THE WINTER’S FIGHT OVER VOCATIONAL TRAINING
The past winter has been perhaps the stormiest season which the incipient movement for vocational education has had to weather in this country. Before state legislatures and national Congress the battle has been fought. In Washington, D. C. the Page and Lever bills granting federal aid to industrial education in the states inflicted mutual slaughter on each other and died in conference. In Illinois a fight has waged over two measures, one providing for the “dual” system of administration and the other for the “unit,” and the probability is that neither will pass at this session.
But in spite of these casualties the war has not been without its fruits. Indiana enacted practically without opposition what is perhaps the most comprehensive statute on this subject yet passed. The Indiana Commission on Industrial and Agricultural Education, appointed in 1911, published during the closing days of 1912 a vigorous report on the whole subject of vocational training for youth. The reasons why boys and girls need such training were put by the commission as follows:
“The larger part of the boys and girls leave school before the completion of the elementary course, unprepared in anything which will aid them in their immediate problem of earning a living with their hands. From statistics available in other states it is safe to estimate that there are fully 25,000 boys and girls in this state between fourteen and sixteen who have not secured adequate preparation for life work in the schools and who are now working in “dead end” or “blind alley” jobs, or in other words, jobs which hold no promise of future competence or advancement. The investigations in Massachusetts and New York city show that not more than one out of five of the pupils leaving school at fourteen do so because it is necessary to help make a living. The conditions are doubtless even better in Indiana. The remainder, four out of five, leave school for a variety of reasons, chief among which is the feeling among pupils and parents that the schools do not offer the kind of instruction which they need for the work they expect to do and which would justify them in foregoing wage earning for a time in order to get it.”
The commission found no organized effort in Indiana to put pupils in touch with the opportunities for life work. The pupils are in the main, it declares, left to their own resources in choosing a vocation except where enterprising teachers have been able to give personal advice. It believes that every city and town should survey the vocational opportunities within its borders and place the information, together with all information available on vocational work, within reach of the pupil at the proper age.
Contrary to the claims of some of those who are administering industrial education in other states the commission found that the largest problem in carrying out such training is the lack of teachers competent to do the work. “If the vocational subjects are to find and hold the place that is due them in the common schools of the state,” says the commission, “the teachers must be educated to handle them more effectively than they have been able to handle such subjects in the past.”
The Indiana statute, which was signed by the governor in March, established a state system of vocational education and gave state aid for training in industries, agriculture and domestic science, through all-day, part-time, continuation and evening schools. This work is to be carried on either in separate schools or in special departments of regular high schools. In every case, the local control is vested in the regular board of education for the community and the laws are to be administered as a whole by the State Board of Education. The state board has been reorganized so that seven of its members must be professional educators. The remaining five may be laymen. Two of the laymen must be citizens of prominence and three of them shall be actively interested in vocational education. One of these last three shall be a representative of employes and one of employers. Attendance upon day or part-time classes is restricted to persons over fourteen and under twenty-five years of age; and upon evening classes to persons over seventeen years of age. The state superintendent of public instruction is made the executive officer and a deputy superintendent is to be placed under him in charge of industrial and domestic science education. The agricultural work is carried on by another deputy.
Local communities are required to supply the plant and equipment for carrying on the work. When this has been approved by the State Board of Education, the community is to be reimbursed out of the state treasury to the amount of two-thirds the salary of each teacher giving instruction either in vocational or technical subjects.
In order to secure the benefit of the knowledge and co-operation of the layman, local school authorities are required to appoint, subject to the approval of the State Board of Education, advisory committees composed of members representing local trades and industries, whose duty it shall be to counsel with the board and other officials in the conduct of the affairs of the school.
In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey bills creating state systems of vocational education are likely to pass soon. The Pennsylvania measure has already gone through the House by a vote of 182 to 2. This latter bill is very similar to the Indiana act. The State Board of Education administers the act, with the state superintendent of public instruction as the executive officer.
The regular board of education is in charge of the local schools. They are required to appoint advisory committees composed of members representing local trades, industries and occupations, to aid them in making the work practical and effective.
In general the New Jersey measure is similar to those of Indiana and Pennsylvania. There also the work is to be administered by the State Board of Education and local boards of education, and may be carried on either in approved schools or departments; these departments must consist of separate courses, pupils and teachers. Advisory committees are not provided for in the act, but it is expected that these will be required by the board of education under authority conferred by previous legislation.
In Connecticut and New York, which have already made some provision for vocational education, laws are pending which considerably extend the scope of the systems. In Washington a measure establishing a “dual” system of vocational schools is regarded as unlikely of passage. In Massachusetts a pending amendment to a former act authorizes school committees, with the approval of the State Board of Education, to require every child between fourteen and sixteen years of age who is regularly employed not less than six hours a day, to attend school at the rate of not less than four hours per week, during the school year. Another measure which will probably become a law raises the compulsory school age from fourteen to fifteen, for all children, and for illiterates from sixteen to seventeen. Attendance on a vocational school of children fourteen years of age is accepted as school attendance.