Commercial education

“ High schools in all parts of the country are giving commercial courses in increasing degree. The first type of industrial education to be extensively cultivated in the United States was commercial education. This consisted in133 training for clerical positions and was carried on for the most part in private “business colleges.” The reason for the early demand for this particular kind of training is to be sought in the fact that America has for years been a country devoted on a vast scale to exporting raw materials. ”

“ It remains, however, to be seen what relation the public high school and the private school will eventually sustain to one another in this branch of education.
Higher Commercial Education is the effort of universities to respond to the call for a course of education which shall fit young men for the more responsible positions in industry. It aims to provide the theoretical and systematic part of the education of those who are to determine and execute the commercial and financial policy of businesses. ”

“ If, then, the commercial and trades training, the business or manual, or whatever the course be called, can be found in actual commerce and trade; if a sufficient degree of scholastic education can there be added, and if with this the maturing man or woman shall gain a higher degree of technical skill and a safer knowledge of men and affairs, does not the plan of the school in business best meet the educational problem for at least a majority of childkind? ”

“ Let technical and commercial education be understood to be an essential branch of the work of developing the resources and forces of British industry, and be connected with this department.
Let our commercial department be in constant and daily touch with the trade interests of the country, be accessible to every man, as in the United States and our colonies, and accessible to workingmen as well as to employers. ”

“ Although it might be thought that we should have made it our first duty to provide the best commercial education, this has not been the case. Thus, in the words of an Indian economist, "the supreme need of to-day is managers of firms, pioneers, and entrepreneurs. ”

“ Turning to the subject-matter composing the courses in higher commercial education, provided by some fifteen of our larger universities, we find the most prominent place among the studies designed to give general culture occupied by history. The first place among studies calculated to give special training is given to economics, which explains the general principles underlying the present structure of economic society. ”

“ Higher institutions of commercial education establish, if not already existing, in their curricula the separation of commercial from economic geography, the study of commercial geography to begin in primary schools, with periodical competitions for the preparation of the best commercial and economic geographies of each country and the exchange of prize works be arranged for. ”

“ Industrial higher education in this or some other form is the secondary hope of manufacturing business in the United States, the primary hope being in a decent commercial liberty to buy their supplies and to sell their products in the best markets wherever these are to be found. ”

“ What better way to train to higher commercial standards the minds, not only of the youths who are seeking a university education and who have in view a business career, but also of the many already engaged in business who have not had the benefit of a college training? ”

“ Corporation schools, night schools, special classes, and many other forms of education inside the walls of commercial and industrial enterprises are being used to good advantage. In an ideal economic system, every factory, every store, every shop, every place where men and women are gathered together for employment should be, in the higher sense of the word, a school for the development of the very best human qualities. ”

“ It seems an inevitable corollary that if a preliminary training is deemed indispensable to the successful conduct of a private mercantile business, then those who aspire to manage the commerce of the nation should in a greater degree be equipped by education and experience, unless indeed they trust, like the Irish pilot, to learn all about the rocks by running on them. ”

“ Primary economic proposition #2 The second economic proposition posed by OER is a riskier challenge – to abandon the pervasive economic logic that education should be treated as a business, governed by the same rules and incentives as the commercial and retail sector. ”

“ Statistics show that commercial training is not to be looked upon, in a wholesale way, as a successful means of taking care of backward academic students.
Commercial students' need for cultural and other supplementary education may be even greater than that of academic students.
The graduation rate of commercial students in public schools has been increased since the organization of a separate commercial high school and the number of students entering has been decreased. ”

“ A final, and probably in the long-run the most permanent, influence making for the extension of scientific method in business has been the new viewpoint from which universities have been approaching the task of educating men for business. Prior to 1900, university education for business in the few universities that attempted anything of the sort was confined to such branches of applied economics as money and banking, transportation, corporation finance, commercial geography, with accounting and business law to give it a professional flavor. ”

“ It also helps to widen the area of productive industry, and to encourage varieties of activity which the free and unfettered conditions of competition tend unduly to restrict. On the other hand, the artisan engaged in hand industries looks to technical education for self-improvement, and for the means of acquiring that general knowledge of the principles and practice of his trade, which he is unable to obtain in the commercial shop. Hence the artisan and the manufacturer approach the consideration of the question from different sides. ”

“ The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people of some rank and fortune. ”

“ The highest results of trade-schools upon a nation’s manufactures, and therefore upon its exports and its wealth, cannot be realized until the Manual-training school has furnished the educated hand as raw material for the trade-school to work upon. ”

“ Their aim is to afford persons engaged in business and industry on a large scale (Grosskaufleute and Grossindustrielle) , masters at commercial schools, administration officials, bank officials, Consular officials, secretaries to Chambers of Commerce, and so forth, a deeper and broader measure of instruction in commercial and national economical matters than that provided by the various commercial schools. ”

“ In consequence of these facts it is insisted that school instruction should be given to make good the absence of shop practice; that a general system of industrial education should be developed to give our workingmen systematic training in the various trades. ”

“ But my father, who had known, by his wide experience, the immense value of a technical knowledge of a trade or business as compared with general educational advantages of the second order, and who knew how much more easy it is to earn a living as a skilful artisan than as a clerk, possessing a mere general education, always urged those who sought his advice to begin by giving to their sons a practical knowledge of a trade. ”

“ A really efficient workman must be to-day an intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this situation the industrial schools began a further development; they established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the purposes of general education, such of the simpler processes of elementary trade learning as were best suited therefor. ”

“ A student coming from one of our constantly improving high schools of commerce is checked for two years and given time to forget all the bookkeeping and other commercial work which he has learned and on which advanced commercial instruction may be built, while he pursues an academic course. It would be far better to continue the modern languages, the mathematics, and natural sciences, along with business courses. ”

“ Each year has brought many more requests than we have men to recommend.” Ten years ago President James would have been ridiculed for advancing this new idea for the establishment of a school of commerce in connection with a university. Today, commercial schools are a part of the regularly established courses of nearly all of the great universities of our country. Men trained in the theory, practice and administration of business will always occupy the best positions and will always command the greatest salaries. ”

“ But instruction in mechanical processes and practice in technique of manufacture are the husks of industry when divorced from the planning, the management, the examination of problems, the determination of the value of goods in their use and in their place in the market, the division of labor throughout an enterprise, the relation of all persons involved to each other and to the product. The schools with their industrial education courses do not undertake to supply their young people with an opportunity to plan ”

“ If the demand for technical instruction is to be fully satisfied, a great part of our existing system of education must be reconstructed, and the training provided in our several schools must be made a more fitting preparation for industrial work than it is at present.
Schools in which the course of instruction is not specialized with a view to any particular industry, but is so arranged as to form a general preparation for manufacturing or other trade pursuits, are often spoken of as professional, technical, or trade schools ”

“ They are of high-school grade, and, in addition to general domestic economy, teach special trades to women, such as millinery and artificial flower work. The nation maintains high-class trade and technical schools in all industries important to her commerce. And there can be no doubt that the excellence of her manufactures has its origin in the large number, variety, and excellence of her free schools. ”

“ Students must be trained to perform specific kinds of skilled labor which has a commercial value. But the learning of a trade must include the scientific principles underlying it, and must not be confined to mere hand-training. ”

“ We can therefore define business education as education which directly prepares people to discharge the business function: namely, the economical organization of men and materials in production and the most advantageous distribution and exchange of the commodities or service for consumption. ”

“ In order to meet the demand for men competent to organize production wisely and from a business viewpoint, more courses will be given in what we may call production management or commercial engineering. ”

“ The point made is that while the trade school, per se, is doing its work, boys are, more and more, being trained for their trades in the so-called trades continuation schools and as apprentices in the shops. ”

“ Shading off into a more distant, although essential, connection is another class—that of those laborers who train human beings in the branches of knowledge necessary to the attainment of proper skill in managing the processes and instruments of an industry. The acquisition of the rudiments of education, and, in many cases, the most profound knowledge of chemistry, physics and recondite studies, are essential to production; and teachers are indirect laborers in producing almost every article in the market. ”

“ THE GROWTH OF JABBERGRAB Modern industry is an enormously complicated thing, and specialized teaching of industrial processes is just as necessary as any other kind of education. I would not give anyone the impression that I object to the teaching of advertising or foreign trade or finance, any more than I object to the teaching of plumbing or manicuring fingernails. My point is that all these arts should be taught in trade schools, and they should be taught as trades. For example, the International Harvester Company maintains an excellent school for training its employes ”

“ Of recent development and also under control of the National Government are the Commercial schools for men and women, which provide adequate modern instruction in salesmanship and bookkeeping and all other affiliated activities of commerce. ”

“ Fifth, trade training is provided not merely for those in the trades but also for those who are preparing to enter them. Trade schools are sometimes supported out of the public purse, sometimes by private endowments. ”

“ First among them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and methods of distribution. Commodities are treated as exports and imports, or solely in regard to their commercial value, and not, of course, in relation to their historic development or the manufacturing processes to which they have been subjected. These schools do not in the least minister to the needs of the actual factory employee, who is in the shop and not in the office. ”

“ The establishment of trade schools by the public school authorities is now a matter of discussion in every manufacturing city in the land. Manufacturers and philanthropists alike are clamoring for the introduction of industrial training into the public schools.... The true reason for industrial education lies ... in the fundamental conception of modern education—to fit the child for his life environment.... ”