What the Schools Teach and Might Teach

by John Franklin Bobbitt

MANUAL TRAINING AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS

In the grammar grades manual and household training receives an average proportion of the time. In the grades before the seventh, the subject receives considerably less than the usual amount of time.

TABLE 11.—TIME GIVEN TO MANUAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
1 | 32 | 42 | 4.3 | 4.8
2 | 32 | 47 | 3.5 | 5.1
3 | 32 | 40 | 3.5 | 4.5
4 | 32 | 45 | 3.5 | 4.6
5 | 38 | 50 | 4.3 | 5.2
6 | 38 | 57 | 4.3 | 5.8
7 | 63 | 72 | 7.1 | 7.1
8 | 63 | 74 | 7.1 | 7.4
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————
Total | 330 | 427 | 4.8 | 5.6
———+—————-+—————-+—————-+——————

It is easy to see the social and educational justification of courses in sewing, cooking, household sanitation, household decoration, etc., for the girls. They assist in the training for complicated vocational activities performed in some degree at least by most women. Where women are so situated that they do not actually perform them, they need, for properly supervising others and for making intelligible and appreciative use of the labors of others, a considerable understanding of these various matters.

Where this work for girls is at its best in Cleveland, it appears to be of a superior character. Those who are in charge of the best are in a position to advise as to further extensions and developments. It is not difficult to discern certain of these. It would appear, for example, that sewing should find some place at least in the work of seventh and eighth grades. The girl who does not go on to high school is greatly in need of more advanced training in sewing than can be given in the sixth grade. Each building having a household arts room should possess a sewing machine or two, at the very least. The academic high schools are now planning to offer courses in domestic science. As in the technical high schools, all of this work should involve as large a degree of normal responsibility as possible.

We omit discussion here of the specialized vocational training of women, since this is handled in other reports of the Survey.

When we turn to the manual training of the boys, we are confronted with problems of much greater difficulty. Women's household occupations, so far as retained in the home, are unspecialized. Each well-trained household worker does or supervises much the same range of things as every other. To give the entire range of household occupations to all girls is a simple and logical arrangement.

But man's labor is greatly specialized throughout. There is no large remnant of unspecialized labor common to all, as in the case of women. To all girls we give simply this unspecialized remnant, since it is large and important. But in the case of men the unspecialized field has disappeared. There is nothing of labor to give to boys except that which has become specialized.

A fundamental problem arises. Shall we give boys access to a variety of specialized occupations so that they may become acquainted, through responsible performance, with the wide and diversified field of man's labor? Or shall we give them some less specialized sample out of that diversified field so that they may obtain, through contact and experience, some knowledge of the things that make up the world of productive labor?

Cleveland's reply, to judge from actual practices, is that a single sample will be sufficient for all except those who attend technical and special schools. The city has therefore chosen joinery and cabinet-making as this sample. In the fifth and sixth grades work begins in simple knife-work for an hour a week under the direction of women teachers. In the seventh and eighth grades it becomes benchwork for an hour and a half per week, and is taught by a special manual training teacher, always a man. In the academic high schools the courses in joinery and cabinet-making bring the pupils to greater proficiency, but do not greatly extend the course in width.

Much of this work is of a rather formal character, apparently looking toward that manual discipline formerly called "training of eye and hand," instead of consciously answering to the demands of social purposes. The regular teachers look upon the fifth and sixth grade sloyd[*sic] which they teach with no great enthusiasm. Seventh and eighth grade teachers do not greatly value the work.

The household arts courses for the girls have social purposes in view. As a result they are kept vitalized, and are growing increasingly vital in the work of the city. Is it not possible also to vitalize the manual training of the boys—unspecialized pre-vocational training, we ought to call it—by giving it social purpose?

The principal of one of the academic high schools emphasized in conversation the value of manual training for vocational guidance—a social purpose. It permitted boys, he said, to try themselves out and to find their vocational tastes and aptitudes. The purpose is undoubtedly a valid one. The limitation of the method is that joinery and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for metal work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.

If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And, moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work out in the world as possible. In keeping work normal, the main thing is that the pupils bear actual responsibility for the doing of actual work. This is rather difficult to arrange; but it is necessary before the activities can be lifted above the level of the usual manual training shop. The earliest stages of the training will naturally be upon what is little more than a play level. It is well for schools to give free rein to the constructive instinct and to provide the fullest and widest possible opportunities for its exercise. But if boys are to try out their aptitudes for work and their ability to bear responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.

There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial problems. Just as we use industrial history and industrial geography as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of man's work, so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in their details, with the nature of work, and with the nature of responsibility. On the play level, therefore, constructive activities should be richly diversified. This diversity of opportunity should continue to the work level. One cannot really know the nature of work or of work responsibility except as it is learned through experience. Let the manual training adopt the social purpose here mentioned, provide the opportunities, means, and processes that it demands, and the work will be wondrously vitalized.

It is well to mention that the program suggested is a complicated one on the side of its theory and a difficult one on the side of its practice. In the planning it is well to look to the whole program. In the work itself it is well to remember that one step at a time, and that secure, is a good way to avoid stumbling.

Printing and gardening are two things that might well be added to the manual training program. Both are already in the schools in some degree. They might well be considered as desirable portions of the manual training of all. They lend themselves rather easily to responsible performance on the work level. There are innumerable things that a school can print for use in its work. In so doing, pupils can be given something other than play. Also in the home gardening, supervised for educational purposes, it is possible to introduce normal work-motives. By the time the city has developed these two things it will have at the same time developed the insight necessary for attacking more difficult problems.