It is inevitable that many of our school subjects will change their emphasis after the war. To some teachers the awakening will be cruel, to others a blessing in the form of new opportunity.
CHAPTER III
THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS
For ten years a group of men in America have been trying to convince Congress that we should set up a national program of secondary vocational education. As a precedent we have had a system of agricultural and mechanic-arts education of collegiate grade in existence for the last fifty years. But we have had in the past no system of national aid for promoting and maintaining a type of vocational education in agriculture, mechanic arts, and home-making, which would reach a much larger clientele than could possibly be touched through any land-grant college system. It has been an up-hill fight to get Congress to see the importance of providing vocational education for industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced providing for national aid. These bills defined vocational education as including all types of industrial, commercial, agricultural, and home-making schools, between the upper grammar grades and the college, whose controlling purpose is to fit for specific profitable employments and which receive pupils 14 years of age and over.
President Wilson in his second inaugural message called the country's attention definitely to the fact that a vocational-education bill was before Congress and that it ought to receive favorable consideration, not only on the grounds of educational advantages contained in the bill, but also on the grounds that it fitted in with a national economic and industrial policy.
Perhaps the measure would have met the fate of its predecessors if war had not been declared. Friends of the measure feared lest discussion incident to national preparedness should overshadow the vocational-education bill, but fortunately Congress saw that vocational education and national preparedness were linked together, and the bill passed almost unanimously.
The full significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill, as it will always be known by those who worked for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the surface it merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education and provides that federal grants shall be made for the purpose of coöperating with the states in the promotion of industrial, agricultural, and home-making teaching. But if we scratch the surface we shall see that the federal money is not paid to local communities except after their work has been approved by a state board of control on the basis of this federal act, and the principles and policies which were adopted after conference between the Federal Board and the state boards of control. It furthermore limits federal aid to definite vocational training and eliminates all aid to any dilettante or superficial types of practical-arts education which do not meet the idea of preparing young persons over 14 years of age for useful and profitable employment in agriculture, in the trades, in industries, or in home economics. It has been stated in preceding chapters, and will be emphasized more than once in succeeding chapters, that the schools which are able to serve most effectively in time of war are the schools which are serving or may serve in times of peace. It has been and will again be shown that school methods usable in meeting a war emergency are the methods not only usable but desirable under normal conditions.
There is absolutely nothing in the following discussion of the field for war service for industrial and trade-school education which does not have its direct application in promoting and administering a national system of vocational education. Definite suggestions are given for organizing day-industrial, trade, part-time and continuation schools, evening vocational schools, trade classes, and off-time courses; for transferring the teaching equipment into the factory; for transferring the technical-supervision equipment of the factory to the school; and for making commercial products. It will be seen that the service of our industrial and trade schools differs from the service of the industrial and household-arts courses in the regular schools. A comparison of what is suggested for war service with what is required by the terms of the federal grant shows that the two are in accord. For example, the latter requires that all-day industrial schools must have at least half the time given over to the actual practice of a vocation on a useful or productive basis; that agricultural schools shall arrange for directed or supervised practice in agriculture either on a farm provided by the school or on other farms for at least six months a year; that part-time schools or classes must be established if the state and the community expect to receive the full benefits of the federal grant for the salaries of teachers of the trade, home-economics, and industrial subjects; and finally, that evening classes for industrial workers are provided in which the instruction is required to be supplemental to the daily employment. However, for the duration of the war, at least, the last requirement needs modification.
War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Congress to pass the Smith-Hughes Bill. War service of our vocational schools will undoubtedly influence the vocational-education movement along right lines more than anything else which could possibly have happened.
Industrial and trade schools stand ready to make their contribution for war service. Some rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent telegrams to Washington, offering their equipment to the government. Others said that they would make ammunition. Still others announced that they would wait for the government to tell them what to do. In the early stages evidently most of them forgot that their chief, if not only, business must be, as it has been, that of training recruits for industry or giving trade extension work to those already in a chosen vocation.