What the Schools Teach and Might Teach

by John Franklin Bobbitt

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?