Industrial school

“ At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. 64 This company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to another group of men. ”

“ Many technical schools are also maintained by the national government. Among these one of the most practical is the Industrial School of the capital. This institution has elaborate workshops which are well equipped with machinery and appliances, in which the trades and crafts are taught. ”

“ As industrial history and technique are taught in the schools, in effect they bind the children to the current industrial practice and to the current conditions. They stifle imagination and discourage the concept that industry is an evolving process. The effect of technical training in the German continuation schools (and the tendency is the same in our own industrial education courses) is to teach the children that the methods and processes as they are carried forward in the shop are right. No question of their validity is raised in the school. ”

“ Further than this, after being provided with group leaders of civilization, and a foundation of intelligence in the public schools, the carpenter, in order to be a man, needs technical skill. This calls for trade schools. Now trade schools are not nearly such simple things as people once thought. The original idea was that the "Industrial" school was to furnish education, practically free, to those willing to work for it ”

“ We find in practice, that the working of the industrial school interferes but very slightly with the regular school work, and I believe that our standard of education is considerably higher than in any of the neighbouring schools. We arrange that the twenty-four industrial girls shall take turn (four or five at a time as they are wanted) in the industrial school under the industrial mistress. Each girl receives about six hours' industrial instruction in the course of the week. ”

“ INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, in England a school, generally established by voluntary contributions, for the industrial training of children, in which children are lodged, clothed and fed, as well as taught. Industrial schools are chiefly for vagrant and neglected children and children not convicted of theft. ”

“ The members of the Survey Staff were, however, of the opinion that through the system of electives in the junior high school, industrial training of a more general type, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes, would be of considerable benefit to those boys who, on the basis of their own selection or that of their parents, are likely to enter industrial pursuits. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ Nothing is more needed than the best type of industrial school, the school for mechanical industries in the city, the school for practically teaching agriculture in the country. The calling of the skilled tiller of the soil, the calling of the skilled mechanic, should alike be recognized as professions, just as emphatically as the callings of lawyer, doctor, merchant, or clerk. ”

“ All pupils of the Industrial High School are required to take academic work of high school grade in mathematics, history, English, and science. [249]
The introduction of manual training and domestic science into the grades of all Columbus schools has pointed many children in the direction of the Industrial High School. While it is not the intention of the school authorities to make the work of the Industrial High School final, it is hoped that those children who are enabled to continue with educational work are benefited markedly by this specialized course. ”

“ And here is the mistake of those who would degrade a manual training school into a manufacturing establishment. The fact should never be lost sight of for an instant that the product of the school should be, not the polished article of furniture, not the perfect piece of machinery, but the polished, perfect boy. The acquisition of industrial skill should be the means of promoting the general education of the pupil; the education of the hand [351] should be the means of more completely and more efficaciously educating the brain.... ”

“ The purpose of the general industrial course is to afford to boys who wish to enter industrial occupations the opportunity to secure knowledge and training that will be of direct or indirect value to them in industrial employment. It is not expected that by this means they can be given much practical training in hand work for any particular trade. The most the school can do for the boy at this period is to bridge over for him the gap that exists between the knowledge he obtains from books and the rôle which this knowledge plays in the working world. ”

“ As a rule, industrial training is not practicable in elementary schools, for the reason that the number of boys in the average elementary school who are likely to enter the skilled trades and who are also old enough to profit by industrial training is too small to permit the organization of classes. ”

“ The organization of the manual work as a part of the regular curriculum prevents the narrow specialization of the trade school. It tends to turn the young worker out, not as a part of the industrial machine fitted to do only one thing, but equipped to meet a dynamic, rapidly changing industrial world which demands above all things versatility, and which scraps methods and machines as ruthlessly as it does men. Only the man of rounded training and resourcefulness who can turn his hand quickly to a variety of occupations has a chance to-day to rise above the mass. ”

“ We have not been able to keep the workshops going owing to lack of funds, but I think this school is a nucleus from which to enlarge this work.
“We do not graduate civil engineers from our school, and our aim is to teach these boys carpentering, mechanical pursuits, and industrial chemistry, though the laboratories have not yet been established. There is a great lack of elementary schools here with industrial applications. ”

“ The children are an actual part of the repair and construction working force on Gary school buildings and on the equipment. As the children are involved in the upkeep of a school it becomes their school. They experience the responsibility of maintaining the school plant, not by some artificial scheme of participation, but by the actual application of trade standards and acquired technique to operations which have for them and those with whom they live important significance. They gain in their work a first hand knowledge of industrial processes and activity. ”

“ The industrial school will be popular with the parents because the girls employed in it either receive some schematic of a model national school schematic of a model national school small money-payment, as at Finchley, or, as with us, are provided with dinner at the school on certain days of the week. ”

“ Industrial work is an important adjunct to the college. It was started as a means of self-help, to enable students who could not pay their tuition or board to earn a part of it by manual labour, and American machinery and tools were introduced for cabinet work according to modern methods. This has proved so popular that it was necessary to make a rule that no boy should take the mechanical courses alone, without taking some of the regular courses in the college or the preparatory school. ”

“ The schools should render every student capable of filling some place worthily in the industries. The longer the student remains in school, the higher the position for which he should be prepared. The amount and nature of the training in the schools depends largely on the industrial work to be done, and will be possible of more accurate estimation constantly, as Scientific Management standardizes work and shows what the worker must be to be most efficient. ”

“ Factory management like college and school management, instead of depending on the subject matter to interest the workers, instead of opening up to them the factors of interest in industrial enterprise, has adopted incentives for getting the required work done. Enlightened school practice, out of long failure to get the children's initiative by the artificial stimulus of rewards for work done, now depends upon the content of the subject matter and the children's experiments with it, to develop their desire to do the work. ”

“ Having substantial amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be tempted to use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of emergency productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers being skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out a substantial amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate educational ends 67 to those of an economic nature may be expected. It is therefore suggested that industrial-school authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subordinate their rightful purpose of giving industrial education. ”

“ We have come to think of the carpenter shop, the machine shop, the forge shop, and the cooking room as necessary and desirable adjuncts of the modern school and to our minds these shops have typified industrial education. All of these have come to be almost synonymous with progressive thought and action in public education. Very generally it has been felt that the problems of industrial education were to be solved through the wider extension of these shop facilities in our public schools. ”

“ Surely, many parishes, if once convinced of the benefit of an industrial school, might manage to raise this sum, especially as a considerable portion of it may be given in the shape of materials, such as stone, wood, tiles, sand, or lime—things which many landowners have on their estates, and would willingly give for building an industrial school, when they might not be conveniently able to give actual money. ”

“ This does not mean that a constructive program of industrial education would affect 22 per cent of the present school enrollment. All the weight of educational opinion and experience is on the side of excluding the children of the lower and middle age groups as too young to profit by any sort of industrial training, while the evidence collected by the survey goes to show that of the remainder less than one-fifth of the girls and one-fourth of the boys are likely to become skilled industrial workers. ”

“ John Y. Culyer, in a recent paper read at a meeting of the Association of School Commissioners and City Superintendents held in Albany, advocates the study of industrial and inventive drawing in our public schools, on the ground that, as a large majority of the pupils in these schools are destined for industrial occupations, their studies should be adapted to improvement in this direction. "Upon what," he asks, "does a man's advancement as a workman depend? ”

“ Public education is at present passing through a transition stage. The emphasis in the school courses of previous generations was upon the culture of the mind and the appeal was made for a high classical training, but now that the work on the farms as well as in the shops is largely done by costly machinery, the emphasis of school work is being rapidly transferred to the hand, and the appeal is for manual or vocational training and domestic science. ”

“ Regular union artisans, chosen because of their character, intelligence, and teaching ability, are engaged by the building departments of the school plant. There are carpenters, cabinet-makers, painters, plumbers, sheet-metal workers, engineers, printers, electricians, machinists, foundrymen, 42etc., sufficient to meet the needs of the schools. This great variety of equipment and maintenance work provides manual activity of a truly educative sort suitable to every stage of the child’s development. The shops of these workmen become the regular manual and industrial training shops of the school. ”

“ The future occupations of the children in school will correspond very closely to those of the native-born adult population. The occupational distribution of the city's working population therefore constitutes the best guide as to the kinds of industrial training which can be undertaken profitably by the school system.
2. Industrial training in school has to do chiefly with preparation for work in the skilled trades. Training for semi-skilled occupations can be given more effectively and cheaply in the factories than in the schools. ”

“ Wherever this plan is adopted, the farmers and tradesmen will have a direct interest in supporting the parochial school, and would seldom, I believe, object to paying for their children at a higher rate, and such payments would go a long way towards supporting the school, and would enable it to be kept up in the highest state of efficiency. With the parents of the labouring classes, an industrial school, when the first prejudice against it wears off, will be sure to be popular. ”