Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial and trade schools will continue. Of course they are now largely attended by comparatively young students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment will diminish, as there is an unusual demand for boys in every branch of industry and commerce. It will be increasingly difficult to hold such boys in school in the face of financial returns rather extraordinary when one considers their youth.

In the interests of conservation of youth and the training of a suitable supply of skilled workers for the future, there should be no diminution of effort to develop and extend day-school work, even though the young people thus trained will be too young to contribute definitely to the present emergency, unless, of course, it should last more than a year or two. Nevertheless, the enrollments are likely to be less. A partial compensation for this situation is that groups of more mature workers coming from the industry itself on a part-time basis can be accommodated for special instruction, or groups of young men who are now elevator boys, messenger boys, clerks in stores, office boys, can be induced, perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and through short, intensive courses be put into the way of earning, in some factory making war supplies, a sum equal to from two to three times what they are now earning. No attempt should be made to hold such youths in the school beyond the period necessary to give them immediate and intensive training.

After the war it will be an open question whether intensive courses should not be more generally adopted in our day industrial schools.

Obviously the largest immediate service that can be rendered by industrial and trade schools will be through the readjustment and extension of evening and other off-time courses. As usual, the especially important function will be the training of men already in the trades for more skilled tasks or for directive work. Ways must be found for extending the evening-school facilities. One way is to operate the evening courses throughout the entire year. Most of our industrial schools operate only from October to April, but in this time of pressure they should be open continuously. The other way would be to carry on trade extension work not only in the evening but also early in the morning or late in the afternoon. These are technically known as off-time courses and came into existence originally in some cities which made provision for training workers from plants operating night shifts.

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there is no sound reason for ever completely closing a day industrial school. It might run during the summer as well as the winter; in the late afternoon and early morning as well as in the evening. In the middle of June, 1917, President Wilson addressed a letter to Secretary Redfield making the suggestion that the vocational-training schools of the country should be open during the summer, when it would be possible to train a large number of young men under military age, either to fill the places in our industries left by men who enlist or are withdrawn for military service, or to carry on special occupations called for by the war, such as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this connection, where the President speaks of "inspectors of material," it may be said that one of the prominent industrial-education experts of the East has been asked to train a group of men selected for special government inspection work. These men will then be responsible for organizing a force of assistant inspectors in the plant to which they are assigned, and of supervising the work of the assistant inspector under their personal direction.

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two units: one dealing with the business and accounting side of inspection and the other with the technical instruction which is given through participation in the actual work of inspection at the arsenal, observation of the manufacturing processes, and direct group instruction.

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires from four or five days to a week for its completion. The second unit is given at the Rock Island arsenal and covers eleven days as a minimum. Only the most experienced men, however, complete it in this length of time. The men enter the school at irregular intervals in groups of four or five at a time. The number in training at any one time varies from thirty-five to fifty.

The men are moved from department to department on a fixed schedule. When a man completes his training he is assigned to a plant in accordance with his qualifications as indicated by his previous experience and his record at the school. Further plans for training the inspector after he has been assigned to the field have been proposed but have not yet been put into effect. Many of the candidates for this training are instructors in vocational training.[3]

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers was never so great as at present, and the opportunity for schools to train them will never be greater than at present. The schools may well organize intensive short courses in practical training, as well as other courses designed to advance qualified workers to positions of directive work in the factories.

While the part-time plan offers excellent opportunities for advancing selected workers in order that they may acquire certain technical knowledge, it is doubtful whether much of this work during this emergency period can be done in the public or private industrial and trade schools. We all know that certain industrial concerns have established part-time schools in their plants. These classes in the works are especially adapted, in the present emergency, for training selected workers to become specialists and foremen. If the school is near the plant, so that industrial workers can attend for part-time day instruction for a period of six or eight hours a week without loss of time or without interfering with production, it may be possible to develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, generally speaking, it would be better for the instructors in these schools to go directly to the plants themselves and give this part-time instruction there. In another chapter mention will be made of a feasible part-time system and the necessity for some such system, but it refers only to boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen years old who belong primarily in school and not primarily at work. It is assumed that the group of which we have been thinking is the older group of workmen who wish to become foremen.

War needs open new fields for schools. After the war, stereotyped courses in trade schools and technical institutes will have lost their hold. Dunwoody Institute (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is one of the few schools having a training course for bakers.