Traditional Neglect of Industrial Education on the Part of the Public
The reasonableness of the demand that the schools prepare boys and girls for their work in the world raises at once the question: Why have the schools ever neglected this need? The answer to this question is supplied in part by the remoter history of schools which was touched on in an earlier chapter and in the early paragraphs of this chapter. European and American schools first dealt with professional and theological problems and have accordingly always had a strong leaning toward the literary subjects.
The early history of the American educational system throws light on this particular matter in a way which will help the reader to understand the present situation with regard to industrial education and traditional education.
At the same time that the New England colonies were passing laws establishing schools where children were to learn to read the Bible, they provided in such laws as the following for training in industrial lines. The Connecticut law of 1650 provides that “all parents and masters do breed and bring up their children and apprentices in some honest lawful labor, or employment, either in husbandry or some other trade profitable for themselves and the commonwealth, if they will not nor cannot train them up in learning, to fit them for higher employments, and if any of the selectmen, after admonition by them given to such masters of families, shall find them still negligent of their duty, ... the said selectmen, with the help of two magistrates, shall take such children or apprentices from them, and place them with some masters for years, boys until they come to be twenty-one, and girls to eighteen years of age complete.”
The conception of responsibility which lies back of this law is wholly different from that expressed in the legislation providing for reading-schools. A public officer was put in charge of reading. He was stimulated to carry on his work by the rewards which he received in the way of compensation for his services. The control of industrial education by the public was very slight. We can imagine some selectman whose attention was by chance drawn to a neglected child, debating with himself the wisdom of setting in motion the magistrates and his fellow selectmen in enforcing this somewhat vague law. The fact is that the law was not enforced. It became a dead letter, and public attention to vocational education has no history in this country until recent years, when the pressure of industrial competition has forced its recognition.
In the early days of the nation’s life the absence of any definite plan for public vocational education of young people was not a serious matter. Industrial life was relatively simple, and the family lived close to its sources of supplies. The family was able to take care of the children’s preparation for industrial life without aid or interference from the state. But social and industrial conditions have changed. With the development of factories, of elaborate systems of transportation, and of urban life it is no longer possible for the family to train the children, and the demand begins to be urgently felt that some agency give adequate preparation for the practical later life of the children, and that more especially where families are not well-to-do.
For a long period after this demand was felt the school went on with its specialized task, and the public was complacent to see the school neglect vocational training. The specialized task of the school, as thought of in those days, was to teach reading and the other subjects which naturally attached themselves to the literary tendencies that grew up in a reading-school. Private institutions, such as business colleges, sprang up as agencies for satisfying the demand for special vocational training. These were tuition schools and secured their students in many cases by criticizing the public school as incompetent and wasteful. In some cases employers, realizing the necessity of training their workers, made it a part of their industrial organization to teach certain branches of the trades. In other cases, a boy going into an occupation which had no regular training-school, either in a private institution or in the industrial plant, got his training as best he could by accepting a low wage and blundering along until he learned his trade. Even to-day the private training of young people for industry is conducted on a scale that shows how new is the idea that the public school is responsible in any degree for such training.