An example of an effective adaptation to a national need. Dunwoody Institute meeting a shortage of army bakers.
Educational efficiency as measured by its response to a national need. Dunwoody Institute is one of the several institutes teaching radiography and power testing to navy men.
Sir Robert Blair, in his report already referred to, speaks of the manner in which technical and trade schools in and about London train semiskilled workers for munition work.
At first we gathered together all the metal-working apparatus of our elementary schools and placed it in two of our technical institutes. Shafting was put up, power was installed and the lathes started, and they have been running ever since July, 1915, for twelve hours a day in three periods of four hours each. At first the period of training was for one period a day for six days a week for six weeks, or a total of 144 hours, but later, to meet the demands, the manufacturers took upon themselves the training of more highly skilled turners, of machine erectors, of milling-machine hands, and so on. We began to train women for tracing in drawing offices and subsequently for mechanical drawing. We trained lead-burners for employment in factories making explosives. We trained gauge-makers for employment in tool rooms of our shell factories (many of these men have been drawn from the jewelry and silversmithing trades). The more skill we gave the training, the longer it took to train these people, and so the number produced weekly has diminished, but in two years we have trained, certified, and placed 6000 workers.
And again he speaks of other training apart from furnishing additional munition workers.
One institution has done a great deal of work in training in cold shoeing over 1000 men belonging to the Royal Field Artillery, Royal Engineers, and the Army Service Corps. The same institution has also been used for the reception, inspection, and dispatch of many of the horse-shoes required by the army. At another institution over 3500 students have been trained for Red Cross duties, and a great work has been done in recruiting men for the skilled sections of the Royal Flying Corps. Besides we have trained men for tinsmithing, copper work, and wireless telegraphy. A third institution took on the general direction of the preparation of synthetic drugs in the chemical departments of the technical institutes, and the medical organization of the army was largely indebted to these chemical departments for the production of the much-needed drugs.
Assuming that administrators of industrial education are interested in the welfare of factory workers,—something often apart from instilling technical skill and knowledge,—it will be necessary for them to provide courses for men and especially for women workers, giving instruction in the laws of health with which every employee in factory life should be familiar. In England the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers Committee have demonstrated conclusively the great necessity of this teaching of hygiene: that the causes of ill health of workers in munitions factories were not alone the result of fatigue from long hours, but quite as much the result of insufficient or ill-prepared food, inadequate sleep and ill-ventilated sleeping quarters, and failure to appreciate the consequences of disregarding safety devices.