The elementary schools and the junior high schools cannot conduct satisfactory trade-preparatory courses for the building industry for the reason that they do not bring together at any one point a sufficient number of these future workers to make it possible to teach them economically. This is a consideration which conditions every plan for the organization of industrial education. It is a question of the community's capacity to absorb workmen trained for any given occupation. In Cleveland about 4,000 boys leave the public elementary schools each year. Approximately 2,400 of them drop out of the elementary schools or leave after graduating from them, while the remaining 1,600 go on to high school. The future workers in the building trades will be largely recruited from the 2,400 boys who leave the elementary schools each year. Most of them range in age from 14 to 16 and in school advancement from the fifth to the eighth grades. They represent a cross-section of a large part of the city's adult manhood of a few years hence.
Now the census figures tell us that if present conditions maintain in the future only about 100 of the 4,000 boys leaving school each year will be carpenters. For the purposes of the present inquiry we may assume that these 100 future carpenters are to be found among the 2,400 boys who do not go on to high school. But Cleveland has 108 elementary schools and these 100 future carpenters are widely scattered among them. Even if we knew which boys were destined to become carpenters, and even if we knew when they would leave school, and even if we should decide to give them all trade preparatory education for the last two years of their school life, we should still have an average class in carpentry of only two boys in each elementary school. This is administratively and educationally impossible. For similar reasons specialized trade preparatory classes in junior high schools would prove exceedingly difficult to organize.
The whole situation is changed, however, when we gather in a central school all these future artisans who have decided that they wish to prepare for specific trades. Under these conditions classes would be sufficiently large so that specialized training could be given and special equipment provided. This work would best be undertaken in a school entirely devoted to the purpose, but such courses might be organized in connection with the present technical high schools. This arrangement would be less desirable and probably give inferior results. The important point, however, is not so much the organization or curriculum for these classes, it is the fundamental fact that trade classes can be wisely organized only when a sufficiently large number of pupils can be gathered in one place so as to make the work efficient and economical.
The effectiveness of the trade-preparatory training recommended would be greatly increased if the upper limit of the compulsory attendance period for boys should be placed at 16 years instead of at 15 as it is now.
4. Trade-Extension Classes for Apprentices. At the present time the technical high schools offer evening classes for apprentices in the building trades. About one-seventh of the apprentices of the city are enrolled in these classes. In the main they are full grown men. In general they do not want shop work related to their own trades, but prefer instead to enroll in courses in drawing.
The considerations already presented bear in minor degree on the problem of providing evening instruction for trade apprentices. The essential for efficient work is that a sufficient number of pupils be brought together so as to make it possible to organize specialized classes in different kinds of work that the pupils want and need. So long as there are only 50 apprentices enrolled in the entire city, and these represent a number of trades, many different stages of advancement, and a variety of needs, truly efficient work will be impossible. Better conditions can be brought about only through the coöperation of the unions, the employers, and the school people.
5. Trade-Extension Work for Journeymen. The evening technical schools now maintain shop classes and drawing classes for workers in the building trades. Less than one per cent of the workers in these trades are enrolled in these classes. There is little differentiation in the school work offered to helpers, apprentices, and journeymen. The result is that the work is much less efficient than it might well be. It cannot be rendered much more efficient than it is until the classes are increased in size and as a result the work differentiated and specialized. This type of improvement will result only from putting the night school work in the hands of skilful and well paid directors and teachers who bring to it a degree of energy, enterprise, ingenuity, and adaptability that it is unreasonable to expect and impossible to get from day school teachers who have already given the best that is in them to their regular classes and are giving a fatigued margin of work and attention to their night school pupils.