C 1046 
 M5 N5 
 314 
 >py 1 
 
 Board of 
 Education 
 
 THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Industrial 
 Conference 
 
 Washington Irving High School 
 J\ine 2 9. 1914 
 
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION— THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Industrial Conference 
 
 Presiding Officer 
 
 His Honor, The Mayor of The City of New York 
 
 John Ptjrroy Mitchel 
 
 President, Board of Education 
 Thomas W. Churchill 
 
 Committee on Vocational Schools and Industrial Training 
 
 Mrs. Ella W. Kramer, Chairman 
 Joseph Barondess Isadore M. Levy 
 
 Ernest F. Eilert John Martin 
 
 Abraham Flexner John Whalen 
 
 Washington Irving High School 
 Monday, June 29, 1914, 8 p. m. 
 
D. of D. 
 
 jan i6 m 
 
 &»*l 
 ^ 
 
 \*\ 
 
 \A 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hon. Thomas W. Chuechill 7 
 
 President, Board of Education 
 
 Hon. John Purroy Mitchel 9 
 
 The Mayor of The City of New York 
 
 Mr. Charles A. Prosser 13 
 
 Of the National Commission on Vocational Education 
 
 Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller 31 
 
 Associate Superintendent of Schools, The City of New York 
 
 Hon. William A. Prendergast 39 
 
 Comptroller of The City of New York 
 
 Mr. H. E. Miles 41 
 
 President of the Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 
 
 Mr. William Wirt .51 
 
 Superintendent of Schools, Gary, Indiana 
 
 Resolution Adopted by Board of Education on 
 June 24, 1914 
 
 Resolved, That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized 
 to invite, on behalf of the Board of Education, speakers and others 
 interested in industrial education to attend a conference on that 
 subject to be held at the Washington Irving High School on Monday, 
 June 29, 1914, at 8 o'clock p. m., and to make any and all such 
 arrangements in regard to said conference as, in his judgment, may 
 be necessary. 
 
Program 
 
 : ". " . - - _ . ■ _ '.I- :■. ~ii ■:■'.' 
 
 . :::: : 7 : : :-:-:- th:- - 
 
 _ _ ^-- . Hox. Job 
 
 : :i _ _ 
 
 i ADP7I-- 
 
 E'~ _ I . — - -:-i_lit SdUbtrt 
 
 :^in- a 
 
Program 
 
 7. SELECTION 
 
 (a) "Valse Lente" 
 
 (b) "Pizzicatti" Delibes 
 
 8. ADDRESS .... Gttstave Straubenmtjller 
 
 Associate Superintendent of Schools, The City of New York 
 
 9. SELECTION— "Andante Cantabile" . . Tschaikowsky 
 
 10. ADDRESS H. E. Miles 
 
 President, Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 
 
 11. ADDRESS , William Wirt 
 
 Superintendent of Schools, Gary, Indiana 
 
 12. MARCHE MILITAIRE Schubert 
 
 Orchestra of the De Witt Clinton High School 
 Joseph P. Donnelly, Director 
 
Industrial Conference 
 Washington Irving High School 
 
 June 29, 1914 
 
 Hon. Thomas W. Chuechill, President of the Board of 
 Education, addressed the meeting as follows: 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: In opening this conference my function 
 is a simple one — to announce the purpose of the meeting, to extend 
 on behalf of the Board of Education a welcome to the distinguished 
 speakers and the no less distinguished audience, and to introduce to 
 you the eminent official who has consented to preside. 
 
 Vocational instruction is the most ancient form of education. 
 The first naked savage who guided the trembling hand of his off- 
 spring to bend the bow was conducting a system of industrial 
 instruction, admirably adapted to the child's own future calling. 
 Every time and every nation has thus evoked its own system of 
 instructing its youth to find their place in the life of the time; 
 a place where they might render service and earn that reward that 
 would keep mind and body fit for further service. 
 
 Civilization and letters have preserved for us the splendid heri- 
 tage of the past, but they have preserved with it something of 
 tradition that belongs to the past. What may have been useful 
 in one age may yet survive long after its usefulness has ended. 
 
 If, then, we seek a fuller recognition of the needs of the prac- 
 tical life, it is only that the schools may continue their world-age 
 function of preparing for that life. Education, it is true, must 
 include the knowledge of the past ; not less truly must it recognize 
 the needs of the present. 
 
 In a democracy like ours, education cannot be dominated by 
 an ideal that considers only the limited number that need not work 
 with the labor of their hands or the sweat of their brow. In mak- 
 ing provision for the extension of vocational education, therefore, 
 we are but bringing back our educational forces to the exercise 
 of their normal function. 
 
 As to how this may best be done the Board of Education seeks 
 to learn from all men and from every place. It wants light, more 
 light, and it is for this reason that it has asked for information 
 and for counsel from all who may give it. 
 
 Recently a number of gentlemen, interested in this question, 
 visited the cities of the west where many interesting and illumi- 
 
nating experiments are being tried out. The Mayor of the City 
 himself headed this group of visitors. 
 
 It is a significant tribute to the importance of this great prob- 
 lem that the Mayor could find time personally to visit these schools ; 
 it is no less significant of his sympathy with the movement and 
 his wide vision of its possibilities. 
 
 Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is with peculiar fitness that 
 I have at this time the pleasure to introduce as the presiding officer 
 of this conference, His Honor, the Mayor of The City of New York. 
 
Hon. John Purroy Mitchel, Mayor of The City of New 
 York, addressed the meeting as follows: 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : We are met here to-night to consider 
 the most effective way of rendering the people of this City a fun- 
 damental social service. We are here, as President Churchill has 
 said, to devise plans for extending in this City industrial educa- 
 tion — vocational education. I take it that we will all admit that 
 the school exists to fit the boys and girls of the community to take 
 their places effectively and successfully in the community life. 
 
 If that be true, it follows that the school fails of its purpose 
 and object if it fails to equip the boys and girls of the community 
 to take that place and to earn for themselves a sufficient livelihood 
 — if it fails to prepare them to take that place and then to go for- 
 ward in the community life to whatever station their special apti- 
 tudes may permit them to rise. 
 
 We have been coming to the view in New York that the schools 
 as we have them now — the school system as it exists today — lacks 
 something of the effectiveness that it ought to have to equip prop- 
 erly for the community life. To quote once more the figures that 
 most of us probably know, but that it is well for us all to remem- 
 ber, the school mortality in this City: We know, for instance, 
 that in 1912-13 there were in the public schools of the city 661,000 
 children ; that in the second year there were 86,000 children — 
 that is in the second year grade; that at graduation in the ele- 
 mentary schools there were left but 48,000 ; that of those but 
 23,000 entered the high schools, and in the last or fourth year of 
 the high schools there remain but 4,079 children. The rest dropped 
 out somewhere on their way through the school system. 
 
 Now, were those boys and girls properly prepared by the schools 
 of this City to take their places in the community life of this City? 
 'Were they equipped to earn their own livelihood and to advance 
 themselves through their own efforts to whatever places their capa- 
 cities would naturally permit them to rise? I think the answer 
 must undoubtedly be no, for many of them dropped out before 
 reaching the last year in the elementary schools and they could 
 not have been equipped to take their places effectively in the 
 community. 
 
 We want to have those boys and girls whose economic condition 
 at home makes it necessary for them to leave the schools before 
 they reach the last year go out equipped, as soon as they must go 
 out, to take their places in industry, or in business, as the case 
 may be, into which they naturally gravitate. In other words, we 
 wish to extend, I cannot say establish for it has been established 
 and begun, prevocational training in the schools of this City in 
 order that those boys and girls when they do go out may have 
 
 9 
 
some of the things necessary to take their places effectively in in- 
 dustry and business. 
 
 There are several things which we can do, it seems to me, and 
 a good many more probably which we can do, or, which we will 
 learn that we can do when we study this problem carefully and 
 fully as we have begun to do. 
 
 We could increase the number of day trade schools, that is one 
 thing. We can increase the prevocational classes in the elementary 
 schools. We can establish here, I trust, what has been established 
 so successfully already in Cincinnati — a close cooperation between 
 industry on the one hand and the schools on the other under a 
 plan that permits the pupils there, it is true, in the college courses 
 in the engineering school (there is no reason why it cannot be 
 done in the high schools and probably in the upper classes of the 
 elementary schools) to spend part of their time in the shops and 
 factories of industry and part of their time in the classroom re- 
 ceiving theoretical and cultural education. 
 
 There is no reason, it seems to me, why we cannot establish 
 that plan in New York City and get the benefit of the equipment 
 of industry — the training of its artisans — combined with the capa- 
 city for cultural instruction of the teachers in our schools. Then 
 perhaps too, T for one believe that we can establish something of 
 that splendid system of distribution of the pupils in the classes 
 and have the combination which Mr. Wirt has already so success- 
 fully established in Gary. 
 
 Those things we can do, and we are here tonight to consider 
 other means and methods — those and others — that we can adopt in 
 order to extend this system of industrial education in the City. 
 And in making our plans, in formulating our program, we must 
 recollect that, if we are to be successful, it must be upon a basis 
 of cooperation between industry and the schools, cooperation that 
 will be intimate and sympathetic, because without cooperation that 
 means the help of those who are engaged in industry, we cannot es- 
 tablish, in my judgment, an effective plan. 
 
 We have got to understand the conditions that prevail in in- 
 dustry and business in order that we may devise a plan that will 
 meet those conditions. We have got to understand the conditions 
 that prevail in industry, and we have got to avail ourselves of the 
 skilled artisans that industry provides in order to secure for what- 
 ever system we may establish skilled instructors, because it is not 
 enough to get those who are able to pass examinations in cultural 
 subjects. 
 
 We have got to have, if Ave want efficient teachers in these sub- 
 jects, the men who have been trained in the shop and in the factory. 
 So I say we must have that sympathetic and active cooperation 
 between industry and the schools, and we are trying now to devise 
 the ways and means of establishing that cooperation. 
 
 Now it is my function merely to preside and to introduce to 
 you those who are competent to discuss these questions in detail. 
 
 10 
 
I shall not trespass any longer on your time. I have the honor 
 of introducing to you first Mr. Charles A. Prosser, formerly As- 
 sistant Commissioner of Education of Massachusetts. Mr. Prosser 
 was selected by President AVilson as a member of the United States 
 Industrial National Commission on Vocational Education and his 
 Committee has already submitted to Congress a report outlining 
 a plan for the extension of that education. Mr. Prosser is also 
 Secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of In- 
 dustrial Education and has had a direct part in preparing legis- 
 lation in many states on the subject of industrial education. I 
 have the honor of presenting Mr. Prosser. 
 
 11 
 
Mr. Chas. A. Prosser, Secretary op the National Society 
 for the Promotion of Industrial Education and a member of 
 the National Commission on Vocational Education, addressed 
 the meeting as follows: 
 
 "If to do were as easy as to know what it were good to do, 
 chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' pal- 
 aces." If to give New York City a good system of vocational 
 education, meeting the rights and needs of all her workers, were 
 as easy as to agree that it should be done, a splendid structure of 
 practical education would grow up in the New York public school 
 system like the palace of Aladdin of old. 
 
 Unfortunately, the task is not to be accomplished either by 
 wishes or by magic. Institutions do not come to fruition by such 
 easy methods in real life. When the "tumult and the shouting 
 dies" in this nation-wide campaign for practical training, when 
 the promoters and the agitators depart, we will find ourselves still 
 facing the very serious task of developing and perfecting a system 
 of vocational education, and facing in that task the most difficult 
 problem in all the history of education. 
 
 The movement for vocational training is on us today faster 
 than we have teachers to do the work, faster than we have a knowl- 
 edge of the industries, faster than we have gained any experience 
 in dealing with the problem on this side of the water. The City 
 of New York, of all cities in the world, has the most unique task 
 in serving the interests of all her workers, unique in size, unique 
 in complex conditions, unique in the difficulties to be met. 
 
 The Board of Education of this City, many and difficult as 
 have been the problems confronting it in the past, today faces 
 what I think is the hardest of them all. It is prophetic of the 
 future success of the work in this City that conferences of this 
 kind are being called and are yet to be called for the purpose of 
 discussing the question and of securing aid from every source in 
 dealing with it. 
 
 As a prelude to the swelling theme of the evening, I have been 
 asked to state my convictions as to what ought to be done. It 
 would be unfair not to pause at the very outset to commend the 
 interest which the Board of Education has shown. The Board is 
 being impelled from within and from without; impelled from 
 within because of its growing feeling that a democratic system 
 of education for New York City requires the training of all kinds 
 of men in all kinds of ways for all kinds of things ; and impelled 
 from without by a growing public sentiment in the city keeping 
 step with that of the rest of the country. Vocational training has 
 laid hold of the imagination of the people as no other program in 
 education has ever done. 
 
 13 
 
It would be unfair, too, not to commend the splendid begin- 
 nings which have already been made. There are here and there 
 throughout the City of New York interesting and praiseworthy 
 experiments in free vocational education bearing rich promise for 
 the future. You have a system of technical high schools in New 
 York that will bear comparison with the best in the country. The 
 Manhattan Trade School for Girls is as well known as any other 
 school in America. Commendable beginnings have been made in 
 the general continuation classes in department stores. The Board 
 of Education has already begun to cooperate with private ventures, 
 like that of the printers at the Hudson Guild. Some of the very 
 best evening school courses are those that analyze industry, that 
 find out the needs of the workers, that group men according to 
 their needs and give them the next thing they need as the next step 
 forward in their callings. 
 
 Last year, your evening school in applied design probably broke 
 all records for continued persistent attendance on the part of its 
 students, a sure sign that the class was meeting their needs. The 
 truth is the City is so large and so many big things are being done 
 here constantly that many worthy things carried on by teachers 
 within the school system are almost unnoticed, unheralded and 
 unsung, which, if they were being carried on in a smaller place, 
 would be blazoned forth as great contributions to education. 
 
 When the friends of vocational education urge the development 
 of vocational education for New York, they are asking for the ex- 
 tension of work already begun, for the proper organization, the 
 proper support of the movement on a larger scale in order that 
 the interests of a greater number may be served. 
 
 There is more vocational education being given in New York 
 City than any other municipality in the country and there ought 
 to be, because the City is much larger than any other centre of 
 population under our flag. Comparatively speaking, however, New 
 York has scarcely kept step with the tremendous onward sweep 
 of this movement. The very practical and vital issues which are 
 at the present time facing the school authorities are such as these : 
 Knowing that the City must greatly extend this movement, will 
 it provide the funds, is it properly organized to carry on the work, 
 has it yet begun the experiments that need to be made, has it as yet 
 established the different types of schools needed, has it as yet set 
 up the proper cooperation with commerce and industry, does it 
 have its face set in the right direction in dealing with the question ? 
 
 In what I have to say by way of suggestion tonight, I speak 
 purely as a private citizen of this community. There are four 
 things which I think need to be emphasized. What shall New York 
 City do in a progressive scheme of vocational education ? 
 
 First: New York City must set up within her public school 
 system a distinctive management and separate organization under 
 the Board of Superintendents for carrying on this work. 
 
 Second : New York City must search out and train all the dif- 
 
 14 
 
ferent kinds and groups of people needing trade preparation for 
 their life work. A system of vocational education for this City 
 must be broader and more comprehensive than the ideas of any 
 one thinker or the pet plan or scheme of a particular group of 
 persons. Those in charge of the work must keep in mind the in- 
 terests and needs of all groups and provide in time the many kinds 
 of schools necessary to serve them. 
 
 Third : New York City must increasingly demand that a large 
 share of the trouble, expense and responsibility of carrying on 
 practical education shall be met by the industries and the voca- 
 tions themselves. In ancient days, master and journeyman assumed 
 the joint responsibility for the young workers in the craft. The 
 schools of New York cannot solve this problem alone. They must 
 have the help of commerce and industry, and we must bring home 
 to commerce and industry a renewed sense of responsibility for 
 the integrity and efficiency of their workers whether employed in 
 the countinghouse, the shop or the factory. 
 
 Fourth: New York City must carry vocational education to 
 the worker in attractive and convenient ways. He will never come 
 to it otherwise. 
 
 A Distinctive Management 
 
 New York City must have a distinctive management; a sepa- 
 rate and distinct organization within the public schools to handle 
 vocational education. It seems obvious to those who have been in 
 the work that vocational education cannot be carried on by the 
 schoolmaster alone, nor by the manufacturer alone, nor by the 
 trade unionist alone. It requires the union of all three. 
 
 Vocational education has for its controlling purpose the prep- 
 aration of young persons for useful employment. This means 
 fitting them to meet the requirements of specific occupations. If 
 the schools are to prepare people for the machine shop or the print 
 shop or the clothing trade or the textile mill, or the electric shop 
 or the counting room, there are three things we must know. We 
 must know what to teach in order to fit the worker to meet the 
 demands of his vocation, we must know how to teach it, we must 
 know when to teach it. 
 
 The cooperation of the educator and the practical man is nec- 
 essary in dealing successfully with these three problems. The 
 trade worker must furnish the practical information about the 
 processes and requirements of his calling; but the trained edu- 
 cator must have a large part in the organization of this material 
 into a progressive course of instruction by the school, even when 
 the school is operated by private agencies. 
 
 A scheme of industrial training operated by the trade alone 
 without any help from the educational experts in the making of 
 courses of study and in the problems of teaching, would be just 
 as certain to be unsuccessful in giving the worker proper class- 
 
 15 
 
room instruction as a system of vocational education operated by 
 the schoolmaster alone would be certain to fail in fitting the worker 
 for the practical demands and opportunities of his calling. 
 
 A great many people with their eyes fastened on the shortcom- 
 ings of the American schools are crying out that the schools are 
 inefficient. I believe this is true of some schools; but I do not 
 believe that the schools of today are on the whole a bit more ineffi- 
 cient than modern industry. There are not wanting those who, 
 looking at the failures of the schools to provide a practical edu- 
 cation and their lack of practical contact with life and its voca- 
 tions, are advocating what has been called for want of a better 
 name, dual control for vocational education. 
 
 Dual control in vocational education means the establishment 
 of a new and independent system of vocational schools having no 
 connection with the present system. This new system is to have 
 its own school board, its own director or superintendent, its own 
 plant and equipment, its own teaching force, its own course of 
 study and in short, a separate management throughout. This 
 separate board is to operate its schools on a separate budget pro- 
 vided by the City; all of this for the purpose of getting into the 
 vocational schools the voice and the help of those experienced in 
 industry. 
 
 Whatever may be our individual opinions with regard to the 
 proposal that the states and local communities establish separate 
 and independent systems of schools for vocational education, every 
 indication seems to show that the American people are not ready 
 for this step and that they want first to give the regular school 
 system a chance to deal with the task. The American people do 
 not want, if it can be avoided, two different systems of education 
 in the same community competing for the same children ; com- 
 peting for the same funds out of the same public treasury. I do 
 not believe that for the present there will be one Simon Pure Dual 
 System of education in the United States. There is none today. 
 The nearest approach we have to it is the system which has been 
 adopted in Wisconsin. There an independent board of trustees 
 is selected by the Board of Education and that independent board 
 of trustees has in its membership the superintendent of the public 
 schools, who is at the same time the executive officer of the voca- 
 tional schools. 
 
 Whatever may be the situation elsewhere, a dual system of 
 vocational education for New York City is unthinkable. Every- 
 body recognizes that the magnitude and complexity of the task 
 make it impossible under the eonditions which obtain in New York 
 City to handle the matter in any other way than under the regular 
 Board of Education. The schools of New York City are eroing to 
 be called upon to deal with this subject of vocational education. 
 Tf they fail, if they make that education academic instead of prac- 
 tical, if they fail to serve the interests of those who ought to be 
 prepared for their work in life, if they do not secure and use this 
 
 16 
 
information that the practical man has to contribute, if a distinc- 
 tive management is not established which will enable these schools 
 to grow up and realize their aim unhampered by traditions, then 
 we shall have a demand for an independent system for vocational 
 education. 
 
 Theoretically and to a very great extent, practically, there are 
 a number of very strong features in a system of independent con- 
 trol for vocational education. There are at the same time pro- 
 nounced disadvantages in it from the standpoint of the advocates of 
 unit control which need not be discussed here. Every one of those 
 desirable features is worth securing by any regular Board of Edu- 
 cation. There are ways by which they can be secured. When we 
 have a system of distinctive management for vocational education, 
 there are certain large values that undoubtedly result. 
 
 If the regular board of education of New York City is to ad- 
 minister vocational education, how can it secure these advan- 
 tages ? By distinctive management within the public school 
 system of all the work for vocational education. By organizing 
 vocational education in such a way that while it is under the regu- 
 larly constituted authority at the top of the Board of Education, 
 the Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Superintendents, 
 it is carried on separate from the regular schools, with a separate 
 organization, courses, pupils and teachers under the direction of 
 experts who are held directly responsible for the success of the 
 work. 
 
 There ought to be and I hope there are persons on the Board 
 of Education who distinctively represent the vocational interests 
 and experience both of employers and employes. If the Board is 
 without a reasonable representation from this element in the com- 
 munity, then when legitimate vacancies occur, the Mayor should 
 not neglect his golden opportunity to add to the Board people who, 
 in addition to their general and commendable civic interest in this 
 question, bring to it the interest and the knowledge born of practi- 
 cal experience. 
 
 There ought to be and I think there is now a committee on 
 vocational education under the Board of Education. That com- 
 mittee ought to be and so far as I know may now be something 
 more than a rubber stamp for either the Board of Education or 
 the Board of Superintendents. This committee ought to have cer- 
 tain definite duties and responsibilities carefully prescribed by the 
 Board of Education. This Committee working under the Board 
 of Education ought to be composed of the people in the Board 
 who have the most interest in and the greatest amount of experi- 
 ence in dealing with the problems and questions involved. 
 
 It may be and probably is true that the present committee on 
 vocational education of the New York Board of Education is made 
 up of competent persons of the Board, having special interest and 
 experience in dealing with the problem, and that this Committee 
 
 17 
 
has already been given a large field of responsibility and initiative 
 in developing the work in this City. 
 
 In the Board of Superintendents, responsible as they are for 
 every phase of the educational activities of the New York public 
 school system under the City Superintendent, there should be at 
 least one superintendent having special interest in and responsi- 
 bility for the promotion of effective vocational education in all the 
 Boroughs. 
 
 It goes without saying that he should be a person of faith and 
 enthusiasm for the movement for practical education, thoroughly 
 acquainted with its problems and able to present the recommenda- 
 tions of a staff of experts under him to the Board of Superinten- 
 dents in a way that the importance of the subject demands and 
 with the ability and force necessary to carry conviction as to what 
 should be the general policies set up by the Board in this pioneer 
 field of education. 
 
 Under the present scheme of organization of the Board of Su- 
 perintendents of New York City, it would be absolutely impossible 
 for any one superintendent to give his entire time to vocational 
 education alone. The Board as a whole, and the individual mem- 
 bers of the Board have their time taken up with the consideration 
 of many different affairs that have to do with every phase of the 
 problem of administering all kinds of public education in a city 
 of more than five million people. The superintendent for voca- 
 tional education, while participating in the usual duties of the 
 members of the Board of Superintendents, should have for his 
 special work on that Board the things that have to do with the 
 promotion of a system of vocational training for this great centre 
 of population. In a sense, he should represent on the Board a 
 separate department organized under him for which the Board 
 would hold him directly responsible. 
 
 This much of a scheme for vocational education has already 
 been put into effect in New York. Earnest and efficient superin- 
 tendents who are now members of the Board have from time to 
 time been given as their special responsibility the problem of vo- 
 cational education. Already heavily burdened with many other 
 duties they have done all and more than could be expected from 
 them without the effective organization of a department under 
 them to carry on the work. 
 
 The step which is now needed is the organization of such a 
 department for vocational education. This department should in- 
 clude all the activities that have to do with all the education in 
 New York whose controlling purpose is to prepare people for suc- 
 cessful work in industry, commerce or in the home, three of the 
 four forms of vocational education which this country is seeking 
 to develop, the fourth being agriculture. 
 
 This department should have at its head as a director some 
 person of recognized national reputation in the field of vocational 
 training who brings to the task previous experience in organizing 
 
 18 
 
and administering schemes of practical education. The department 
 of which he is the head should be made directly responsible through 
 him to the Superintendent for vocational education, who should 
 in turn be responsible to his colleagues on the Board of Superin- 
 tendents and to the City Superintendent for the successful dis- 
 charge of the task. 
 
 Under the director for vocational education for the City, there 
 should be employed, from time to time as the situation develops, 
 experts for particular phases of the work to be known as agents 
 or supervisors or assistant directors. Under the direction of the 
 director of the department, these experts should begin the devel- 
 opment of schemes of vocational education for industry, commerce 
 and the household. There is needed at the present time at the 
 very outset at least one supervisor or assistant director for com- 
 mercial education and one for household arts education. As the 
 work progresses, as new schools are established and classes organ- 
 ized, additional assistants should be employed to aid these in su- 
 pervising the teachers in the work undertaken. 
 
 Under the director for vocational education, there is need from 
 the outset of a number of supervisors or agents to deal with dif- 
 ferent phases of the problem. One supervisor might well give, 
 even under present conditions, his whole time to the affairs of the 
 evening industrial classes ; one to the many issues that are in- 
 volved in the establishment and operation of all-day schools and 
 one to face the exceedingly difficult task of introducing and su- 
 pervising part-time and continuation classes for young workers. 
 
 It is a mistake to delay the organization of such a department 
 and the use of such expert service until after vocational schools 
 have been established on an extensive scale. This kind of help 
 is needed even more before the schools are organized than after 
 they become going concerns. Where such schools should be located, 
 how they should be built and equipped, for what occupations they 
 should fit, what courses of study they should offer, what methods 
 of teaching they should follow, how they may cooperate with the 
 vocations for which they seek to train ; all these are questions to 
 be worked out now and not after the schools have in a blind way 
 done things that must be undone. 
 
 The City is already awake to the need of expenditures of more 
 money for vocational education. Education is a business as cer- 
 tainly as manufacturing is a business. Every manufacturing es- 
 tablishment expects to spend a certain portion of its budget of 
 expenditures for the proper management and supervision of its 
 work. It is just as necessary that New York City should plan 
 now for the expenditure of a sufficient amount of money for such 
 adequate supervision of the work as will insure success from the 
 outset. 
 
 The State of Massachusetts, with less than half the population 
 of The City of New York and expending out of state funds last 
 year not more than $150,000, has a department of vocational edu- 
 
 19 
 
cation whose duty it is to supervise and approve the state-aided 
 schools of the commonwealth. This department, which is a distinct 
 phase of the work of the State Board of Education under the 
 Commissioner, has for the coming year a deputy and a staff of 
 five regular agents, to whom are added, for special kinds of super- 
 vision during the year, at least five additional persons. New York 
 City, with a population of more than five million people spending 
 not less than $250,000, has practically no supervisors under the 
 Board of Superintendents for this task. 
 
 The Board of Superintedents face the large primary responsi- 
 bility under the Superintendent of Schools for the work and the 
 Superintendent is responsible to the Board and the Board, in turn, 
 to the citizenship of New York. If the work of such a department 
 for vocational education is effective it must have large freedom 
 to adapt itself to the conditions of its problems. The Board of 
 Superintendents can best discharge the task devolving upon it by 
 confining its activities to the establishment of broad policies and 
 principles on the recommendation of the responsible department. 
 This would leave the director of the department of vocational edu- 
 cation and the experts under him large initiative and freedom in 
 applying these policies and principles to the establishment and 
 operation of schools. 
 
 The largest note in municipal government today is the location 
 of definite responsibility so that those so responsible who have 
 failed may be relieved of the task and others chosen to discharge 
 it properly. Responsibility of this character in a department must 
 be accompanied by sufficient authority and freedom to afford a 
 fair opportunity to work out the problem unhampered. Vocational 
 education for New York City requires a distinctive management 
 of the task. Distinctive management requires the establishment of 
 a department for vocational education. The location of definite 
 responsibility requires that this department of vocational machin- 
 ery should be under the Board of Education. This filters the 
 responsibility for its work through the Mayor who appoints the 
 Board of Education, down through the Board of Education to the 
 City Superintendent of Schools, the Board of Superintendents under 
 him, to the department itself. Unity in organization at the top 
 coupled with the distinct separation and organization of the ma- 
 chinery to deal with the problem. This is not only sound business 
 and educational procedure but absolutely necessary for success. 
 
 The same principles will apply to all those special departments 
 of the New York schools, like the Bureau of Research and the 
 Board of Examiners, which are in any way concerned with voca- 
 tional education in the schools. It is becoming more and more 
 apparent that vocational education will succeed whether handled 
 by the public schools or any other way in proportion as its plans 
 are based on a thorough knowledge of the conditions and problems 
 to be met in the vocations, in the schools and in the attempt to 
 
 20 
 
bring the vocations and the schools into helpful cooperation with 
 each other. 
 
 The Bureau of Research has already been created within the 
 New York public school system. This will be needed as the work 
 for vocational education progresses for continued study and in- 
 vestigation in order to gather the data upon which effective schemes 
 of training can be based. The organization of a separate bureau 
 for the investigation of matters connected with vocational educa- 
 tion would probably under the conditions which obtain in New 
 York City be confusing and inadvisable. The simpler plan would 
 be to organize under the Director of the Bureau of Research two 
 divisions or aspects of its work; one having to do with the affairs 
 of the regular education and the other with the affairs of practical 
 education. This would centre responsibility by giving unity at 
 the top in administration. 
 
 There are undoubtedly by-products which result from studies 
 within the regular schools that would be helpful for vocational 
 education. There are undoubtedly by-products which result from 
 a study of commerce, or of the industries or of the home which 
 would be of large benefit for regular education. Gathered by one 
 bureau, these benefits would be conserved and interchanged. A 
 recognition of the two distinct functions of the Bureau would, of 
 necessity, require the employment of assistants of special capacity 
 and experience in dealing with matters of importance to regular 
 education and likewise of specially qualified assistants to deal with 
 matters of importance for vocational education. 
 
 The success of any vocational school or class rests primarily 
 with the teacher. Many of the teachers, at least, connected with 
 the work must have for their largest asset thoroughgoing and suc- 
 cessful experience in the trades or vocations which are being taught. 
 The selection of these teachers through certification and appoint- 
 ment is one of the most difficult and at the same time most critical 
 tasks confronting the New York schools. 
 
 The Board of Examiners is empowered by law to certificate all 
 the teachers employed by the New York public school system in 
 any capacity. This Board has through the years of the past had 
 an exceedingly difficult burden placed upon it, and, on the whole, 
 has discharged its task exceedingly well. Whatever else may be 
 said about the system of certification which has been built up in 
 the New York schools, it must be conceded without hesitation that 
 the Board of Examiners has stood with its back to the wall against 
 the press of partisan and personal politics which it has fought most 
 successfully. Undoubtedly, a large part of the excellent work done 
 by the New York public schools must be attributed to the courage 
 and the honesty which the Board of Examiners has shown in the 
 selection of teachers. 
 
 Teachers for vocational subjects, particularly teachers of indus- 
 trial education must be tested by different standards from the 
 purely academic ones used in the selection of regular teachers. 
 
 21 
 
In selecting teachers for any trade or vocation we must first 
 determine for that trade or vocation the length and character 
 of trade experience or contact which should be required as the 
 minimum. Likewise, the extent of trade knowledge and the ability 
 to use that knowledge in the trade. So also with the ability of 
 the candidate to give instruction in the trade or in subjects related 
 to the trade. 
 
 There are more than four hundred trades or vocations in New 
 York City which present possibilities for training of one kind or 
 another through the schools. It is obvious that for each one of 
 these vocations a different set of standards must be established 
 and that no one person or no one group of persons can evolve these 
 standards only with the help of employers and employes who have 
 themselves had successful experience in the line of work under 
 consideration. What is needed is the establishment of machinery 
 and devices which will make this help available. 
 
 It is equally true that the written examination alone cannot 
 serve as a satisfactory method of testing the fitness of a prospective 
 teacher of a vocational subject. Not only must the character of 
 the written examination be different from that employed for regu- 
 lar teachers, but credentials giving evidence of previous experience 
 and preparation and practical tests of the ability of the candidate 
 must be widely employed. Here again, no one person or group of 
 persons will be able to handle the task without the close and inti- 
 mate cooperation of the practical man. 
 
 Realizing this situation, there are not wanting those who believe 
 that a separate Board of Examiners for teachers of vocational edu- 
 cation should be established. Under the present charter and stat- 
 utes for the City, this separation could only be accomplished 
 through special legislation in Albany. 
 
 Another way which lies entirely open for adoption for the 
 present at least requires a square recognition on the part of all 
 concerned that the Board of Examiners has two phases or aspects 
 of its work; one, the certification of teachers for the regular 
 schools and the other, certification of teachers for the vocational 
 schools and classes. 
 
 A clear understanding of the entire difference in character be- 
 tween the task of testing regular teachers and that of testing vo- 
 cational teachers is at the present time fundamental. There fol- 
 lows in its wake the necessity of organizing separate machinery 
 under the Board of Examiners for the selection of vocational 
 teachers. 
 
 The limits of this address will not permit the detailed descrip- 
 tion of any proposed plan. Some one or more of its members 
 should be especially delegated by the Board of Examiners, subject 
 to its direction, to organize special committees representing the 
 different trades and occupations for which teachers are from time 
 to time to be certificated. These committees, in my opinion, should 
 also include representation from the department of vocational edu- 
 
 22 
 
cation which is to be responsible for the work of vocational teach- 
 ers, after they have been appointed. A separate committee from 
 each trade should include both employers and employes of recog- 
 nized standing who have special interest in the problem and are 
 able to contribute the information and assistance necessary to an 
 effective plan both as to standards and as to methods of testing 
 the prospective teachers of subjects relating to the vocation which 
 the committee represents. 
 
 It is altogether likely that such a service would be rendered 
 by such representative persons without compensation and furnish 
 a very valuable way by which the vocation could cooperate with 
 the schools. The work of these committees would not be burden- 
 some. They could be called together at such times as might 
 be necessary in order to revise standards and methods of 
 testing in the light of the developments within the trade 
 and the success of the teachers previously selected. Should 
 it be deemed advisable to pay for the service the Board of Exam- 
 iners could readily secure by order from the Board of Education 
 a modest appropriation sufficient to meet the expense. 
 
 There should be large flexibility in adopting the actual testing 
 of the candidates to conditions. Written examinations, if em- 
 ployed, should be of a very practical character testing the ability 
 of the candidate to employ his knowledge in the trade itself. Much 
 attention should be given to the careful gathering and weighing 
 of information as to previous trade experience, academic prepa- 
 ration and success of the candidate either as a workman or as a 
 teacher. Wherever it is thought advisable practical tests could be 
 made of the ability of the candidate either as a workman or as 
 an instructor in trade processes or in subjects related to the trade. 
 
 All the information of every kind concerning the candidate, 
 including written examination, certificates, diplomas, recommenda- 
 tions, confidential communications and records of practical tests 
 of any kind should be regarded as in the nature of credentials 
 to be passed upon finally before the Board of Examiners, together 
 with the recommendations of those conducting the examinations. 
 This would leave the Board of Examiners free as a court of last 
 resort to pass upon the fitness of the applicant, just as they are 
 in the case of the regular teachers. 
 
 What is needed above everything else, is that the Board of Ex- 
 aminers should recognize the difference between this task and that 
 of certificating regular teachers, should organize the plan of pass- 
 ing upon their qualifications so as to secure the help of the lay- 
 men, should adopt the recommendations of those who are in the 
 best position to know what should be done, should give large free- 
 dom and flexibility in adapting the scheme to the problems and 
 difficulties which must be met. All of this the Board can do and 
 at the same time, as the court of last resort, discharge successfully 
 its important task of certificating competent teachers for the schools 
 while protecting the service from politics and corruption. 
 
 23 
 
All that has been said with regard to the Bureau of Research 
 and the Board of Examiners is equally true of every other depart- 
 ment of the New York public schools whose duties touch in any 
 way the work in vocational education. 
 
 The Search for Special Groups 
 
 We have all heard the story of the man who had a dollar so 
 close to his eyes that he could not see the sun. There is very great 
 danger that in our enthusiasm for this, that, or the other excellent 
 scheme or plan of vocational education, we will lose sight not only 
 of the problem as a whole, but of other schemes and plans equally 
 excellent and equally necessary. Any intelligent and comprehen- 
 sive approach to the question as it presents itself in its bigness 
 in New York City should begin with a recognition of the many 
 different groups of people whose rights must be served and whose 
 needs must be met. 
 
 The workers of New York City, both present and future, differ 
 greatly from each other in ability, in preparation, in interest, in 
 aptitude, in opportunities and in ambition. It would be unjust 
 and narrow to adopt on an extensive scale any one scheme or plan 
 which met the needs of some and to neglect at the same time those 
 of all the rest. There is but one guiding star to follow in promot- 
 ing vocational education here or elsewhere. We must give those 
 whom we are to reach what they need and what they want, not 
 what we think they ought to want. 
 
 Before we can adopt devices for meeting the vocational needs 
 of the present and prospective workers of the City we must first 
 have a clear understanding of the different kinds and groups of 
 persons to be trained. 
 
 Here are more than 50,000 children over twelve years of age, 
 who, somewhere near their fifteenth birthday must make a choice 
 of work upon which they will enter at once or for which they will 
 take more training through the schools. New York City has al- 
 ready begun the development of pre-vocational classes through 
 which, by coming in contact with real experience drawn from the 
 world of work, these children may come to know what they want 
 to do and what they are fitted to do so that they can define the 
 choice of a vocation. The excellent beginning which has already 
 been made should not cease until these opportunities have been 
 opened up to every child who is not destined for a college and 
 professional career. 
 
 Here is another large army of thousands of children who do 
 not wish to attend the regular high school nor to enter at such an 
 early age upon wage earning. Their parents desire them to con- 
 tinue their education longer in school and want them to receive 
 training which will advance them in the direction of successful 
 employment when they leave the schools. These children are of 
 two different classes. Some of them want direct preparation for 
 
 24 
 
some trade or occupation upon which they can enter to advantage 
 after they become sixteen years of age or more. For them we 
 need to establish separate industrial and trade schools like the 
 Manhattan Trade School for Girls. 
 
 Some of them, and their number is legion, have not yet made 
 up their minds what vocation they wish to follow. They want to 
 extend their general education and to gain industrial experience 
 and insight which will enable them when they face the problem 
 of employment to make an intelligent choice of work and follow 
 it with some understanding of its problems gained through the 
 schools. For these, we need the development of general industrial 
 or vocational schools like the New York Vocational School for Boys. 
 
 Here is a great army of children, 40,000 or more in number, 
 leaving the schools every year to become bread winners at fourteen 
 years of age. Up to this time, we have utterly neglected the edu- 
 cational rights and needs of these children as soon as they left 
 the regular schools to become wage earners. Perhaps the most 
 important problem before any American city at the present time 
 is the development of continuation schools which will reach these 
 young workers. They may be roughly grouped into four classes. 
 
 A small number, much less than 5%, are engaged in vocations 
 which offer opportunities for the future and for which the schools 
 can give valuable supplementary training. 
 
 We need to establish continuation schools claiming a portion 
 of the time of these children for further training, which will in- 
 crease their proficiency in their work, if they desire it. 
 
 A second group, and the most neglected, is made up of children 
 who left the schools below grade, most of them not having passed 
 beyond the sixth year of the elementary schools. We need con- 
 tinuation school instruction for these, which will give further train- 
 ing in the elementary school processes and develop general and 
 civic intelligence. 
 
 The third group finished the elementary school course and now 
 desire to continue general education as the way out to efficiency 
 and happiness. We need to offer them in the time we can 
 secure away from their employment, an opportunity to pursue 
 further whatever studies they may desire. 
 
 A fourth group are engaged in dead-end or blind-alley jobs but 
 have buried within them ability and skill for some desirable trade. 
 Continuation schools should offer opportunities through prevoca- 
 tional training for these to learn what trade they should follow 
 and then should, so far as time permits, give them training for it. 
 
 Here are thousands of young persons between sixteen and 
 twenty-one years of age who are employed as apprentices or other- 
 wise, in the skilled trades and vocations in New York City. We 
 need to establish part-time schools and classes in order to give 
 these young workers a chance to secure the preparation necessary 
 for the widest proficiency in their employment, giving an avenue 
 out to better wage, promotion and leadership. 
 
 25 
 
Here are thousands of adult workers over twenty-one years of 
 age who are employed in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled 
 work of the City. Three groups present themselves. There are 
 the men and women, many of them foreign born, who want more gen- 
 eral education. Some of them want to learn our language. Some want 
 such things as arithmetic and some want other general night school 
 courses. Some want an opportunity to express themselves in art. 
 General evening classes should minister to their needs. There are 
 the men and women who want advanced technical instruction for 
 the trades in which they are engaged. These should have the bene- 
 fit of general evening technical classes of a very practical char- 
 acter, such as are now offered in some of the New York evening 
 schools and in such institutions as the Mechanics Institute, Cooper 
 Union and Pratt Institute. 
 
 There are the ordinary workers in the trade who want to learn 
 new machines or new processes which require a greater knowledge 
 of the related studies that will assist them in the ordinary work 
 of their callings. For these, we need to establish separate classes 
 which will give the short and brief courses necessary to serve the 
 interests of specific groups of men in overalls. They are the bone 
 and sinew of our manufacturing life. 
 
 There is a growing feeling throughout the country that as long 
 as children under sixteen years of age are employed in industry, 
 legislation should provide for compulsory instruction in continua- 
 tion classes for them. In Wisconsin, a state-wide compulsory law 
 of this character has already gone into effect and has resulted in 
 the large attendance on the "Wisconsin continuation schools. Mass- 
 achusetts. New York and Indiana have local option laws which 
 authorize boards of education in local communities to establish 
 and make such continuation classes compulsory upon children un- 
 der sixteen. Thus far. Boston has been the one city in all these 
 states which has through its school committee adopted these com- 
 pulsory classes. These will go into effect on September 1st of the 
 present year. 
 
 Two years ago I had the pleasure of being associated with Mr. 
 Arthur Dean. Chief of the Division of Trade Schools for New 
 York State, in drawing and securing passage for a local option 
 law which authorizes any city in New York State to maintain such 
 compulsory classes and to require the attendance upon them of 
 employed children between fourteen and sixteen years of age for 
 not less than four nor more than eight hours per week between 
 eight a.m. and five p.m. 
 
 This measure was known as the Wilmot Bill, having been in- 
 troduced by Senator Wilmot. Its passage was greatly aided by 
 many different civic agencies and had the hearty support of the 
 New York public school authorities; the act being approved by 
 President Churchill, Superintendent Maxwell and Mayor Gaynor 
 before being signed by the Governor. Probably no measure ever 
 
 26 
 
passed by the legislature gave greater power into the hands of 
 the Board of Education of New York City than the Wilmot Bill. 
 
 Under its provisions the Board of Education may establish 
 and make compulsory the attendance upon continuation schools in 
 any way it chooses. It may promote the work by making it com- 
 pulsory upon specific nationalities or races, boroughs, industrial 
 areas. The Board is empowered to select the children according 
 to age, or health or employment or previous schooling or grade 
 of school attained or upon any other basis which it may deem ad- 
 visable. It would be possible under this act for the school au- 
 thorities to single out one special group of fifteen children and 
 require them to attend such classes. 
 
 One of the moving causes for this bill and for the hearty sup- 
 port which it received in New York City was the fact that it 
 promised a substitute for the present utterly indefensible statute 
 requiring the attendance upon evening classes of children under 
 sixteen years of age who are employed during the day. These 
 children after long hours of labor in the factories are compelled 
 by law to attend evening school instruction. 
 
 The reports of District Superintendent Shiels and of City Su- 
 perintendent Maxwell on the evening school during the last two 
 or three years point out that it is not possible to enforce the law 
 with the present force of attendance officers, that less than 25% 
 of the children who come within the purview of the statute attend 
 the evening schools, that they fall asleep at their desks and that 
 physicians and social workers are agreed that such evening school 
 attendance for these children results in far more physical ill than 
 it gives educational benefit. 
 
 There are but two escapes from this situation. One is to raise 
 the age of compulsory school attendance to sixteen. For this step, 
 New York does not as yet seem ready. The other is to require 
 employers to give these children an opportunity to attend contin- 
 uation classes during the day. 
 
 Although this law has been in operation for over a year, not 
 one single compulsory class has been established in New York. The 
 problem facing the public school authorities is an exceedingly diffi- 
 cult one. They are not prepared to make the attendance compul- 
 sory upon from 50,000 to 80,000 children which would be neces- 
 sary if they attempted a general enforcement of compulsory at- 
 tendance. If they pick out specific groups of children or the chil- 
 dren from specific vocations, the charge of discrimination and 
 favoritism would be made. 
 
 The public school authorities have concluded up to this time 
 to attempt the development of this continuation work on a per- 
 suasive and voluntary basis. Here and there encouraging results 
 have already been secured, but the response to the voluntary ap- 
 peal has, to say the least, considering the great magnitude of the 
 task, not been very encouraging. At the present rate of progress, 
 
 27 
 
New York will require a quarter of a century to deal with the 
 problem. 
 
 Personally, I favor an amendment of the present act so as to 
 provide that within five years from the passage of the amendment, 
 the attendance upon such continuation classes will be made com- 
 pulsory for the entire state. This will stimulate all local Boards 
 of Education, including the New York City Board, to begin to 
 deal with the problem in an experimental way in order that they 
 may learn how to handle it in a large way when state-wide com- 
 pulsion ensues. It will at the same time give due notice to local 
 employers of the step which is to be taken at a later date in the 
 enforcement of the act on a state-wide basis and stimulate them 
 to deal in a cooperative way with the local authorities now so that 
 they may be in a position to meet the expansion of the act 
 
 In my opinion, it is advisable to develop prevocational centres 
 and all-day industrial and trade schools by industrial and com- 
 mercial areas, choosing those that furnish the most promising op- 
 portunities. Continuation and part-time schools on the other hand 
 should be spread out over all the five boroughs in order to take 
 advantage of every possible opportunity of. inducing employers to 
 cooperate. 
 
 The effort to reach working people in evening schools should 
 also be made through classes that are offered at points favorable 
 to workingmen in all the five boroughs. 
 
 Cooperation with the Industry 
 
 In the ancient days, master and workman felt and discharged 
 a common duty and responsibility for the training of the workers 
 in order that the integrity of the craft might be preserved. Modern 
 industry shows a very decided tendency to throw the entire burden 
 of expense and trouble of every kind on the schools. Part of this 
 is, of course, due to the fact that the schools have not yet been 
 able to present to modern industry a promising program of coop- 
 eration. 
 
 It is certain that the school men cannot solve this problem by 
 themselves. They must have the close and intimate help of em- 
 ployers and employes in the trades and vocations in dealing with 
 the question. Time will not permit here any detailed description 
 of ways in which this can be done. Representatives of the trades 
 ought, and I think will be willing, not only to confer with the 
 public school authorities but to serve without compensation on 
 committees provided the public school authorities recognize the 
 work of such committees by using the information and the rec- 
 ommendations which they offer. 
 
 With the school authorities as the third part, an increasing 
 number of employers and trade unions will be willing to confer 
 together upon ways and means by which they can aid the schools 
 
 28 
 
in the training of workers. A growing number of employers will 
 find themselves willing to recognize educational training by larger 
 wage and to go to the trouble to so organize their work as to offer 
 their young workers time away from their employment for other 
 training. 
 
 The expense of vocational education in New York City when 
 developed to the full would be enormous if all of it were under- 
 taken by the schools. The vocations themselves must bear a part 
 of the cost. Shops must offer the opportunity for the shop train- 
 ing, leaving the schools to give related instruction. In many cases, 
 shops and factories and commercial houses must provide facilities 
 for classroom instruction under the roof of the plant. Where great 
 industries like the garment trade draw together large numbers of 
 workers into unions having large resources, employers and unions 
 should be asked wherever possible to undertake to a large extent 
 at least the joint burden and responsibility of training their own 
 workers. 
 
 Taking Mahomet to the Mountain 
 
 The establishment of vocational education in the community 
 requires a campaign of promotion at the outset. Public sentiment 
 must be roused, the value of the work must be set forth, the ad- 
 vantages of the schools advertised. Schools and classes must be 
 located at favorable points. We must carry the facilities for train- 
 ing close to the worker. Whenever necessary, we must take the 
 training into the very shop where he is employed, always with 
 the reservation that the training paid for at the public expense 
 must be controlled and supervised by representatives of the public. 
 
 A distinctive management for vocational education within the 
 school system through a separate department charged with the 
 duty and responsibility for its success. The employment of ex- 
 pert service in administration and supervision with large power 
 of recommendation, initiative and direction. The establishment 
 of machinery bringing employers and employes into hearty co- 
 operation with the vocational work of the schools and using the 
 practical advice and assistance which they contribute. A search 
 after the many different kinds and groups of persons — young and 
 old — not yet reached but needing the help of the schools and the 
 beginning of schemes of training to reach them. A recognition 
 of the duty and responsibility of the vocations themselves, par- 
 ticularly the larger ones of bearing a share of the task of training 
 their own workers. Large emphasis at the present time on the 
 promotion of part-time and continuation classes for wage earners, 
 who are so numerous and so long neglected. A legitimate cam- 
 paign for vocational education which will bring its benefits close 
 to the workers and carry its facilities wherever necessary to reach 
 them. These are essential features of the program for New York 
 City. 
 
 29 
 
Chairman: I will now introduce to you Dr. Gustave Strauben- 
 muller, who has been an unusually careful student of industrial 
 education and a recognized authority in the development of that 
 movement in Germany. The establishment of the Vocational School 
 for Boys and the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in this City 
 was due, in a large measure, to his efforts. 
 
 30 
 
Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller, Associate City Superinten- 
 dent op Schools, New York City, addressed the meeting as 
 
 FOLLOWS : 
 
 Your Honor, Ladies and Gentlemen: A few years ago an 
 attache of the embassy of a leading European country was in- 
 vestigating a matter entrusted to him by his government. He 
 was greatly surprised and impressed by the fact that American 
 employees were superior in general intelligence to the people of 
 the same class in his own country. He determined to find a rea- 
 son for this. He found that the railroads, the stores and the 
 manufacturing plants at that time were doing nothing to develop 
 this general intelligence. He determined to search farther, and 
 decided finally that it must lay with the child, its schooling and 
 general training. This foreign student unconsciously contributed 
 his mite to the tendency which led to the naming of the 20th 
 century as the " Century of the Child." It remained for this 
 century to take the child in all its relations to life from the realm 
 of indifference to the high plane of a vital issue. 
 
 For to-night's discussion on vocational training let us fancy 
 that New York City is a vast stage, and let me arrange the stage 
 setting for you. On one side of this vast stage there are the most 
 diversified industries and occupations found in any city of the 
 world. On the other side of this stage there are a million chil- 
 dren in schools of various kinds, the majority of whom will leave 
 school at fourteen years of age without graduating. 
 
 We know that these children and these industries and occupa- 
 tions will sooner or later become interdependent. The problem 
 is, therefore: "What can be done by the educational authorities, 
 by the employees and by the employers to fit these children to 
 continue and perpetuate these industries and occupations, and to 
 help to bring about conditions that will be satisfactory to the child 
 and to the employer, and the community at large? 
 
 Let us turn to the industries and occupations to try to find 
 out what the conditions are that must be met. 
 
 The margin of profit in business has been so diminished in 
 recent times that reduction of waste of all kinds has become a 
 great factor in the successful conduct of a business. The skilled 
 workers, trained by others, no longer swarm to this country to 
 do our skilled work. The industries that formerly relied parasiti- 
 cally upon the influx of skilled workers must now increasingly 
 depend upon American skilled labor. Judging? from reports and 
 statements, there seems to be a dearth of this kind of labor, and 
 this scarcity will increase and will affect disastrously our business 
 interests, unless something be done to prevent it. 
 
 The employer is not yet quite sure what he wants the schools 
 
 31 
 
to do that they can do, nor what he himself can do to remedy 
 matters. He, too, in a small way, is experimenting. Both the 
 merchant and the manufacturer complain that boys and girls who 
 come to them are not well prepared for the work required of them. 
 
 On the school side of this scene we find children leaving at 
 fourteen, for whom there are no places in the skilled industries 
 until they are sixteen or older. We find no special attempt at 
 vocational guidance, but we do find in elementary schools, in high 
 schools, and in colleges a realization that something must be done 
 to meet changed conditions. 
 
 What can be done to bring about an adjustment? 
 
 This is still a mooted question on both sides. But there is one 
 thing that we do know. Nothing much can be accomplished until 
 the city authorities, the employers and the employees themselves 
 work in harmony. 
 
 If the employer will find out what he wants the schools to do, 
 and what he can do in the matter of training; if the employees 
 will take advantage of the proper training offered them ; if the 
 city authorities will give financial aid and encouragement, a scheme 
 of vocational education for shop, store and schools can be developed. 
 
 We have in Mr. John Purroy Mitchell a mayor who senses 
 the importance of this question and the need of its solution; who 
 has weighed and is weighing the means suggested for its solution: 
 who is taking a personal interest in the matter of vocational train- 
 ing; whose cooperation, leadership and advice will be of moment- 
 ous value; whose presence here tonight marks a new epoch in the 
 development of the education that fits a child to its future life. 
 We have a President of the Board of Education whose enthusiasm 
 is boundless in the cause, and a Board of Education that will 
 support vocational training on sane lines. We have some manu- 
 facturers and some business men who are alive to the situation, 
 and we have labor organizations willing to help. Thorough and 
 extensive cooperation, however, is still lacking. Let me define 
 some of the terms to be used tonight bv auotina' from a report 
 of Dr. Shiels : 
 
 "Vocational instruction may include commercial, trade and agri- 
 cultural instruction, and training in the home-making arts. Any 
 of these types may be taught while the child is in the ordinary 
 school, either in prevocational classes, or in a school specifically 
 devoted to such work (e.g., the all-day trade school) ; in both of 
 which cases the pupils are entirely under school authority and, 
 therefore, not regularly employed. All-day trade schools are some- 
 times called 'prevocational schools,' as they undertake to teach 
 a pupil some occupation for which, after proper trial, he seems 
 especially fitted, but these schools should not be confused with the 
 ordinary prevocational classes, as the work of the former is more 
 intensive, and the equipment usually more complete. Again, we 
 may have provision for the instruction of pupils who are regu- 
 larly employed; if a portion of regular hours of employment 
 
 32 
 
be devoted to such instruction, we have the day 'continuation 
 schools'; if no part of the regular time of employment be used, 
 and if the instruction be during evening hours, we have the 'con- 
 tinuation evening school.' An evening school might afford instruc- 
 tion in some branch of commerce or of the trades to pupils whose 
 working hours were not devoted to the subject they were follow- 
 ing in the evening. Such a school would be an 'evening vocational 
 school,' but its pupils would not be 'continuation pupils.' " 
 
 Now let us see what actually has been done and is being done 
 on both sides, and let us begin with the schools. The first ques- 
 tion that arises is : Shall there be any vocational training as such 
 in the elementary schools? Many educators and business men be- 
 lieve that the best training a child can receive for an industrial 
 or commercial career is a good foundation in the fundamental 
 subjects constituting the ordinary school curriculum, and that such 
 training should extend over a period of seven or eight years. This 
 is the prevailing opinion in Germany, whose rise to industrial 
 supremacy is known to you all. So firm are the Germans in this 
 belief that shopwork, which is very common in American schools, 
 is seldom found in the German elementary schools. 
 
 If, therefore, we were to follow in the footsteps of Berlin, for 
 example, we should have no shops or kitchens in our elementary 
 schools. But society in Germany is not democratized as much as 
 it is in New York. Therefore, we have a different problem to 
 solve. In Germany a son usually follows in the footsteps of his 
 father. If his father be a mechanic, he becomes a mechanic; if 
 his father be in official or business life, he aims to get there him- 
 self. If his father be in a profession, that profession will be his 
 goal. Thus the personnel of the industries, the professions and 
 business are recruited in quite a natural way. This is not quite 
 so with us, and hence we do not in the same degree get the advan- 
 tages that come from inherited dispositions. Our girls and boys 
 are not only not predestined for their life work, but the whole 
 matter is left frequently to chance. It is for this reason that 
 vocational guidance in this country is a necessity, and our problem 
 a different one from that of Germany. 
 
 Drawing, considered the fundamental subject for all trades, 
 was introduced into the elementary schools some fifty years ago. 
 It was introduced for industrial purposes. There was little prac- 
 tical gain, because the lack of cooperation between the trades and 
 the schools led to wrong methods of teaching. Today the teaching 
 of drawing is more along practical lines. The next subject intro- 
 duced for the development of manual skill was manual training, 
 including shopwork. These subjects, regarded at first as only of 
 cultural value, now have a distinct trade tendency. Shopwork 
 is pursued not only in the interest of education in general, but 
 also in the interest of trade education. 
 
 Shopwork in New York City is being taught to 60,000 boys, 
 of whom 4,861 are below the 7th school year, i.e., the Board of 
 
 33 
 
Education is gradually extending shop practice to all boys above 
 a certain age, instead of restricting it to the boys who are in the 
 7th and 8th years. More than 60% of the teachers of shop work 
 are practical mechanics. "Work that would have cost the Board 
 of Education $8,000 was done in the schools last year. The tend- 
 ency toward the practical is evident. Shopwork might be made 
 more practical still if the time devoted to it were extended, if a 
 few power machines were set up in some schools, if simple sheet- 
 metal work were added as an alternating course, and finally, if 
 the course were made elastic enough to be adapted to some one 
 worth-while industry in the neighborhood. Shopwork is daily get- 
 ting away from its strictly cultural leaning ; it is becoming more 
 and more practical. 
 
 But real practical work in vocational training is being done 
 (1) in our day schools, (2) in continuation classes in cooperation 
 with certain firms, (3) in our evening schools, and (4) in our 
 truant school. 
 
 In connection with our day schools we have three trade 
 schools with a register of 1,327 ; we have two prevocational schools 
 with a register of 362; we have one trade modeling class with a 
 register of 15, and two schools in which home-making is taught, 
 with a register of 823 ; we have also a truant school. It must 
 be confessed that the total number thus being instructed, about 
 2,527, is entirely inadequate : we are not reaching the masses. 
 In the cooperative plan with various firms we are instructing 
 about 256 pupils, and in our high and elementary evening schools, 
 we are instructing in trade subjects, in commercial branches, and 
 in home-making about 17,000 pupils. I personally believe in the 
 so-called trade school as we have it in New York City. It is in- 
 tended for the ] 4-year-old boy (or girl) who knows what trade 
 he wishes to learn and whose parents can afford to keep him at 
 school for a .year or two longer. These schools give a boy an op- 
 portunity to lay a good foundation for a skilled trade at an age 
 when he can not get an opening in the skilled trades. In these 
 schools for boys and girls we give a good knowledge of the tech- 
 nique and some speed in about eighteen trades or branches of 
 trades, together with English and other subjects related to the 
 trades. I believe in teaching the home-making occupations to 
 girls because I know there is nothing more important to man than 
 the proper care of man, and because I know that 85% of all our 
 women over fifteen years of age become housekeepers. I believe 
 in that prevocational school whose main object is to o-ive a boy or 
 girl a ehance to discover his aptitudes and his leanings. The 
 average New York boy gets no help in this direction from any other 
 source, and, therefore, frequently becomes a drifter. I believe 
 in our trade and commercial evening schools because they eive an 
 opportunity to the man, woman, boy or girl who is engaeed at 
 some highly specialized trade an opportunity to learn some par- 
 ticular process, to handle some one machine, and to make of him- 
 
 34 
 
self a better workman or employee ; I believe above all in the great 
 efficacy of the continuation school on the cooperative plan because, 
 with the proper laws and proper cooperation, we can reach the 
 masses and supply their needs. The needs of the masses, like the 
 masses themselves, are rapidly progressive in nature. We can not 
 afford to sleep on this proposition. 
 
 What is this day continuation class or school? It is a cooper- 
 ative school. The cooperation takes place between a firm and the 
 Board of Education. The object of the school is to increase the 
 industrial or commercial efficiency of boys and girls. It is con- 
 ducted in the day time so that children of 14, 15 and 16 years 
 who work may have the evening for rest and recreation. Health 
 demands this. 
 
 In what does cooperation consist? The Board of Education 
 supplies the teacher and the firm pays the full wages of the boy 
 or girl while attending school, and also loses the services of the 
 boy or girl during that time. 
 
 What is to be taught in a continuation class? Boys and girls 
 who leave school at fourteen without graduating therefrom need 
 additional instruction in the common subjects. No child under 
 sixteen, and better still, under eighteen, should be freed entirely 
 from school control. The continuation school keeps a boy or a 
 girl under that control, and, in addition, closely relates the school 
 work with his daily occupation. For a class of boys or girls in 
 an organized business or trade very definite and very practical 
 instruction can be provided; for a class of errand boys or mes- 
 senger boys or hall boys continuation work in school subjects can 
 be provided. In some cases of illiteracy, some firms believe it 
 pays them to have the boys and men and women taught how to 
 read and write, as, in their estimation, it has a direct bearing on 
 their efficiency in doing purely manual work. One firm in England 
 gives a four years' course to its girl workers without giving any 
 direct training in the work of the factory. They believe it pays. 
 All who have tried it believe it pays. There is no doubt that the 
 continuation idea carried out to its fullest extent reaches more 
 boys and more girls than any other kind proposed. Why is the 
 continuation school so superior? Because the boy studies where 
 he works and while he works; his studies are not a thing apart 
 from his work ; he sees the practical application of his studies and 
 the need of such application. He has a motive, than which there 
 is no superior impetus. 
 
 Where is the continuation class to be taught? It is difficult 
 to conduct continuation classes in school buildings in New York 
 City. Large business houses, factories and stores in New York 
 City are usually located in non-residential sections, where there 
 are practically no schoolhouses. To ask these employees to travel 
 many miles to a school from their places of employment involves 
 too great a loss of time for the firm and the employee. The solu- 
 tion of the problem is to rent buildings or to erect schoolhouses 
 
 35 
 
in such sections, but no one can expect The Citv of New York 
 to do this. Therefore it is the plain duty of the business man to 
 supply a room or a space in which the proper kind of instruction 
 may be given. Or, two or three or more firms of the same char- 
 acter and located in the same section of the City may rent a nearby 
 loft for school purposes. As soon as we become convinced of the 
 value of such schools, rooms will be furnished by the firms. But 
 we shall never be convinced if we do not experiment with these 
 schools, to learn how to adapt them to conditions as they are. 
 
 The danger of the continuation school or class lies in the mis- 
 understanding of what constitutes such class. Boys or girls at- 
 tending a continuation class should be classified according to trades 
 and occupations; schools not so organized have proven a failure 
 wherever they have been tried. 
 
 In connection with the day continuation classes it may be noted 
 that there is a law in this state permitting the Board of Educa- 
 tion at any time to compel attendance of working boys and girls 
 under sixteen between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and that an 
 employer who will not allow such attendance must surrender the 
 privilege of employing such labor. 
 
 The evening trade and commercial schools are, next to the day 
 continuation schools, the means of reaching the greater number 
 of students. While these schools are primarily for the student 
 who has trade experience, i.e., who is working at his trade during 
 the day, yet there is even in these schools a large place for insight 
 into trade processes for those without trade experience. 
 
 The student in the evening school gets from the school what 
 no shop can give him, for lack of time. He is a most satisfactory 
 student because he relates every step he takes to real conditions 
 of business and manufacturing. The teachers of trade subjects 
 in all our schools in which trades are taught are mechanics; they 
 are men and women who have been in the trades and who, in many 
 cases, are still working at the trades they are teaching. 
 
 Why did the day trade schools and the evening trade schools 
 develop before the continuation or cooperative schools? Simply 
 because their organization was free from all complexity; they 
 could be organized by the Board of Education without the coop- 
 eration of an outside body. Why did the schools established by 
 corporations grow more rapidly than continuation classes? For 
 exactly the same reason, because their organization is simple. Co- 
 operation between two bodies whose functions and methods are 
 entirely different is a complex process needing nice adjustment. 
 The object of both parties to the bargain is really the same, viz., 
 to improve and to increase the industrial and commercial capacity 
 of the employee, but the manner in which it is to be accomplished 
 offers some difficulties. In the first place, the viewpoint and meth- 
 ods of the school man and the business man are popularly supposed 
 to be different. Hence the present need is to get these two train- 
 ing bodies together for the purpose of understanding each other. 
 
 36 
 
The second difficulty is to find a place in which to teach boys and 
 girls already employed. This I have already touched upon. The 
 third problem is the problem of the teacher. 
 
 Besides the various kinds of trade and commercial training 
 referred to, manufacturers and owners of large stores are doing 
 their own training. So important and far-reaching is this move- 
 ment that already a central office has been established in 'New 
 York City by the National Association of Corporation Schools for 
 the purpose of assisting those belonging to the Association in es- 
 tablishing schools. Fifty or more of the largest corporations in 
 the United States have joined in this movement. The object of 
 this Association is to develop the efficiency of the individual em- 
 ployee, to increase efficiency in industry, and to have courses in 
 established educational institutions modified to meet more fully 
 the needs of present day industry. 
 
 Labor unions have established schools of their own, notably in 
 the printing trade. Besides these there are private and philan- 
 thropic enterprises that have been in the field for a long time. 
 
 If I were in full control to do as I thought proper, and had 
 the means to carry out my ideas, I should select for experimental 
 purposes some section of the City, such as Greenpoint, in which 
 I should develop the continuation idea both in day and evening 
 schools. I should attempt in this section first to stop waste by 
 some method of selecting boys and girls in the elementary schools 
 for the work which they seem best fitted to do ; in other words, 
 I should guide them. This plan, if followed even superficially, 
 would stop some waste of time on the part of the child, and also 
 on the part of the employer after the child is in business. In 
 other words, I should begin selection, and possibly a little special- 
 ization in the elementary schools, even if I had to do it on a theo- 
 retical basis. 
 
 I should depend for success upon intelligent cooperation, which, 
 it is possible, would have to be developed and nurtured. I should 
 get the schoolman to know what the shops require, and employers 
 and employees to know what the teacher can do. 
 
 I should try to concentrate upon this movement all the social, 
 business and educational forces of the section. I should exhibit 
 the results of experiments to both employers and employees. 
 
 I should continue the Mayor's idea of conferences, and lastly, I 
 should be hopeful that a way could be found to maintain our indus- 
 trial efficiency, even without the aid of foreign-trained workmen, 
 and a way could be found to prepare our industries for world-wide 
 competition, and a way could be found to gain the ability to adjust 
 ourselves quickly and sucessfully to changing economic conditions. 
 
 Chairman: We are going to omit one or two of the musical 
 numbers. I know we are all anxious to hear fully from Mr. Wirt. 
 I do not want his speech to come too late in the evening. You 
 
 37 
 
can make all kinds of plans, good or bad, but however good we 
 cannot carry them out without money. Money comes through the 
 Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Now when the Board of 
 Education goes down there to ask for funds there are two officers 
 whom it must face and whom it must persuade — the Comptroller 
 and the Chairman of the Committee on School Inquiry. Both are 
 here this evening and T wall ask both to speak now. 
 
 38 
 
Hon. William A. Prendergast, Comptroller op the City of 
 New York, addressed the meeting as follows : 
 
 Your Honor, Ladtes and Gentlemen: Neither his Honor the 
 Mayor, nor the energetic President of the Board of Education 
 need be in the slightest doubt but that I thoroughly understood 
 the reasons for my being here. It is one of the privileges of the 
 Comptrollership to be invited to select parties ultimately for the 
 discussion of some little matter that will cost the City some little 
 money ; to large dinners where great public problems are duscussed 
 to which the City treasury should unquestionably be allied, and 
 then to public meetings such as this, but I am glad to be here any 
 way, even if for only financial convenience. 
 
 I do not intend to say very much because I know that you 
 have upon the program two very distinguished speakers from 
 abroad and that you are anxious to hear from them, and all that 
 is possible of the evening should be given over to them. 
 
 I want to say for the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, 
 if I may assume to speak for it in a very modest way, Mr. Mayor, 
 that it has become more thoroughly appreciative every month of 
 the importance of a- better relationship between that Board and 
 the Board of Education, and I think we can say with justice, or 
 with truth or accuracy, that the estimates, or rather the budget, 
 of the Department of Education for this year was made up more 
 fairly, more accurately, with less misunderstanding, or disputes, 
 with fewer altercations between high officials in the Board of Esti- 
 mate and Apportionment and very high officials in the Board of 
 Education than any budget in our history, and we are all very 
 glad that this is the case, and anything that any members of the 
 Board can do to continue this era of good feeling and make it 
 a permanent one, I think the members of the Board want to do. 
 I think the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has become so 
 thoroughly appreciative of the great work that you are supposed 
 to do, the responsibility that is upon you, that this year it organ- 
 ized among its standing Committees a Committee known as the 
 Committee on Education, the first time the Board has had such 
 a, Committee. To this Committee is being referred all questions 
 pertaining to educational matters, and I am sure that this scheme 
 is going to be very much more satisfactory than the old one, be- 
 cause now to every question in which the Board of Education is 
 interested the same Committee will give its attention. And we 
 also have as the very efficient Secretary of that Committee one 
 who is an educator herself, who understands the requirements of 
 the educator, Mrs. Ford. Really the members of the Committee 
 and the Chairman do very little indeed — we are only supposed to 
 
 39 
 
vote when it comes to money. Now that was to be the principal 
 point of my address and I will address myself to it. 
 
 We are all very well aware that New York City must meet 
 the pressing economic demand of the times by preparing her chil- 
 dren properly for a vocation, no matter what that vocation may 
 be. Very often when you use this word vocation people think 
 you are only referring to trades, but of course vocation covers 
 the entire field of human endeavor. Now I believe that New York 
 City has already done a great deal in that respect. I listened 
 with admiration to a most explicit statement of the work that 
 New York City has already undertaken from Superintendent Max- 
 well some two weeks ago tomorrow, and after listening to that 
 statement — we hope to give everybody an opportunity to read it 
 — no one will be under any misapprehension that New York City 
 has not been entirely alive to the fact that she had a great prob- 
 lem before her. One reason why more progress has not been made 
 in this work is that the demands of the Educational Department 
 have been so great that it seemed almost impossible to furnish 
 all the money that had been asked for. Great cities like New York 
 are conservative, they do not move as rapidly as Gary, Indiana. 
 New York, like all other great cities, usually permits other com- 
 munities to experiment with things before she undertakes to do 
 them, and after we undertake to do them, we do them. 
 
 Now, in order to carry out the designs of the Department of 
 Education we realize that money, as I have said, is required. I 
 do not suppose that it is possible — I base this statement upon my 
 experience of the last four years in the Board of Estimate and 
 Apportionment — I do not suppose it is possible to economize in 
 very many directions, but I will say this (and I am sure that 
 I am not going outside of the bounds of prudence when I say it) 
 that supported by the very earnest wishes of his Honor the Mayor, 
 and imbued as T am with full sense of our responsibilities towards 
 this question of vocational training, and speaking, I think, on 
 behalf of all the other members of the Board of Estimate and 
 Apportionment, that if there will be evolved what seems to be a 
 thoroughly comprehensive plan for developing the vocational idea 
 in our public sehnol system, the Board of Education when it comes 
 forward with that plan is going to receive as substantial support 
 as the generosity of the city treasury will warrant or justify. 
 
 Chairman: T now have the pleasure of presenting to you an- 
 other distinguished visitor, Mr. H. E. Miles, President of the 
 Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education. 
 
 40 
 
Mr. H. E. Miles, President op the Wisconsin State Board 
 of Industrial Education, addressed the meeting as follows: 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Members of the Board of Education, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : There are two kinds of schools in this world, one of 
 which we, in America, seem to have utterly overlooked. One is 
 the school of childhood — a place for babies and immaturity. In it 
 are all our children from the sixth to the fourteenth year, a pre- 
 cious lot in whom are our hopes and our dependence. They are 
 however, wholly receptive, imitative, obedient, absorbative. They 
 are doing nothing in an objective way that is helpful or produc- 
 tive. The educators' task in this school is to develop scientifically 
 and in all directions the faculties of these little ones that they 
 may be alert, well balanced and, in due time, creative. The high- 
 est type of scientific and professional training is essential for this 
 work. A half million teachers are devoting their lives to this 
 school. We are criticizing them very severely and, from my stand- 
 point, justly in the main. 
 
 The other school is the school of the day's work — the school 
 of adult practical experience. In the first school, the school of 
 childhood, are only a fifth of our people — in this other school, the 
 school of the day's work, are three-fourths of the people — are the 
 creators — the burden bearers — all of the hope and the fear of the 
 present day, the good and the evil and the entire making of the 
 life of the present. 
 
 In making this distinction, I am overlooking that little 3% of 
 the people who go through our high schools and that exceedingly 
 small number, a fraction of 1%, who go through our colleges. 
 
 Into this second school, the school of the day's work, full of 
 anguish and hope and fear, of blind but fierce endeavor, the Amer- 
 ican state must now enter. It must correlate knowledge with ex- 
 perience, make clear the pathways of the mind from lowly place 
 to higher, and higher. 
 
 Aware and alarmed at the human waste, the loss and sacrifice, 
 not of a part, but of the majority of our people, in the struggle 
 of life, we are inclined to turn upon the first school, the school 
 of childhood, ourselves ignorant of the second school — and its sep- 
 arate needs — and insist that the first school, the present common 
 schools of the country, now assume the impossible task of training 
 for industry, of teaching the actual practical requirements of every 
 occupation in the world. 
 
 We blame this first school because 80% or more of its children 
 leave its four-walled cloistered precincts at their fourteenth birth- 
 day, and propose now, by various and sundry devices, or, per- 
 chance, by sheer force of law and the police officer, as in cities 
 in this state, to induce or compel what we can of these fourteen- 
 
 41 
 
year children to stay on in this school of childhood, to stay away 
 from the world of the day 's work and of accomplishment as though 
 work and accomplishment are things to be avoided, unworthy and 
 degrading. 
 
 Adolescence 
 
 Children do not leave school at fourteen simply because they 
 are fourteen — nor because the law permits, but because they are 
 adolescent. The reason is psychological — pathological — you can't 
 keep the buttertiy from leaving the chrysalis at the appointed time 
 without hurting it or killing it. You can't keep the flower from 
 bursting from the bud without starving it. At adolescence the 
 will and the creative faculties burst into flower — those faculties 
 and capacities which are the most precious that we possess and 
 that most distinguish us from the brute creation. I shall never 
 forget when, on mentioning this to Mr. Edison, he exclaimed: 
 "Yes, I know that — I've been to the psychologists — I've been all 
 through that — to bind the adolescent child to the wooden bench 
 and the white page with the back marks on it — to say incessantly 
 to his creative impulses: 'Don't, don't, don't,' is to palsy his will, 
 as you would palsy an arm by binding it to the side. That's why 
 so many men, most men, have little will power and are ever afraid 
 to do those things which judgment clearly directs." 
 
 We adults may mislead fourteen-year children. We may intro- 
 duce into the school of childhood various toys and playthings — 
 even things made for altogether serious use — hammers and chisels, 
 saws and sewing machines, needles and cooking-utensils, and no 
 one can believe more than I in the introduction of these imple- 
 ments, and through their use, teaching the mind through the hand 
 and eye, and preparing the child, in a childish way, but just as 
 practically as his little mind makes possible, the beginnings of 
 those things which he is to do when he is a man. 
 
 When a great Spartan king, 2600 years ago, was asked "What 
 shall we teach the children?" he answered: "Teach them what 
 they are to do when they are men. ' ' The schools of America have 
 tried only to develop those general faculties and perceptions which 
 may enable the child quickly to grasp the essentials of the particu- 
 lar occupations upon which they must later enter. And for want 
 of detailed and particular instruction sixty per cent, of our chil- 
 dren — more than half of all who are born in America — concrete 
 or hand-minded, unable to accept of mere generalizations, at four- 
 teen are still in the fifth or sixth grade and then quit school. 
 
 The Cost 
 
 According to a recent statement of the National Society, three 
 million of these children leave school each year at fourteen. The 
 cost per pupil in every vocational or trade high school, of which 
 I know, that is, schools like the Stuyvesant High in New York, 
 
 42 
 
the Cass in Detroit or the Lane in Chicago, is about seventy dollars 
 in running expense and thirty dollars in interest on plant and 
 up-keep, or one hundred dollars per pupil per year. To this is 
 to be added at least another hundred in loss of wages, sometimes 
 sorely needed, or a total loss to the city and the child of two hun- 
 dred dollars per year, or six hundred million dollars for the three 
 million children per year, on the assumption that they should all 
 have such training, either in the women's arts, manufacturing, 
 commerce or agriculture. Twice this sum, if we include, as we 
 must, the fourteenth and the fifteenth year, and four times if 
 we go to the eighteenth year, as is contemplated for all continua- 
 tion and part-time schools. The Superintendent of Schools of 
 Pennsylvania voices the general judgment that such a plan of teach- 
 ing the vocations would bankrupt any state. 
 
 Make all the allowances you will from the figures here sug- 
 gested — and great allowance is necessary — and you still have an 
 annual expense very far exceeding the present total cost of the 
 public schools. An expense that must be noted with a billion mark. 
 Los Angeles, a city of a half million, has done its best in this di- 
 rection. Its Superintendent and Board of Education are brilliant 
 and able. But with a constantly rising school tax a forty per cent, 
 increase in the appropriation was demanded a year ago — about two- 
 thirds of this increase was for the increased expense due to the 
 introduction of the so-called vocational element. I sat repeatedly 
 with a committee of very able citizens of that community, not all 
 of them men, some of them very closely allied with the school work, 
 and here is the most important consideration of all: they could 
 not report upon that vocational work, much as they would have 
 liked to, without declaring that the introduction of that work in 
 palatial school plants, under conditions that might have been called 
 ideal — and certainly were far from real workaday conditions, has 
 caused many children to dislike their own homes and hate work. 
 
 In consequence of what, under the circumstances, may be called 
 the extreme development of this type of vocational work, an un- 
 fortunate situation has now developed there, with a possibility that 
 some of the best educators in the country will suffer from the gen- 
 eral belief that the work has been overdone, that the city has been 
 given "to much of a good thing." Years of experience caused 
 the committee mentioned earnestly to recommend that any city 
 undertaking to introduce the vocational element into its public 
 schools do so with very considerable moderation, and as a modifi- 
 cation of its present system rather than a radical overturning. 
 
 I believe this to be somewhat the experience in substantially 
 all the cities of the United States, and beyond question in the cities 
 of Europe. There were many of these vocational or trade high 
 schools having the vocational element as the centre of interest, and 
 effort, in Europe, fifteen years ago. There were many less five 
 years ago, and a friend of mine, recently returned, found that most 
 of those he visited five years ago have now disappeared. 
 
 43 
 
I wish to emphasize with all the force of which I am possessed, 
 the need of at once introducing the vocational element, of intro- 
 ducing it in the most practical way possible, and of doing it mostly 
 for its cultural effect at decidedly small expense and through the 
 employment of exceedingly practical teachers of long and suc- 
 cessful experience in the vocations and not necessarily with ex- 
 tended pedagogical training, for such training cannot now be se- 
 cured iti addition to the other and more necessary qualifications, 
 but must be acquired largely along with the instruction in night 
 courses, summer courses and where may be, by a ninety days train- 
 ing, as now in Boston, where picked men and women from the 
 industries are being prepared to teach thousands of pupils in the 
 continuation classes to be opened there next September. 
 
 We will be a far happier, nobler, more efficient and godlier 
 people when our children in the elementary schools, and more 
 especially in the latter years in those schools, are taught the value 
 and use of the hands, the use of the fundamental tools of the race 
 and the dignity of the occupations that depend upon them. 
 
 All this work, however, is primarily the task of the professional 
 educator. Not as he has been, but as he will be shortly when he, 
 together with the leaders in all other walks of life, becomes the 
 leader that he ought to be and rises to the opportunities and 
 responsibilities of the new and wonderful era in which we live. 
 
 True Vocational Education 
 
 True vocational education is, however, a task quite beyond any 
 single institution apart from the rest of the world. It calls upon 
 all the energies, spiritual, intellectual and physical of all the peo- 
 ple in all the walks of life. "We must get a new conception of the 
 value and the dignity of the day's work — not, may be, work as 
 it is, but certainly of work as it ought to be and as we are about 
 to make it. We may not know why Adam was created. May we, 
 however, recall the only suggestion that the Bible gives? Imme- 
 diately upon his creation he was "put in the garden to dress and 
 to keep it." And, when the Infinite One sent into the world a 
 part of Himself, The Only Son, He was put, not in the home of 
 a teacher, banker or lawyer, but in a carpenter shop where in the 
 day's work knowledge and wisdom came unto Him. 
 
 Carlisle says something like this: "All true work is sacred. 
 In all true labor, be it but true hand labor, there is something 
 Divine." In the impulse of the adolescent child to go to work 
 at fourteen, there is, after all, this reaching for the Divine. In 
 the poor child's hunger for the world of work and of real things 
 is a tiny reflection of that Infinite Spirit that in the seven days 
 made the world. 
 
 I would fear beyond measure the present day endeavor in many 
 places, and more especially among school teachers, to keep children 
 away from work, retard or break this initial impulse, could I think 
 
 44 
 
that it possibly might succeed. But the older and wiser countries 
 of Europe have tried out again and again and in each country, 
 all our present speculations in this respect. They let the child 
 that is concrete minded and ill fitted to a scholarly life, go to 
 work at fourteen but they don't abandon him as we in America 
 abandon eighty per cent, of our fourteen-year children and leave 
 them half blind and for the most part helpless and uninformed 
 to fight their way among and against thoughtless and selfish adults. 
 The State goes into the occupation with the child — it is nothing 
 less than a social crime that we have committed for tens of years, 
 an infinite provincialism, in not taking a similar course. All the 
 working places of America must be made in a measure places of 
 education. This world exists for the people thereof. The nation, 
 the state, the community and all that in them is. The first and 
 chief duty is to make men and women, and the wonder of it all 
 is, that every development of this principle that is right, that is 
 full of the best intelligence and heart of the people, makes for 
 all those several and personal profits, comforts and advantages 
 which we each of us most desire. It is not socialistic. 
 
 Industry 
 
 I might say that the heavy hand of the State must be laid upon 
 industry to this end, but the opposite is true, the heavy hand, the 
 hand of ignorance or inconsideration, would blight and destroy it. 
 The hand that is laid upon industry must be a hand infinitely 
 expert in industry — the hand that knows industry, its every im- 
 pulse and symptom as the most skilled diagnostician in the world 
 knows his particular kind of ailment — the hand of industry itself. 
 
 Labor 
 
 So, we may say, that the heavy hand of the State must be laid 
 upon labor, upon the parents and the children and all others who 
 live by their hands, but this hand of the State also is a gentle and 
 saving hand for it must be in the main, the hand of labor itself 
 laid upon itself and all the intelligence and spirit that labor at its 
 best possesses. 
 
 Practical Control 
 
 It is easy to destroy, difficult to build up. The professional 
 educator who must always lead in the academic schools knows little 
 or nothing of industry. Just as he must lead and be respected 
 in his leadership in the school where children are developed in 
 their general faculties from the sixth to the fourteenth years, or 
 a little later, so he must yield in this other work to the men of 
 affairs and for the same reason. He knows the purely academic; 
 they know the occupations. Neither can get on without the other, 
 
 45 
 
each must measurably satisfy the other, but he who knows, in 
 either case, must lead. This implies no discredit to the profes- 
 sional educator — this is an age of specialization. Men succeed in 
 each line of endeavor now, much in proportion as they confine 
 their efforts to a mere fraction of the general field, the lawyer to 
 marine law or corporation law or criminal law or any one of a 
 dozen other branches — never to all. Our colleges are independent, 
 our normal schools, our boys' college preparatory schools and, in 
 some States, even our high schools, and yet all are correlated and 
 affiliated unofficially and as well correlated as those who severally 
 direct them find possible. 
 
 This is the European experience, Dr. Kerchensteiner of Munich 
 has one Board for general education and another Board for voca- 
 tional schools. In Crefeld is a separate Board of nineteen members 
 representing all the principal occupations of that city devoted ex- 
 clusively and to the limit of its ability to its vocational schools. 
 Says Dr. Kerschensteiner : " I could not get along any other way. ' ' 
 This separate and practical direction of vocational education is the 
 rule throughout Europe except in Russia and England. Our rela- 
 tion to these latter countries is suggested by Dr. Kerschensteiner 's 
 statement: "Nowhere except in Russia and in England have I 
 seen such neglect of childhood as in the United States." 
 
 Those who are responsible for our present schools have been 
 utterly unable to control and direct the body of our children after 
 the fourteenth year. It is easily done. They must now leave it 
 to those who can do it, as it is being done throughout Northern 
 Europe, to the men of affairs, the men in the industries, employers 
 and employees. 
 
 There should be established in New York City, as well as else- 
 where throughout the country, a sub-committee ot the present 
 Board of Education, with power, consisting of an equal number 
 of those who direct the industries and of those who work in them. 
 Or a separate Board appointed by the Board of Education with 
 power, not separate in the full sense and as that word has been 
 interpreted by many in alarm and anger, but associated and affil- 
 iated as a sub-committee would be if only it has power. It must 
 have power, otherwise after finding what to do with extreme care 
 and consideration, its energies would be wasted and its patience 
 exhausted in a vain endeavor to instruct the general Board, now 
 and always taxed beyond its strength with its own general and 
 especial problems. Furthermore, unless this sub-committee has 
 power, there will always be the risk of a single member or a minor- 
 ity too impatient or unwilling to work out its problems in its own 
 committee, rushing to the general Board with consequent confu- 
 sion, bad feeling and inaction. 
 
 The confidence with which many men in public office and else- 
 where insist that they be trusted in the management of affairs is 
 too often in reverse proportion as thev themselves trust others 
 or permit, others to be trusted. New York abounds with employers 
 
 46 
 
and skilled workingmen and women, so large minded and humani- 
 tarian, so tremendously experienced in the needs of the occupa- 
 tions and of those who work in them, and of the citizenship of 
 this great community, that not one but a dozen committees of five 
 or seven could be named, half employers, half workers, and the 
 odd man an especially selected educator, the City Superintendent 
 for instance. These men could be trusted with the entire problem 
 as no other men could be in the world. They will be trusted before 
 New York gets right. Those representing employment, backed by 
 the authority of the City and State, with ripe experience and broad 
 judgment, will make you marvel shortly at what industry is pre- 
 pared to do, and the representatives of labor will bring to the 
 working people a new appreciation of the day's work with its 
 new hopes and opportunities. 
 
 Wisconsin 
 
 This has been done in Wisconsin. There we have a State Board 
 especially named, consisting of three especially competent educa- 
 tors, three skilled employees and three employers. In every city 
 of five thousand people or more, by compulsion of law, the local 
 Board of Education has named a Board of Industrial Education, 
 consisting of two employers, two employees and the City Superin- 
 tendent. By statute the City places at the disposal of this Board 
 whatever funds it requires, not exceeding a half mill on the prop- 
 erty tax. 
 
 Compulsory Attendance 
 
 Every child in these cities, that is in employment, has a work- 
 ing permit issued with care, not simply permitting him to work 
 and enabling him after getting that certificate to do whatever he 
 will for the rest of his life, but, instead, noting a particular place 
 of employment where he must remain or come back to the all-day 
 industrial school, or go to another permitted place of employment. 
 If he leaves his employer, the employer, under penalty, must notify 
 the authorities so that the school and truancy officers may check 
 the child and see that these conditions are met. The State of New 
 York has what we may call "Local Option." The Board of Edu- 
 cation of this City by a simple majority vote can and should re- 
 quire the attendance of every child in employment upon the special 
 vocational continuation or part-time school for the four hours a 
 week noted in the law. New York City has from seventy to ninety 
 thousand fourteen- and fifteen-year children out of school, in idle- 
 ness or in "dead end" unpromising employment. They are dis- 
 regarded, neglected, groping, purblind, fast losing all those spiritual 
 values that make men; cheated by their own city of that educa- 
 tion which is the birthright and chief inheritance of an American, 
 for they are either misfits or unfitted, while education is "the fit- 
 
 47 
 
ting of the individual to take his place and do his part in the life 
 of his time and his community." 
 
 New York is not peculiar in having from seventy to ninety 
 thousand of these imperiled youngsters upon her streets. While 
 the number is greater, the percentage in proportion to population 
 is substantially the same as in the average industrial city through- 
 out the country. Think of sixty per cent, of all our children com- 
 ing to this untimely end throughout the country in the fourteenth 
 year and add to them the great unlettered immigration and say 
 whether we are in peril of our institutions and whether any but 
 ourselves, adult and responsible, are at fault. 
 
 In the cities of Wisconsin, there isn't a single such neglected 
 child, except as he is beyond discovery and learning the vocation 
 of artful dodger beyond the ken of the law. I would hesitate greatly 
 to commend the Wisconsin experience to you, were it isolated or 
 peculiar. It is the experience of hundreds of millions of people 
 in the north of Europe. People very like ourselves and from whom 
 we come, who send us three-fourths of the men and women who fill 
 the commanding places in our factories, as foremen and superin- 
 tendents, and do most of the work requiring real skill. And yet, 
 our disinherited sons and daughters have a native ability, initiative 
 and energy that we sincerely believe makes them naturally superior 
 to all others. 
 
 The Utterly Obvious 
 
 It seems exceedingly difficult for an American to do the utterly 
 obvious. We see sixty per cent, of our children disinherited, edu- 
 cationally, and yet we refuse really to comprehend or notice. If, 
 perchance, we do, we say, as did a State Officer of education in 
 Philadelphia Saturday, "It would cost too much," when the Wis- 
 consin Continuation Schools are deeply touching the lives of all 
 working children under sixteen, and of many thousands of older 
 people of all ages, at an average cost of not over fifteen dollars 
 per year per person. Or, "It's right, but it can't be done," when 
 it's the easiest thing that Wisconsin has done in many years. It's 
 a positive joy, equally for employers, working men and all who 
 are public spirited, happily to conspire in this common effort to 
 uplift by the most intelligent processes known to man, the average 
 citizenship and every needy individual, not by charities and cor- 
 rections, but by the strengthening of the spirit, the intelligence 
 and the personal efficiencies. 
 
 No Survey 
 
 A man buried under his work and a year behind needs no im- 
 aginative, speculative expert, rushing about, conjuring up things 
 that he might do if he had time. New York is forty years, as time 
 has gone, behind North of Europe countries in the training for ef- 
 fective use of the faculties of her children for the day's work and 
 
 48 
 
a life of service. Her first duty is to the forty-five thousand that 
 she is disinheriting this present month. Her next, to the forty-five 
 thousand she disinherited this day a year ago — and so on. She 
 wants no new buildings — she had best not bury her feet in brick 
 and concrete. Rent lofts in fireproof sanitary buildings, bring 
 in the children from all the occupations for a half day during 
 sunlit working hours — bring for them teachers chosen directly from 
 the occupations to be taught. If you cannot handle 45,000 at once, 
 as is probable, make allotments, as Boston is doing under a similar 
 law, and get to work with them in September as Boston will do. 
 This is simply beginning at the beginning. Your first obligation. 
 
 With the management right, you will be delighted with devel- 
 opments. In Milwaukee twenty-three languages are spoken. Her 
 condition differs from New York's in little else than size. Begin- 
 ning in this way she first taught very few trades. Her schools 
 have been open continuously for eighteen months. She now teaches 
 all the usual women's occupations and about ten men's trades. In 
 September, after a vacation throughout August, she will begin with 
 eighteen or twenty men's trades. Nothing is so easy or so natural 
 with such a beginning as to add in sequence, as it were, trade after 
 trade. Only with such a beginning can trades be taught with 
 proper correlation to the general work, so that beginners may rise 
 naturally to the more difficult occupations. 
 
 The Higher Beaches 
 
 The foregoing is the kindergarten work, as it were, of voca- 
 tional education. Few of us have contemplated the upper reaches. 
 Industrially, we have been well described as a nation of stevedores 
 bearing down to the ships of the seas the crude and semi-crude 
 heritage of the ages, from forest, field and mine, with only enough 
 of brains put into the shipment to make it fit for ship's cargo. 
 Our captains of industry with marvelous ability are exporting tre- 
 mendous quantities, but fifty-six per cent, of our exports of so- 
 called manufactured products are of such crude stuff as beef, 
 hides, petroleum, crude copper, flour and steel in its rougher forms, 
 containing, as I estimate, from five to fifteen per cent, of manu- 
 facturing wages. Our imports are the reverse. Mostly the skill 
 and brain of foreign workmen and industrial experts and engi- 
 neers with only enough material to give their brains expression. 
 The very stuff that we send abroad often comes back at ten and 
 forty-fold price. 
 
 New York City is and will be the first to feel the effect of bal- 
 ancing unskilled native labor with the highly skilled foreign labor. 
 Our expert vocational schools must reach as soon as possible from 
 the humble beginnings noted to the topmost developments in art 
 and science and all places between. The school teacher in the 
 vocational school must provide the laboratory and the very latest 
 experience and development in any part of the world to the in- 
 
 49 
 
dustries of his community, under that practical guidance and co- 
 operation of those in the industry that assure the heartiest right 
 coordination and understanding in all directions. 
 
 In Conclusion 
 
 There is every indication that vocational education as here de- 
 scribed, based upon all previous successful human experience, is 
 coming in the United States almost immediately. It is being de- 
 manded by the representatives of labor and of employment and 
 in the common interest. Several cities will begin to do their full 
 duty toward their children in September, as all towns in Wiscon- 
 sin are endeavoring to do. It seems that New York will not fail. 
 Not in this generation has there been such evident opportunity for 
 her leaders so to benefit her people. The measure of that benefit 
 can only begin to appear when her heretofore disinherited chil- 
 dren and adult workers are brought into her schools and in their 
 faces is seen the story of their inefficiency, their neglect, their 
 hopes and their capacities. 
 
 That story is a wonderful one — I wish I might tell it. When 
 you see it in your own city, you will understand all that has been 
 said about the shortcomings of the present schools and will see a 
 new light, a new hope and confidence, pervading the entire citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 Chairman : I believe that the Comptroller was right when he 
 said that New York often permits other cities to make experiments 
 and then takes the best of what it finds has been done and goes 
 forward in achievement here. 
 
 I am not sure that it is always wise to wait for experimentation 
 elsewhere, but I am sure it is entirely wise for us to study the best 
 that has been done in other places and to make use of it. Gary 
 may be an experiment station, but I am sure from what I saw of it 
 during the brief time that I was able to spend there on our trip 
 west that it is an entirely successful experiment under the guidance 
 of Mr. Wirt. We found during our trip west nothing that was 
 more interesting than the system that Mr. Wirt has developed 
 and established in Gary. We have invited him to come here to- 
 night and to tell us again the main features of that system and 
 to hear from him the recommendations he can make to us based 
 on what he has done and what he has learned in Gary. I have the 
 pleasure of presenting to you Mr. William Wirt, of the School 
 System of Gary. 
 
 50 
 
Mr. William Wirt, Superintendent of Schools op Gary, In- 
 diana, ADDRESSED THE MEETING AS FOLLOWS: 
 
 Mr. Mayor, President op Board of Education, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : According to many of our critics the only legitimate 
 claim that Gary has to fame in its school system is the fact that 
 it was visited by Mayor Mitchel. I am sure that the school cities 
 visited by the New York party were very appreciative of the cour- 
 tesy shown them. But I am sure also that that trip of your Mayor, 
 and the President of your Board of Education, and the persons 
 that they took along with them, meant a whole lot more to the 
 educational welfare of this country than visiting only three cities. 
 The fact that the Mayor of New York City would take the time 
 to travel a thousand miles to study school problems ; the fact that 
 he sacrifices his time here in the city to cooperate with the Board 
 of Education in the solution of many of their problems, is a sug- 
 gestion to civil officers and authorities everywhere in this country. 
 One of the great difficulties with the public school system in the 
 past has been that, in the opinion of mayors of cities, the business 
 men of cities, the professional men of cities and the industrial 
 leaders of cities, any one could teach a school and that a school 
 problem existed largely for Fourth of July orators anyhow. To- 
 day the school problem is being looked upon from an entirely dif- 
 ferent viewpoint. It is no longer a problem for young women 
 teaching school, but it is a problem that demands the intelligent 
 application of the biggest business men, the biggest officials, the 
 largest and brightest professional individuals the community af- 
 fords, and I know of no other city that has the opportunity to so 
 develop the school system that will make the city a fit place for 
 the rearing of children as you have here. 
 
 As I see it the problem is one of cooperation, and with the civil 
 authorities and the school authorities cooperating as they are in 
 New York City you have an opportunity to do things that many 
 other cities don't have. I do not believe that any part of any city 
 can solve its social problems alone. I believe that the schools 
 should give up the idea that they are a separate entity in the com- 
 munity — a separate organization in the municipality. I believe 
 that the time is near when every department of our municipal 
 housekeeping must work together in harmony with every other 
 department and that in effect we will have only one department 
 for making our cities the best places possible in which to live. 
 
 What has been done in Gary was not done by Mr. Wirt. Please 
 don't forget that. It is not new. We have simply appropriated 
 all the old things that we thought were good in New York City 
 and everywhere else, and the city authorities, the school authori- 
 
 51 
 
ties, the church authorities and social workers and all agencies 
 in the community have worked together as one department to get 
 the thing done. And when I try to show you in as brief a time 
 as possible what we have done, please don't misunderstand me. 
 We have not solved all the problems of making the cities fit places 
 for the rearing of children — fit places for them to live in after 
 they have been successfully reared. I know you are more inter- 
 ested in learning exactly what somebody else has been able to do 
 rather than what he would probably like to do. Gary is a public 
 school system of the State of Indiana. It has only the corporate 
 powers conferred upon any school corporation by statute. It can 
 do only the things that the statute authorizes it to do. We have 
 not been able to do many things we would like to have done, but 
 we are pleased to know that when you get at it and attempt to 
 get the thing done, the statutory limitations, and many of the 
 great difficulties we imagine in the way disappear and the problem 
 is relatively a simple one. 
 
 I believe that the child must come to the school teacher; the 
 child must go into industry, into the profession, and into business, 
 intelligent, reliable, industrious, and he must be physically strong 
 and reasonably healthy. I do not believe that any teacher can 
 teach successfully reading, writing and arithmetic until the child 
 has these four attributes; and in the average city the biggest job 
 for the public school is to get the child into a condition to be 
 taught. The whole problem of rearing children successfully in 
 our cities hinges upon these two things : First, providing for a 
 sufficient quantity of wholesome self-activity, and second, occupying 
 all the child's time. I believe that we must do better than keep 
 children busy two and one-half hours a day with the public school 
 system. The average system has only 900 hours a year; what are 
 the children doing the rest of the time? They are not in their 
 homes helping their fathers and mothers. Are they in the churches, 
 recreation parks, etc. ? I have not found it so. Never in any city 
 have I found more than one child in four going to Sunday school 
 regularly. What does that mean ? It means sixty minutes a week 
 in Sunday school and for seven days a week it is barely two minutes 
 a day. In fact I do not know of any city in this country where 
 the child welfare agencies outside of the school including churches, 
 public libraries. Young Men's Christian Association, Boy Scouts 
 and Camp Fire Girls — all child welfare agencies, are occupying 
 the time of the children on the average for ten minutes a day. 
 The child on the average in the city is on the street five hours 
 a day and the street is a most efficient school for educating him 
 in the wrong direction. 
 
 Today we must institutionalize the function of government, we 
 must institutionalize the church activities and educational facilities. 
 The average family in the average city has thrown upon this public 
 institution for the educational work of the family every year more 
 and more responsibility. And when it comes to the problem of 
 
 52 
 
occupying the time of the children for eight hours a day it is not 
 at first as easy as it might seem. 
 
 In the beginning you have your teachers to consider. Can 
 teachers do any more than they do now ? I doubt it. Many teach- 
 ers are going into the hospitals from nervous prostration and the 
 strain of the schoolroom duties; and, I believe, that the strain 
 that will send a teacher to a hospital with nervous prostration is 
 a bad thing for the children in the school. 
 
 All of our children are not anxious to go to school longer hours. 
 I was asked a few weeks ago to deliver a lecture at Trenton. Be- 
 fore my coming they published some things about the Gary schools. 
 A group of boys got together and held an indignation meeting and 
 drew up a set of resolutions that read something like this: "We 
 don 't take any stock in the Gary schools ; we don 't believe in going 
 to school eight hours a day, six days a week; going to school is 
 like doing time." 
 
 Last fall a little boy stopped me on the street in Gary and 
 asked if I were Mr. Wirt. He then said: "I am a new boy in 
 town and expect to start school next Monday." I told him that 
 I was glad to learn that he would enter school so promptly and 
 hoped that he Avould like the school. "Oh, I will like your schools 
 fine, ' ' he replied. ' ' What do you know about the Gary schools ? " "I 
 read about them in the paper." "What is there about the Gary 
 schools that you hope to like fine." He looked in my face and 
 smiled and said : " As far as I can make it out a fellow can take 
 a vacation whenever he wants to and I think I will like that fine. ' ' 
 
 Now I believe that the first business of the school is to get the 
 child to want to learn the things that the school has to teach. We 
 cannot send children to trade schools — we cannot send them into 
 industry, into professions or anywhere, unless the child has made 
 himself ready, and no industry, no profession or no school can 
 take a child that is not industrious, not reliable and not intelligent 
 and that is not physically strong and make the man or woman 
 that he or she ought to be. To develop these four fundamental 
 characteristics is the first job of the public school. I wish to show 
 you briefly a type of building that we think in Gary does that 
 thing. Here is a school with approximately two thousand children 
 in attendance, representing thirty-two nationalities. Last fall four 
 hundred of these children could not speak a word of English. We 
 have a second Ellis Island in Gary. Here is a school site with a 
 building in the centre, public square in front of the building, 
 gardens on either side and a playground in the rear, containing 
 a quarter of a mile running track, baseball diamond, outdoor gym- 
 nasiums, basketball and tennis courts for boys and girls. 
 
 Next to the playground is a swimming pool for boys and men, 
 with accommodations for one thousand adult men in addition to 
 the school boys. There is a swimming pool for women and girls 
 with locker accommodations for one thousand women in addition 
 to the school girls. In the building is a branch of the public li- 
 
 53 
 
brary, all sorts of industrial shops for boys and girls, a nursery 
 for babies, nature study conservatories for the care of plants and 
 activities that supplement the life of the child in the schools. On 
 the first floor above the boys' swimming pool is a gymnasium 51 
 by 80 feet. Over the girls' swimming pool another gymnasium 
 of the same size, and between the two gymnasiums is the auditor- 
 ium stage 55 feet wide and 50 feet deep and 45 feet high with a 
 seating capacity in the auditorium of a thousand. These audi- 
 toriums are planned as municipal theatres and in this particular 
 building last winter this auditorium was filled with children from 
 2.30 to 3.30 on Sunday afternoons and with adults from 3.30 to 
 5.30. The remainder of the building is given over to the labora- 
 tories of a high school, music studios, special classes for foreign lan- 
 guages and history and literature and the ordinary academic 
 studies of the school. In the building there is accommodated the 
 children from the kindergarten, the nursery, the elementary grades, 
 grammar grades, high school and two years of college work. 
 
 I believe that such a plant when children can come into the 
 building as babies and remain through the kindergarten in the 
 first, second and third grades and see about them on every hand 
 older boys shoeing horses in the blacksmith shop, the older boys 
 doing cabinet, electrical or plumbing work or whatever it may be, 
 that as they grow older and come into the higher grades they 
 have formed a great many ideas of what they will do in life — 
 whether they want to be a lawyer, doctor, industrial chemist or 
 whatever it may be. And if they are permitted to grow up in an 
 atmosphere of that type and go into laboratories, studios and 
 workshops and help the older children in their work, the time will 
 come when the boy and the girl will know what he or she is best 
 fitted for and will know the thing he or she wants to do. 
 
 I believe it is possible to disappoint these children because 
 they do not have the things that the school can teach and that is 
 the only thing that will make them want to know the things the 
 school has to teach. We often hear an adult say if I only had my 
 school days over again I would improve them better than I did. 
 Now when we want to educate ourselves we cannot have the op- 
 portunity. Can we not do something that will prevent that 
 tragedy in the lives of our boys and girls? I think we can. I 
 think the thing that makes the adult regret his lost educational 
 opportunities is the fact that he is disappointed every day in not 
 being able to do the things that he otherwise might do if he had 
 properly trained his hand and his brain when he had the oppor- 
 tunity. We can disappoint children because they do not have 
 the things the school can teach, then they will want what we are 
 able to give them. The playground and the workshops in con- 
 nection with the school can create within the child the need for 
 the things that the school can teach. 
 
 But how are you going to finance a program that provides 
 for every child in the city practically the opportunities of a tech- 
 
 54 
 
nical high school? I do not know how you are going to finance 
 a program to take care of children for eight hours a day, six 
 days a week and forty-eight weeks in the year when we can 
 scarcely finance our present budget for taking care of them five 
 hours a day for 200 days in the year. I do not think that com- 
 munities can afford things any more than individuals. There is 
 a limit to the amount of money we can appropriate for public 
 educational purposes just as there is a limit in any family to the 
 amount of money they can appropriate for any purpose. When 
 we take care of children for eight hours a day, however, we find 
 it can be done more cheaply than caring for them only 2% hours 
 a day. The reason it is costing so much now for taking care of 
 the children 2% hours a day is because your facilities are in use 
 only 2% hours a day. When you use these facilities for eight 
 hours a day you can occupy the time of your children and you 
 will need only about half of your present plant for traditional 
 school purposes. Also there is no reason why the schools should 
 do it all. 
 
 We do not wish to take children from the home, or from the 
 church, or industry, or business. We wish to have every factor 
 in the community working together providing a sufficient quan- 
 tity of wholesome activities for the children and keeping them out 
 of the streets. Here is a program that shows the whole plan 
 in operation for eight hours a day. 
 
 (Here a description of the plan of school sessions in Gary was 
 given.) 
 
 Sometimes I am asked whether two teachers in a room do not 
 confuse the work. In my judgment that is one of the best 
 features of the plan. There is no one thing I know more difficult 
 to do than to give teachers initiative and responsibility. When 
 you place your strong and weak teacher on the same level you 
 cannot give more initiative and responsibility to these strong 
 teachers than you can t© the weak. We try to select the most ex- 
 perienced and the strong teacher as the head teacher and assign 
 the weaker teacher as an assistant. The head teacher is paid an 
 extra salary. The inexperienced teacher is required to visit the 
 strong teacher as frequently as desired. He may visit one hour 
 every day. The head teacher is required to observe the work of 
 the weak teacher. The weak teacher can consult the head teacher 
 and the school authorities can give to this head teacher almost 
 unlimited responsibility because he can use^initiative and respon- 
 sibility safely. 
 
 I believe that one of the most difficult things in a school system 
 is to get supervision and at the same time preserve initiative on 
 the part of the workers. School principals as a general rule are 
 not successful as supervisors ; they look after the details of ad- 
 ministration. There is no reason why you should not have two 
 principals in a building accommodating two duplicate schools. 
 
 55 
 
Select one who has a taste for school management and let him 
 manage the building for both schools. The second principal can 
 supervise the instruction for both schools. I believe then that 
 you will be able to place a great amount of responsibility and 
 initiative in each school plant, which is absolutely necessary if 
 we are going to get an organization that will make the school an 
 institution for meeting the needs of our children. 
 
 A plant of this type with two principals and two corps of 
 teachers occupying the same building means that our first invest- 
 ment in a school plant is only half what it would otherwise be. 
 
 You have invested in New York City $140,000,000 in your 
 sites and buildings. In my judgment you can take care of the 
 same number of children that you are now providing for with 
 two-thirds of your present equipment and you need many things 
 more than new schools. Gary has no more space per child than 
 the average city has for playground use. Our capita cost for the 
 education of the children in Gary is $40, including instruction and 
 operation and maintenance, with an average salary of $1,100 for 
 teachers. The general wage schedule is the same as in Chicago, 
 which is higher than in New York City. 
 
 I find in New York City that you have $140,000,000 invested 
 in your sites, equipment and buildings. You have $31,000,000 
 invested in sites, that is, practically $3 out of $14 has gone into 
 the school grounds. Now land values are higher in New York 
 than any other place in the country. I would say offhand that 
 one of the most serious problems in your social welfare work in 
 New York is the land problem. Yet you have invested here with 
 your tremendous resources and with the tremendous cost of your 
 land only $3 out of $14; while Gary, built in a woods during the 
 past eight years, has invested in its land $4 out of $14 of its total 
 cost of school plant and school equipment. 
 
 I believe that New York City can well afford to put a greater 
 amount of its school plant investment in school ground. You 
 need not carry fire insurance on it. You need not spend as much 
 for janitorial service, operation and maintenance as buildings and 
 equipment require. When a building takes care of twice the 
 number of children, you have only half the janitorial cost. The 
 rooms get swept once every day and the janitors will take care of 
 the rooms with two different sets of children using them just as 
 easily as with one set using them. You have only half the fuel 
 and maintenance cost. You are not through with the expense of 
 buildings when they are paid for. They must be kept in repair, 
 heated and operated. If there is anything we need to do for 
 public school betterment, it is to stop wasting our money. 
 
 We need also to get other people to help take care of our 
 children. The schools everywhere are like the old woman who 
 lived in a shoe and had so many children she did not know what 
 to do. We are overwhelmed with children, thousands upon thou- 
 sands, in part-time schools. 
 
 56 
 
I do not know any reason why a church should not give re- 
 ligious instruction to children from 8.30 to 10.30 in the morning. 
 The children could go for religious instruction every day in the 
 week if the church provides it for them. The children who are 
 dismissed at 10.30 might go to their respective churches for re- 
 ligious instruction and then to their lunches. Another group 
 might go for religious instruction and report for school work 
 at 2.30 in the afternoon. The group excused at 2.30 could go from 
 school and remain as long as the church wished to keep them. 
 
 Near one of the Gary schools there is a public library. One 
 teacher with her forty children are in the children's reading room 
 every hour of the day. Every child in the school spends sixty 
 minutes in the public library every fourth day. When the chil- 
 dren go regularly with their teachers for sixty minutes every 
 fourth day they develop a library habit. There is no reason why 
 the Young Men's Christian Association should not be running 
 every hour of the day and every day of the week. The more 
 activities provided for children outside the school, the less 
 need be provided in the schools. In New York City there are 
 public bath houses, gymnasiums and public libraries adjacent to 
 schools. They should help to solve your school problem and they 
 should help keep your children busy eight hours a day. 
 
 Why should we teach a child to cook, if her mother will do it ? 
 One of the troubles with our modern efforts with social welfare 
 work in our cities is the fact that the public school system with 
 its compulsory education law takes the child just early enough 
 in the morning to prevent anyone else doing anything for it, and 
 holds the child just late enough in the afternoon to prevent any- 
 one else doing anything for it. Now I believe the public 
 school ought to get out of the way of these other child welfare 
 agencies. If the parents of children would like them to have 
 religious instruction, why not let them go to the church for a 
 part of the day? If the mothers would like to have their daugh- 
 ters help with the work, why not let them do so ? If the boys can 
 help with any activities outside of school, why not let them do so ? 
 A school program that is elastic enough for the school to serve 
 as a clearing house for the child's activities will go a great way 
 towards getting their cooperation. 
 
 I wish to mention just one other phase and I quit. How are 
 you to train children to work without any work to do? I think 
 it is very fine to teach the love of work to a child, but how are 
 you going to do it? Gary has been only an experiment, but it 
 was a fortunate place for an experiment, a suburb of Chicago — ■ 
 a new city — and with the large corporate interests there it has had 
 a good field. Why not make it a practice to call the various men 
 in the industries and their superintendents together and ask each 
 man present what he finds to be the principal difficulty with the 
 men in his employ and the men that he is employing and offer 
 suggestions as to what the school might do to help solve the 
 
 57 
 
problems of these employees and prospective employees. I have 
 yet to find out of over a thousand men, foremen and assistant 
 superintendents who have stated their problems, more than a very 
 few who asked us to put in a machine and to teach the boys how 
 to run the factory machine. Invariably these men say if you will 
 send us boys and girls out of your schools who are intelligent, 
 who are reliable, who are industrious and are strong physically, 
 we will try to do our part to teach them the particular work we 
 want them to do. The trouble with your school is that these 
 children cannot add one-half and one-fourth; they cannot spell, 
 write and read. That is easy to understand because the industries 
 are recruited from the children who fail in our schools, the chil- 
 dren who drop out in the third, fourth and fifth grades. They 
 are not able to start in where the employer would like to start 
 them and have them grow up in the business. They say that you 
 are sending us boys that do not have the foundation for develop- 
 ment. If you will simply do your part in building the foundation 
 on which we can construct, we will try to do our part. This 
 whole problem of industrial education will be solved only through 
 the cooperation of the industries and the school. 
 
 The worst place in the world to make the child industrious, 
 intelligent and reliable and strong physically is the mechanical 
 school-house, with the seats and other devices perfected for keep- 
 ing children rigid and quiet. The average boy is a bundle of 
 twist, wiggle and squirm and that tendency to twist, wiggle and 
 squirm is the starting point in his education, and if you are going 
 to make a worker out of him when he is a man you must give him 
 a chance to play when he is a boy. 
 
 Fortunately the school is like a large family. There was a 
 time a couple of generations ago when there was so much work 
 to do in the home that everybody had to help do it, the children, 
 the father and mother. In the school there is so much work to 
 do, why not let everybody help do it? Why not let the boys do 
 your plumbing, help with the electrical work, cabinet work, paint- 
 ing, your machine shop work and metal work? Why not let 
 them help do the work that must be done? 
 
 I do not know of any reason why the Board of Education 
 cannot take charge of its own repair work and elementary con- 
 struction work, and by putting a plumber in the school, a cabinet 
 worker and a painter, etc., and letting them do their work with the 
 children, provide, a sufficient quantity of wholesome industrial edu- 
 cation activities at practically no expense. 
 
 If you will take the money that you are now spending for the 
 material upkeep of your plants and distribute that money through 
 a number of your schools, you will not only keep your school build- 
 ings in better repair than now but you will bring to the children 
 of those schools industrial opportunities that are worth while. 
 Why should the School Board pay the child for doing the work? 
 The School Board does not use the fixtures, but the child does. 
 
 58 
 
The child thinks he is working- for himself. I believe here is the 
 opportunity to secure the activities necessary for the development 
 of the fundamental principle of industrial education in our school 
 system. I believe that if the boy is going to have a love for the 
 work, if the boy is going to work effectively when he gets to be 
 a man, there must be real work for him to do as a boy and there 
 must be a real need for the boy doing the work. 
 
 The average mother will not bother as a rule with her little 
 girl who wishes to help with the work of the home because she 
 is too much trouble. The mother would rather do the work her- 
 self. In a few years when the mother wishes to have the child 
 help in this home work, she will not do so because she is not 
 qualified to do the work. Now if the mother had had the patience 
 to let the child do the work when younger and grow up in the 
 habit of doing work I do not think the child would be conscious 
 of doing anyilnug out of the ordinary. 
 
 I believe in a school you must start at the age of ten to permit 
 boys to work at the ordinary activities. I believe that five years' 
 play in the sand pile is enough for any child, but you can transfer 
 him then to another sand pile. Here the sand pile is on the floor 
 and he takes a pattern and he makes something that can be used 
 in the playground or machine shop. Now the child has been 
 transformed from the player to the worker and he will take the 
 same delight and pleasure in his work in the foundry that he for- 
 merly did in his play in the sand pile. 
 
 Last fall a little boy heard some older boys talking about the 
 vacation that was coming. He talked to his father and mother a 
 great deal about it. "When Thanksgiving did come, after break- 
 fast he put on his hat and coat and started out. The father sair), 
 "Where are you going?" "I am going to school." "Well, this 
 is vacation." "I know this is vacation. I have been waiting for 
 it; I am goine* to have a bushel of fun." "But the schools are 
 closed." "Why are the schools closed at vacation? How can a 
 fellow have fun when the schools are shut up?" That is not 
 strange when the closing of the school means the shutting up of 
 the swimming pool and the workshop and everything he finds 
 pleasure in. The father of this boy ten years old bought him a 
 steam engine for a Christmas present and helped him fire it up, 
 for he was as anxious as the boy to see it run. The boy said, 
 "Daddy, that is a first-class lever. "^ rr " Are there anv other kind of 
 levers?" "There are second and third class levers." The boy had 
 been working with older boys in the physical laboratory as a 
 helper and they had been studying levers. The boy brought the 
 engine to school and I called in three boys seventeen years of age 
 who had been in Gary a little over a year and during the fall 
 had been studying mechanics. I gave them the engine and asked 
 them if there was a lever there and after looking it over they said, 
 "No, there is no lever there." 
 
 59 
 
If you permit your boys and girls to run the streets for five 
 hours a day until they are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen 
 years of age and then try to get them in any kind of school to 
 develop a scientific attitude of mind, you will have a most difficult 
 problem. But if you will take the child who is a natural born 
 scientist and permit him to exercise from day to day that scientific 
 impulse in his nature, when he gets to be seventeen years of age 
 he will recognize a lever if it is on a machine. 
 
 I believe the whole problem of modern industrial education is 
 only a part of a larger problem of making the city a fit place for 
 bringing up children, but for fear I may be misunderstood I wish 
 to place myself on record as in favor of regular trade schools. I 
 believe that a state should have an institution like the University 
 of Wisconsin that enables every farmer in the state to send to 
 the Agricultural Department and get information that will help 
 him with his growing crops. 
 
 I believe that every workman in the city, every industry should 
 be able to send to the State University and get help in their prob- 
 lem. I believe that a university should be universal in its appli- 
 cation and in a city like New York you should do for yourselves 
 what the University of Wisconsin is doing for the State of Wis- 
 consin. 
 
 What would you do with half of your school buildings if you 
 doubled np the other half? The entire academic work of New 
 York City schools should be accommodated in two-thirds of your 
 present plants and, of course, you would pick out for your use 
 your most modern and best located plants. What would you do 
 with the others? Probably a great many of the others would be 
 old buildings. What I Avould like to see is a part of these vacated 
 plants us^d for special industrial education schools. The tailors, 
 carpenters, plumbers and printers, all should be able to secure the- 
 best information that the world affords concerning their work. 
 The young man should go to a university for a course in plumbing 
 as well as a course in Greek or Latin. I do not see any reason 
 why the University of New York should not do for your city what 
 the University of Wisconsin is doing for the State of Wisconsin. 
 I believe that when you stop wasting your money you will have 
 ample funds for this extension work of your University. T would 
 like to see the day when the men charged with the industrial work 
 of the City will have their offices for getting together in the build- 
 ings of the City devoted to industrial educatioii. 
 
 Why would that not be possible for every trade and industry? 
 If you are <?oing to get the cooperation between the industry and 
 schools I think you must have a place to g p t together. I do not 
 see any reason why in this extension work of the University, for 
 instance, the plumbing union and the master plumbers should not 
 have offices in the plumbing school. The whole problem of making 
 the city a fit place for the children is one of cooperation. We are 
 spending enough money and energy if we only would work to- 
 
 60 
 
gether, and the City of New York has relatively more strong men 
 and women than any other city in the country. As I take it your 
 problem is purely one of not being able to work together and that 
 is the problem everywhere. I think you have that problem to a 
 greater degree than the average city because you have so many 
 people who are capable of bossing the job. 
 
 61 
 
uffiASy 0F CONGRESS 
 
 019 595 518 9