PART II
REPRESENTATIVE PROBLEMS[B]
The organizing of a girls' trade school in any given locality necessitates the meeting of many problems of a serious nature. Some of these appear immediately and require consideration before a satisfactory curriculum can be developed, but most of them are hydra-headed, and one phase is no sooner settled than another arises. Attention must be given to them whenever they come if any progress is to be made in solving the question of the broadest and yet most practical education for the girl who must earn her living in trade. These problems are so connected with the keenest yet most obscure social and industrial questions of the day on one hand, and, on the other, with the future of the race, that they are often very puzzling. Some of them can never be entirely settled, though they can be temporarily adjusted to immediate needs. The following are selected as representative.
Direct Trade Training
Many schools of a domestic or technical nature have been opened in the United States, but the instruction in them is for the home or for educational purposes rather than for business. The trades, if they are represented at all in these schools, are general in character, covering often many branches of an industry in a short series of lessons, and not having the particular subdivisions and special equipment which are found at present in the regular market. Employers of labor have not been favorably impressed with the practical usefulness of the graduates in their workrooms. As the sole reason for the existence of the Manhattan Trade School is to meet this requirement of employers, and therefore to develop a better class of wage-earners directly adapted to trade needs, the instruction must be in accord with methods in the shops and factories of New York City. Such specific trade education for fourteen-year-old girls was new, and therefore the problem of organization had to be faced for the first time in America. Careful study of the workrooms and the industrial conditions of New York City was essential before the aims or the curriculum could be decided upon and the school could be opened for instruction. Furthermore, if the training is to be kept up to date this study of trade conditions must not cease, and readjustments of the curriculum must equal the changes taking place in the outside workrooms. Consequently these problems must be met repeatedly.
Need of Preliminary Training
On beginning the trade courses at the school a difficulty was discovered immediately which brought home the truth of the complaint made by trade that young workers are utterly incompetent. The students coming to the school were allowed by law to enter trade, as they had met all requirements for obtaining their working papers, but they were not found to have sufficient foundation to begin the first simple steps at the school without some preliminary training. The defects which were especially evident were: (1) lack of sufficient skill with the hand; (2) inability to utilize their public school academic work in practical trade problems; (3) dullness in taking orders and in thinking clearly of the needs which arise; (4) absence of ideals; and (5) need of knowledge of the laws of health and how to apply them. Preliminary, elementary instruction in all of these subjects had, therefore, to be organized and given to the entering students before they could begin upon their true trade work. Such instruction is and will continue to be necessary unless the public elementary school arranges to give, between the fifth and eighth grades, a more satisfactory preparation to those who must earn their living. The Manhattan Trade School has been obliged to give from two to eight months to elementary branches of instruction alone. The kind of work needed varies constantly with the condition of the students. Every one requires some of it, but many must take months of tutoring. Public instruction could readily give the practical academic work which the school has organized. Such instruction would not only directly help the pupils who must leave early to work, but would lay a good foundation for the vocational education which is being planned for the early years of the public secondary schools.