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APPENDIX G.

1. Introduction.

"INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION."

II.-Paper read by General Francis A. Walker before the American Social Science

Association, at Saratoga, N. Y., September 9, 1 84.

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I.-INTRODUCTION.

Though the title of President Walker's admirable paper seems rather to connect it with Part II of this Report, yet in it he bears such ample testimony to the value of drawing as a study in all the public schools, and is so full of suggestions as to such modification of methods of teaching in the elementary schools, as is desirable from the standpoint of the advocates of manual training, that I have thought proper to include it in this volume, as useful to those especially interested in the common public schools of the country. As president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the author of this paper has had every opportunity of observing the working of the school of manual training which forms a part of that institution, and upon this new form of prac tical education he is qualified to speak with authority. He is also, of necessity, familiar with the several classes of institutions devoted to the higher education in science, and in his classification the province of each is accurately defined.

It will be observed that he does not urge the multiplication of such schools as are the two first founded, the one in St. Louis, the other in Boston, but steps upon a broader platform, and urges, rather, the adoption of the principle which they illustrate in the education of boys. This is imperative if any general result is to be reached, for, excellent as are these manual training schools, they are only available for a limited number of pupils; so that, if there were no other reasons, the expense of providing such schools by the public, or the necessary cost of tuition in private schools of this class, would prove an insuperable obstacle to their very general introduction.

The great majority of the pupils in the public schools must be reached by other instrumentalities, if at all.

General Walker realizes this, and his suggestions are made with direct reference to "the proposed changes in public instruction to the boys in our public schools."

These pioneer manual training schools have been of great service by demonstrating the feasibility of introducing systematic courses of training in the mechanic arts, and by proving that boys can be taught in classes, the dexterous use of tools; just as they can in like manner be taught to spell or to cipher. This is the corollary to the problem of teaching elementary drawing to classes, so thoroughly solved by Walter Smith. Whatever can be thus taught, at the same time, to numbers by one teacher, can be taught in public schools. The giving of manual training to pupils in the public schools becomes, then, for each commu nity only a matter of detail, to be worked out by the educational authorities in concert with the teachers. In some parts of the country the demand for some form of manual training in public schools is already urgent. How best to meet this new want is a present and pressing problem. The school authorities of the city of Baltimore are the first to boldly attempt its solution, by attaching such a school to their system of public schools. Their experiment will be watched with much interest.

II.-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

By FRANCIS A. WALKER, PH. D., LL. D.

President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the active discussion now in progress concerning industrial education, that term is used in such widely different senses as to require that a paper treating of this theme should begin with a definition. With a view to this, I offer the following classification of the schools which undertake what is by one person or another understood to be industrial education.

SCHOOLS OF TECHNOLOGY AND APPLIED SCIENCE.

First, we have the schools of applied science and technology, whose purpose it is to train the engineer, the architect, the geologist, the chemist, the metallurgist, for the work of their several professions. These schools do not aim to educate the men who are to do the manual work of modern industry. In the main they do not even aim to educate the men who are to oversee and direct the work of others- the men, that is, who are to act as superintendents of labor. It is the function of the schools of this class to train those who shall investigate the material resources of the country, and shall project operations for the development of such resources, to be carried on by bodies of labor and of capital under the direction, in the main, of persons who have received their education and training in schools of a different order, or through practical experience in the field, the shop, and the mine.)

The distinction here rudely outlined between the person who investigates the material resources of the country, in any direction, and organizes industrial enterprises for the exploitation of those resources, and the person who superintends and directs the labor employed in such enterprises, is not, indeed, strictly maintained; but it exists in a general way, although a tendency to employ, in increasing degree, civil, mechanical, and mining engineers, chemists and metallurgists in administra tive and executive capacities, has been observed during the past few years.

The expediency of establishing schools of this class herein indicated is no longer a matter of debate. The General Government, and many, if not all, of the State gov ernments have recognized the importance of thus providing for the scientific development of our industries, and the large and increasing measure of reputation and finan cial success enjoyed by the Troy School of Civil Engineering, the Hoboken School of Mechanical Engineering, the Sheffield School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, the Columbia School of Mining Engineering, the Boston Institute of Technology, with its departments of civil, mechanical, and mining engineering, the Worcester Free Institute of Industrial Science, the Chandler Scientific School, and the Thayer Engineering School, both of Dartmouth College, with a score of other institutions, all deserving to be named were this the immediate subject of our paper, show that the value of such institutions has passed beyond challenge or cavil.

TRADE SCHOOLS.

A second and widely different class of institutions is found in the so-called trade schools. The purpose of schools of this class is to train the actual workers in industry, and to train them, moreover, for what it is presumed will be their own individual occupations in life. In the main these schools do not aim to train the overseers and superintendents of labor, but the individual operatives. And, in general, the work of these schools assumes that the particular avocation for life of the children who enter them is already reasonably well determined.

The efforts at industrial education in the states of Europe have commonly taken this form. The trade schools of Switzerland, of Holland, and of France are schools in which young people are taught defined trades, generally such as are pursued in the

immediate region where the schools are established. Thus, certain trade schools in Switzerland have reference to the great watch-making industry of that country, and have it for their object to train pupils who, it is assumed, will, by almost an industrial necessity, become watchmakers.

MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOLS.

The third class of schools, and that to which the present paper will be confined, comprises those into which manual and mechanical instruction and training are introduced in greater or less degree; not, on the one hand, to make engineers; not, on the other hand, for the purpose of training the pupil to become an operative in any particular branch of industry which it is presumed he will enter; but as a part of the general education of the scholar, with reference to the fuller and more symmetrical development of all his faculties and powers, and to promoting his success in whatever sphere of labor it shall subsequently be determined he is to enter.

It is schools of this class the establishment of which is at this time being especially urged under the general title of industrial education.

In some respects the term "industrial education" is itself an unfortunate one. The term "mechanical education" would better express the objects of those who are now advocating an important modification of our system of instruction. But the term first referred to has been so widely adopted in the discussion of this subject that it is likely to be used long after the mechanical education of our children and youth has passed the period of debate and become incorporated in our public school system.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRADE SCHOOLS AND MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOLS CHARACTERIZED.

The distinction between the trade school and the school of the kind last indicated will be seen, if properly contemplated, to be very marked. Not only does the trade school assume that there is a high degree of probability that the pupil will enter a definite field of labor, for which it undertakes to prepare him, but the establishment of such schools undoubtedly contributes, in an important degree, to enhance the probability of that result.

The confusion of trade education with a general mechanical education has undoubtedly engendered not a little of the prejudice which the scheme of industrial instruction has encountered in certain quarters within the United States. It has been alleged that the establishment of the proposed system would be opposed to the sentiments of our people and to the genius of our institutions, inasmuch as it would assume that the children who were to receive training were born to a certain condition of life, and were destined to perform a certain industrial rôle. The scheme of industrial education has, therefore, been objected to, as curtailing the glorious birthright of every American boy to become banker, merchant, judge, or President, as his own abilities and virtues may qualify him. It will appear, I think, in the further course of this paper, that the objection is founded upon a misapprehension, and that the adoption of the system of education under view would not only not confine the choice of the pupil as to his subsequent mode of life, but would tend to give him an even greater freedom of movement and action.

That the establishment of trade schools, in the strict sense of that term, has proved advantageous in many of the crowded communities of Europe, I entertain no doubt. When, by reason of the dense occupation of the soil and the diversification and localization of industries, the choice of young persons is, in fact, very closely limited, it is probably the part of wisdom to recognize that fact, to accept the situation, and to prepare the young as well as possible for the work which, by almost a moral necessity, they will be called to perform. That even in some communities of the United States the point has already been reached where the establishment of trade schools by private benevolence, or even by municipal authority, might be practically advantageous, I am not disposed to deny.

In any large city whose population is chiefly, and perhaps almost wholly, occupied in some single and highly special branch of industry, the instruction of the young in the arts specially concerned in the prosecution of that industry, may, not unreasonably, be deemed the dictate of practical wisdom.

Yet the position of those who have opposed industrial education on the ground that the United States have not reached the condition which requires or justifies the education, at the public expense and under State authority, of young children with reference to specific trades, is in the main sound and just. The proper answer to this objection is, that the system of industrial education proposed would rather enlarge than confine the subsequent choice of occupations by the children of our public schools.

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