government need for the
kind of truck drivers who could be
depended upon to deliver the goods
under war conditions became appar-
ent, a certain educator in Minneapolis,
DR.. C. A. Prosser of the Dunwoody in
stitute, set about the task of produce
ing such drivers by schooling them in
their duties.
1t is probable that the average man,
soldier or citizen, would not consider
such an undertaking practicable. He
would say that the drivers would have
to learn their business for the most
part at least by the hard and eXpen-
sive process of trial and error in the
field. For We have all come to look
upon education as a sort of dispens-
able preliminary to the main business
of life. We know that the college
man comes away from his Alma
Mater with "a head full of theories"
which he has to forget before he can
become really useful while some
practical men even regard much edu-
cation as a handicap
Making Education Useful.
Doctor Prosser belongs to a new
class of educators, who do not believe
that education necessarily lacks this
applicability to the practical ends of
life, although admitting that it gen.
orally does. They have set themselves
to the task of making education use
full So Doctor Prosser went at the
truck driver problem in characters
tic fashion by creating a little mo
mans land" in a large field near his
school. He equipped it with artifi-
cial shell holes, with entanglements
and difficulties of all kinds, and he
set his nOvitiate truck drivers the
ly across it. He exposed them to
every condition which close study of
the war in Europe indicated they
would be apt to meet in France. And
he turned out military truck drivers
that could drive.
Doctor Prosser's field of activities
as a practical trainer of men has now
been enlarged to include substan-
TALLY the whole county; for he has
been made director of the Federal
Board for Vocational Education,
which is a new department of the
government created by a recent act
of congress for the purpose of using
federal funds and the federal admin
istrative machinery to help the states
install practical training courses in
the schools. In its application to
civilian life it is a revolutionary meas
ure, and means new opportunity for
the youth of America. That phase of
it will be treated in a separate article.
For the present the board is directing
its energies to work similar to that
which Doctor Prosserl undertook at
Dunwoody--the work of training men
to fill the industrial needs of the ma
ton at war.
This. of course, is not what the
board was created primarily to do, but
a clause in the law under which it
works gives it power to make investi-
cations and studies of methods of vo-
cational training. 1t regards the train
ing of men for war work as an excel
lent experimental investigation of
such methods.
Trained Radio Operators.
One of the first needs it set out to
fill was that for trained radio oper-
ators. The Signal corps needed Is. 900
of them, and they were nowhere to be
found. Accordingly it turned to the
board for advice. The board at once
got into communication with leading
schools IN the states which had
formed state boards to cooperate with
the federal board, and suggested that
these schools open evening classes at
which men subject to the draft might
learn the business of radio -teIegra phx,.
The response both from the schools
and from the men was prompt There
are already between fifty and one
hundred schools for radio-teIegrap hers
in operation, and about three thou
sand men are attending them. while
the organization of these evening
schools is proceeding at a rate which
has encouraged the board to make on
| timistic estimates, which cannot vet
/ be made public. as to the number of
radlo-teIegraphers it can supply to the
war department
| The success of this experiment has
lifted the board for vocational educa :
| ton into the position of a recognized
part of the government war ma
! chinery. Secretary of War Baker has
written letter to the heads of all
his department telling them that this
| board is the departing to which they
should refer their problems in the
matter of trained men. And almost
| every department has such problems.
! The quartermasters corps for ex-
ample, needs men trained in fifty diff
! ferent trades. OF course, men trained
in all of these trades are found among
the conscripts; but they are not found
| in the proportions needed. There are
too many clerks for example, and not
enough cooks Only by training men
can the needs of the quartermaster's
! corps be filled. Hence it is more than
probable that evening classes for
drafted men in a great many trades
will soon be held in all the principal
/ ri of No