The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1920-01-02
NEW SYSTEM OF
EDUCATION NEEDED
Gamma Tribune)

offensive IN support Of our pubic
s. hool system?
We often hear the assertion made
b. educators and friends of education
tiat college-trained men earn more
money that uneducated men of their
age. Because this ought TO be true
men assume that it is true; but is it
true?
| am a contractor in the building
trade, and I know something of the
wages paid in the building trades. For
example, in this section bricklayers
get from 81 to S1.25 per hour for an
eight or nine-hour day; carpenters
get 70 to so cents per hour for a nine
hour day; the pay of painters is from
Is to So cents per hour, and plaster
e~s get about as much or more pay
than any of the other vocations. Now,
the building trades are by no means
as highly paid as some of the other
callings. Some of the more highly
skilled of the steel workers are draw
ing a wage which would make a build
ing trades craftsman's salary look
like poor school teachers pay check
by comparison.
Now, how about your "white collar
man." Do you know that there are
plenty of freight engineers drawing
more pay than the division superin-
tendent they are working under? |
wonder how many college presidents
and professors in Florida are drawing
as much pay as a first-class carpenter
or a second-rate bricklayer. You would
have to look long to find bank cash
Ter who earns as much money in a
year as a plumber, and bookkeepers
would be glad to exchange pay en-
velopes with the hod-carrier if they
did not have to change clothes and
jobs as well.
Has education failed that these
things are so? tell you. nay! The
fault is not in education but in the
kind of education. We have been
teaching our sons and daughters that
the so-called "higher professions"
such as law. medicine, ministry, teach
ing, civil engineering, etc, had more
honor connected with them than man.
ual labor. Perhaps we have not gone
not as far as the "Old South aristo-
crat" Lowell tells about in one of his
"Biglow Papers," who was Gas proud
as the Grand Turk; she never had a
relative that ever did lick of work.;
but somehow we have rather despised
honest toll as beneath the dignity of
a gentleman. AS a result we have
been educating our children away
from the carpenter bench, the farm,
the brick pile and the cabinet shop,
and there is a dearth of skilled hand
craftsmen and surplus of would-be
lawyers and commercial school grad
yates.
During the war, as some of my
friends know. I worked on some of
the big government jobs and l found
out that, after getting below the
superintendent, the highest paid men
in the offices drew far less money
than the most humble and illiterate
carpenter, and the carpenters pay en-
valope looked puny beside that of the
plumber. The assistant civil engineer
Oh one job was a graduate of Geor-
2ia "Tech" and man Of some fifteen
Years field experience under a big
contracting company of national re-
nown; yet he drew $50 less per month
than a field foreman of the carpenters
on the same job did. and only about
half as much as jouneyman plumb
err on the same job. Still civil en-
cheering is one of the best paid of
the "white collar jobs"
Now. what are we going to do
about it? The memorable law of sup
My and demand governs this. We are
short, woefully short. Of skilled work
ers in the trades, while we have a ire
n,endous surplus of business college"
Graduates. Contractors have to put
I'D with makeshifts because they can
not get skilled workmen for love nor
money.
There was time in the days of our
dads when a supply Of dependable
mechanics was kept up by the appren-
t:ceship system. Somehow that good,
old, though sometimes tyrannical sys-
tenn has fallen into what the late
Grover Cleveland called "innocuous
deseutude." We are too busy to stop
to teach apprentices, or our boys are
too impatient to go through the term
Of apprenticeship and. the classes of
1917, 1918 and 1919 are half-baked
lot of fellows who waste more ma
terial in the run of day than their
wages come to. We haven't time, as
I said. to teach them even if they
were willing to learn, which they sell
dom are; competition is too strong;
what is the use for a contractor to
take up his valuable time in teaching
an apprentice who is not bound and
who his competitor may get away
from him tomorrow?
The burden is up to the school. Our
educational system is a tradition
handed down from our grandfathers.
Our high school and college curricu-
Itlms are the survival Of period when
education was not for the masses but
for the well-to-do class exclusively;
when every gentlenaan's son was edu-
Gated to be gentleman" The edu-