Trainee

“ His activities do not displace any of the regular employees, who do most of the work themselves, and must stand immediately by to supervise whatever the trainees do. The applicant's work does not expedite the company business, but may, and sometimes does, actually impede and retard it. If these trainees complete their course of instruction satisfactorily and are certified as competent, their names are included in a list from which the company can draw when their services are needed. ”

“ However, the lads went at it with a will. The variety of the work kept them constantly interested. There was not a dull or tiresome moment in all that morning’s work, the instructor leading them from one thing to another until the faces of the apprentices glowed and their eyes sparkled with excitement and pleasure. ”

“ Let the student have before him a full and explicit description of the duties of the job he must be able to hold down after graduation, and of the qualifications in the form of particular sorts of skill, technical knowledge, general abilities and personal traits which he must possess if he is going to make a success of that job. Let each instructor be in a position to speak with authority when challenged to justify every task he assigns as contributing directly to the development of one or more of these essential qualifications. ”

“ Boys between fifteen and seventeen years old of good character, who can read and write and pass the physical examination, may enlist for the term of their minority. They enlist as third-class apprentices, and are given six months’ instruction at a training station, and thence go to sea in apprentice training vessels. ”

“ We have established a school for vocational training, appointing an instructor in each department who takes direct charge of each new employee. Through this system we have placed many women on work which was entirely operated by men heretofore. ”

“ Each company is in six sections, of twenty-five to thirty students each, a lieutenant of infantry in charge of each section. The studies prescribed are the same for all arms—viz. Tactics, Artillery, Science, Fortification, Topography, Military administration, Field hygiene and farriery, Foreign languages, Surveying, and Practical work. For exercise the students have drill (distinct for each arm) , gymnastics, fencing, sabre exercise, riding, and shooting. Study and exercise together keep the youths at work the whole day, save for half-an-hour after supper, when they unbend. ”

“ Method of instruction.—The duty of the officer commanding the battalion is to supervise the training of the company and give company leaders the benefit of his experience, but he should not lay down the method to be employed in the training of companies. The training must be carried out by the officers of the company without undue interference on the part of superiors. It is only when the methods are manifestly wrong, and would work harm, that there should be interference. ”

“ The instructor of physical training is greatly aided in his actual work, by the kind of life the cadet leads, so that he has not to struggle with a crowd of men who after having received physical training daily, indulge themselves to their heart’s content. ”

“ As the young women pass through the Employment Department they are placed in this Training School under the supervision of a competent instructor and are thoroughly grounded in the operation performed in that particular department. While in this school their characteristics are studied and as they acquire proficiency and their ability develops, they are assigned to more intricate and important work in the other departments throughout the factory. ”

“ In the first lessons as to position, the instructor should carefully place the hands, arms, etc, of the recruit in the form desired. When he is more advanced, he should not be touched; but from the example shown, and the directions prescribed, be taught to correct himself when so admonished. ”

“ The earthly apprentice, freed from his articles of apprenticeship, may serve any master, the heavenly apprentice asks but one. Oh, Jesus, Master, Thou Saviour of our race, have mercy upon us, grant us so to serve Thee in time, that our earthly labours ended, we may hear Thee say, "Well done good and faithful servant," while the pure and beautiful angels shall rehearse to each other, "Rejoice, another apprentice is out of his time." ”

“ The first stage in the evolution in a given field may be called the apprentice stage. Just as physicians, lawyers, and in fact practitioners in all the professions and crafts trained their assistants in their establishments for the purpose of making them proficient in their daily work, so did merchants at this stage give apprentice training in commercial branches to their employees. ”

“ Once the apprenticeship at an end, the youth could work, as what would now be known as an ‘improver,’ with any master he liked, and in any town that he chose. Later on, in order to become a master, he had to present himself before the heads of the guild and give proofs of efficiency, promise obedience to the rules of the corporation, and swear to carry on his work well and honestly. ”

“ Some of the chaps in my section, which is the leading and senior section of the battery, try to ask me questions as I pass.
“Are we going far, sir?”
“Are we going out for training?”
“Do you think, sir, that it’s the Big Push at last?” I cannot see their faces, but I recognise them by their voices. They are drawn from every class of society. Some of them were college boys, some were mechanics, some day-laborers, some adventurers, some came out of gaol to join. Now only one quality lifts one man above another—his courage. ”

“ Rarely endowed as a teacher, having entered the profession before she was fifteen years old, it was natural enough that she should be recalled to her alma mater as an instructor in the training department. ”

“ Each soldier is required to do one year’s training in the workshops for seven hours a day. There is also educational work in full swing and special three-months’ courses of instruction. To these one private and one lieutenant are elected [167] for each company at a time, and although no promotion follows special success in the examinations, they are taken cognizance of when there is a question of promotion. Much attention is paid to athletics and physical drill, and efficiency is the hall-mark of every department. ”

“ The training for senior cadets consists of physical drill, company and some battalion drill, field training and musketry. An excellent provision secures good work on the part of the cadets. At the end of each year’s training an inspection takes place, and all who fail to satisfy the regular officer responsible, lose the value of their year’s work, as the Act requires an additional year’s training for each failure of the inefficient. ”

“ After the women have been transferred to the factory their progress is kept track of for at least one week, to make sure that they are following the instructions given in the training room. Those who do not make good after training are assigned back to the training room for further instruction, or for such disposition as the chief instructor may see fit. ”

“ Of course, I had forgotten that it takes about a thousand rounds to secure one dead man. However, it is wonderful what example and training will do. I believe that, no matter how funky a man may feel, if he has been to a good school he immediately thinks, “What will they say in school if I make a bad show?” Training is also useful. [111] Months of discipline tell. But the greatest asset is the bearing of the officer and the N.C.O. Fortunately, we had a splendid company commander. ”

“ Occasionally take them to a shady [Pg 64] place and instruct them orally, explain the objects sought and the reasons for doing things in anything that is part of their proper training.
Do not keep at one class of work until the men are tired of it; vary the work. You can keep a company interested for four hours a day if you will only vary the instruction and put some soul into it. Give very little place rest; for a rest change the work. Combat exercises must be frequent. They are entitled to a large share of the time; the work of the firing line must be a habit. ”

“ Well, as long as a boy is fit to be a tailor, well and good, he needs no other qualification, but the qualifications to become a good tailor are just as various as that of a lawyer, or a doctor, or a preacher. If a boy is not brought up to work, but has been loafing most of the time, I would not risk him as an apprentice. ”

“ The three apprentices, through their steadiness, good conduct, and energy, have become proficient enough in their different callings to set up for themselves, while the boy at school is one of the most advanced students of the Gymnasium. ”

“ In track and field athletics, the pleasantness and informality of English methods of training reach a climax. In America we place the welfare of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, who, through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate captain, is apt to make the pursuit of victory pretty much a business. ”

“ All the employer has a right to demand is that the school give the young worker a general pre-vocational training which will introduce him to the special trade work. The graduate of the elementary school should have been through a well rounded course which not only cultivated a general intelligence, but discovered, by submitting him to many different kinds of activity, his particular flair or knack, and thus enlisted his interest in further training for a particular vocation. ”

“ A shoemaker once engaged an apprentice. A short time after the apprenticeship began, the shoemaker asked the boy what he would call him in addressing him, "Oh, I would just call you master," answered the apprentice. "No," said the master, "you must call me master above all masters." ”

“ There was a training-ship used as a reformatory for boys where it had been designed to make them skilled sailors, and I found that after years of apprenticeship to the business of the sea, nineteen-twentieths of them instead of being employed in our commercial navy, were hired out for agricultural or domestic work. ”

“ The parents or guardians have to make annual payments for the support of [323] the cadets as long as they remain at the academy, the amount being greater for the son of a civilian than of a military or naval officer. When the term of instruction—which comprises the subjects of a thorough general education, the higher mathematics, fortification, gunnery, and military duty—is completed, the cadets compete for vacancies in the engineers and artillery, those who pass the best examination being allowed a choice of either branch of the service. ”

“ The men I have in my mind as the best qualified and able to do this are schoolmasters, clergymen, members of the Y.M.C.A., Legion of Frontiersmen, officers of Cadet Corps, Boys' and Church Lads' Brigades, Rifle Clubs, country squires, ex-army officers, telegraph-masters, etc. These could carry out the training of a few boys apiece, with very little expense of time or money, by devoting, say, Saturday afternoons and Sundays to the work, which, I can promise them, they will find a pleasure rather than a labour in practice. ”

“ An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France, [72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. ”

“ But when one starts with the first class and goes along through the day's work with it, the deadly seriousness of the training gets to him. The first thing the first class does is to gather around a sergeant major, who in a few simple words tells his pupils how to use the bayonet. ”

“ I am often tempted to quote the remark of a French training-ship surgeon, of blunt speech, but with a sharp eye for the character-traits of his young countrymen: "If I had my own way," said he, "every boy in the marine should serve an apprenticeship in the rigging, and learn to rough it, before he gets a soft berth. The lads that have grown up before the mast make the best men in every sense of the word, brave, honest fellows most of them ”

“ Riding-school work forms the chief portion of his training as a recruit, when he is taught to ride both with and without stirrups, to take jumps with folded arms, to vault on to a horse’s back, and, in brief, to do all that can be done with a horse. ”

“ But our intending professor can not go back into the fitting-school or into freshman year, and begin over again. He enters the graduate department. Here he has, with few exceptions, as colleagues in study, men who, like himself, are not well-grounded and who are unable or unwilling to submit to the prolonged and severe discipline which is necessary for the training of the intellectual athlete. ”

“ The captain must exercise care in selecting the instructors for the various subjects. The man who will do it the best should be the instructor in each. Perfunctory or indifferent work should never be allowed on the part of an instructor or by the man being instructed. ”

“ In these circumstances the recruits are too numerous and the time available is too limited for the work of training to be committed to a few selected instructors, and every officer has therefore to instruct his own men. ”