The Technical Night Schools
Night classes are conducted in both of the technical high schools for two terms a year of 10 weeks each, the pupils attending four hours a week. A tuition fee of $5 a term is collected, of which $3.50 is refunded to those who maintain an average attendance of 75 per cent. No special provision is made for apprentices as distinct from journeymen, and the trade classes are attended by a considerable number of wage-earners employed in occupations unrelated to industrial work. The list of courses offered during the past year, with the number enrolled in each course at the beginning of the second term, is shown in Table 12.
A glance at the list of courses shows at once that while the vocational motive is given first importance, the schools also aim to provide instruction in cultural subjects which have only an indirect vocational application. Less than one-third of the students are pursuing courses which are directly related to their daily work. The remainder are enrolled in courses which have little or no connection with their daily occupations. In but four of the courses—machine shop, architectural drawing, printing, and sheet metal work—are more than half of the students employed in directly related occupations.
TABLE 12.—COURSES AND NUMBER ENROLLED IN THE TECHNICAL NIGHT SCHOOLS, JANUARY, 1915[TableList]
| Course | Number enrolled |
| Mechanical drawing | 328 |
| Machine shop | 222 |
| Electrical construction | 159 |
| Sewing | 103 |
| Mathematics | 89 |
| Architectural drawing | 83 |
| Pattern making | 73 |
| Woodworking | 67 |
| Chemistry | 59 |
| Sheet metal drawing | 52 |
| Cooking | 46 |
| Foundry work | 36 |
| Agriculture | 31 |
| Printing | 27 |
| Sheet metal shop | 23 |
| Business English | 20 |
| Electric motors | 19 |
| Arts and crafts | 18 |
| Millinery | 18 |
| Electricity and magnetism | 16 |
| ———— | |
| Total | 1,489 |
The policy of the schools is to form a class in any subject for which a sufficient number of students make application. Only a small proportion of the pupils attend more than one year, and the mortality from term to term is very high, although the tuition fee plan insures fairly good attendance during the term. The data collected by the survey indicate that the average length of attendance is approximately two terms—the equivalent in student hours of less than three weeks in the ordinary day school.
Most of the men who enroll in night school classes need a course of at least two or three years. All but a few, however, insist on having their supplementary training in small doses. Frequently they want only specific instruction about a specific thing, such as how to lay out a certain piece of work or how to set up a particular machine tool. They want to secure this knowledge in the shortest possible time, and very few want the same thing. A course of two or three years does not appeal to them. Another difficulty is that their previous educational equipment varies widely, and some are not capable of assimilating even the specialized bit of trade knowledge they need without a preliminary course in arithmetic. As the personnel of the classes changes to a marked degree from term to term, the courses undergo frequent modifications. Apparently the teachers and principals have made a sincere effort to adapt the instruction to the demands of the men who attend the schools, but the fact is that the difficulties inherent in such work make it impossible to organize the classes on any basis except that of subject matter, which means fitting students into courses, rather than adapting courses to the needs of particular groups of workers.
The enrollment is far below what should be expected in a city of nearly three-quarters of a million inhabitants. The total number of journeymen, apprentices, and helpers from the skilled manual occupations, receiving trade instruction in the night schools, is considerably less than one per cent of the total number in the city.
A large enrollment is necessary for efficient administration. Success in specializing courses in night schools, as in day schools, requires a large administrative unit. The possible variety of courses is in direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a class of 200 carpenters there would probably be, for example, 10 or 15 men who need specialized instruction in stair-building. On the basis of the present enrollment of 40 or 50 carpenters the class would dwindle to three or four, with the result that the per capita teaching cost becomes prohibitive.