<< 3 are ios : L/ ve = a? , Oe ee Ai & St 4LY L&h r _ Proposed Legislation’ on Agricultural and Industrial Education in Ohio | By WILLIAM T. MAGRUDER Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University, and President of the Ohio State Branch of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education. Industrial Education in Cincinnati By heer DYER Superintendent of Schools, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Director of the Ohio State Branch of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education. 558888888 Issued By 7 The Ohio State Branch of the National Society for the Promo- tion of Industrial Education. ET PROPOSED LEGISLATION ON AGRICULTURAL AND —— INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN OHIO-——— By WM. T. MAGRUDER Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State Un versity, and President of Ohio State Branch of the Nat onal Society for the Pro- motion of Industrial kducation. | At the meeting of the Ohio State Board of Commerce held last winter, it was my privilege to discuss the subject of industrial edu- cation, to show the need of it in Ohio, and to advocate the creation of a commission on industrial education. My remarks may be found in the issue of The Ohio Journal of Commerce for January 15, 1910. Since then a number of boards of education have begun to utilize the provisions of the Tuttle Bill, Section 7722 of the School Laws of the state, and which provides that “any board of education may es- tablish and maintain manual training, domestic science, and com- mercial departments; agriculture, industrial, vocational, and trade schools, in connection with the public school system; and pay the expenses of establishing and maintaining such schools from the public school funds, as other school expenses are paid.” At the last session of the legislature, to meet the needs of the board of education of the city of Cincinnati in its desire to establish continuation schools at which attendance should be compulsory under certain conditions, Section 7767 of the School Laws was amended, so as to read: “All minors over the age of fourteen and under the age of sixteen years, who have not passed a satisfactory fifth grade test in the 3 186150 studies enumerated in Section seventy-seven hundred and sixty-two, shall attend school as provided in Section seventy-seven hundred and sixty-three, and all the provisions thereof shall apply to such minors. In case the board of education of any school district establishes part time day schools for the instruction of youth over fourteen years of age who are engaged in regular employment, such board of education is authorized to require all youth who have not satisfac- torily completed the eighth grade of the elementary schools, to con- tinue their schooling until they are sixteen years of age; provided, however, that such youth if they have been granted age and school- ing certificates and are regularly employed, shall be required to attend school not to exceed eight hours a week between the hours of 8 a. m. and 5 p. m, during the school term. All youth between fourteen and sixteen years of age, who are not employed, shall be required to attend school the full time.” It would seem that this is the beginning of the extension of the age limit of the compulsory. education act, and which we have been advocating for four years. At the annual session of the Ohio Teachers’ Association held on June 29, 1910, speaking on the subject of the “Poss‘bilities of In- dustrial Education” (see Ohio Educational Monthly, Vol. 59, No. 7, July, 1910, page 341), I gave detailed description of certain of the most advanced types in the practice of industrial education, and stated that “the fundamental principles upon which any system and practice of industrial education should be based were as follows: FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 1. Grammar school education with manual training or domestic science practice through the eighth grade, with the emphasis on the local adaptation of manual training and domestic science to the social grade and future occupation of the pupils, should be required for admission to an industrial school or to a trade school. 2. A continuation school should be provided, preferably by day, but if not, then at night, for those foreign born and backward chil- dren and adults who may need education in English, arithmetic, civics, drawing, and technical subjects, such as bookkeeping, sten- ography and typewriting, nursing, cooking, and the fundamental trades, such as carpentry, plumbing, machine shop, printing, agri- culture and horticulture. 3. Part-time schools should be provided for those children, who are fourteen years of age, who must earn something towards their support. Such a school should be in the shop, factory, or store, if the school has sessions of only one or two hours, or at centers such as regular school buildings, before and after school hours, or in special buildings if the sessions are one-half a day, or four hours, in a length. The children should be paid by the employer for school at- tendance. It may be parenthetically stated that employers find this profitable on account of the added interest taken by the children and the greater commercial output in the less time. The instruction should not be solely technical. 4. Co-operative schools of one type or another differing in details to suit local conditions and the particular vocation followed may be offered by the board of education to the employers. Co-operation does not mean half and half, nor yet the pairing of pupils. It may mean one-quarter in shop, factory, or store, and three-quarters in school, or any other division of the week, month or year which is locally feasible and workable. For example, in a rural community or in a fishing village, the pupil should give the time to his vocation and trade during certain seasons and to his school during the off seasons. Full time should be given to his trade during good weather, planting and harvesting times, and likewise full time should be given to his school work during bad weather and between seasons. 5. The manual training high school, the commercial high school, and the technical high school should be provided for those children, fourteen years of age and older, whose parents can afford to support them while they are in school and whose desire is to enter one of the industries, rather than to finish their education in the high school, or to continue in the classical high school and enter college. It must be remembered that manual training is not industrial educa- tion, and that domestic science is not housekeeping, millinery .or dressmaking, but only preparations therefor, and that technical high schools aim to train for subordinate leadership in the indus- tries. Such a course of study should make a better trained and happier citizen, but it will not make a journeyman of him or enable him to earn full wages before he is nineteen or twenty years of age, and has supplemented his school training by actual training in shop, store, office, factory, or home. 6. For those children, fourteen years of age, whose parents can afford to support them for two years, boards of education should provide elementary trade schools, or intermediate industrial schools. Such schools should not demand the completion of the elementary school course, nor yet try to give a complete trade education, for they cannot do it. What they can give is some additional mental training, and can supplement and round out the previous elemen- tary instruction. They can give some education in the principles of the specific trade and with some trade practice; but still, assur- ance and industrial sense come only with experience. The school work and the shop work should be mutually co-operative in training both the mind and the hand, and to lay the foundation for industrial efficiency and to arouse and stimulate the interest of the child in industrial affairs. 7. For those children, sixteen years of age, who have had the necessary preparation, there should be a two-years’ course, of fifty o ~ weeks, five and one-half days each, eight hours a day, of genuine trade school work under instruction by competent mechanics and specialists at that trade. The intermediate industrial school and the trade school should be true to their name. They should not train solely for leadership. They should train the masses and not the few. They should not be magnified manual training schools with academic methods, but should follow the normal and usual methods of the trade. They should not be subterfuges for giving more academic and cultural training, but should be a means to the end, namely, industrial efficiency. They should not be so highly specialied that each city would have to maintain several hundred trade schools. They should be made to fit the prevailing industries of the locality and to meet its needs. They should train for the future occupation of the pupil, and not only that he shall be able to earn an honest wage, but shall be taught to spend it wisely. Above all, he should be educated to appreciate his responsibilities as an industrial unit and as a social being in the complex world in which he will live. As a result of this he will learn industrial honesty and truth, and apply them in his school work. He will have a higher regard for skill and good workmanship, and for his own industrial responsi- bility to his trade, his employer, and his community. : Such schools should be under the regular board of education of the community, supplemented by advisory boards of competent ex- perts for each of the trades, business or other vocations to be taught and followed... These advisory boards should be made up of em- ployers, of manufacturers and artisans, all of whom should be com- petent to give good and unprejudiced advice. Such schools should have their own courses of instruction, their own teachers, and their own building. They should not be an appendage to existing schools. The teachers should be men and women with skill and practical ex- perience in the trade or industry which they propose to teach, and who can earn at least a journeyman’s wages at their trade. They should not be industrial misfits, superannuated, or radicals. The course of study should be not shopwork added to bookwork, but the essentials of bookwork added to shopwork. The teaching should be practical as well as theoretical. No principle or theory should be taught without its immediate application to the trade or industry. One reason why so many of our high school pupils fail to make good, and especially in mathematics, is because they do not see the logic of the subject, and the sense and utility of the process. Back up each theorem or principle with a practical example drawn from the pupil’s experience, and the whole subject becomes real and illumi- nated. How the possibilities of industrial education can be applied to each community is a large problem. I have stated some of the principles of the subject. It would seem that a subject so general as industrial education, and which appeals to the thousands of chil- 6 dren who are not in school, should be studied by some state officer for the benefit of all.” STATE POLICY NEEDED. What we need is a state policy for industrial education rather than a series of local policies, applied with the best of intentions but not infrequently with egregious blunderings. As tthe general assembly has three times declined to authorize the appointment of a commission, it would seem that the subject naturally fell to the duty of the office of the State Commissioner of Common Schools to do what it can to care for that large number of school children who are not in school. This number is really appalling. The figures for different localities vary, and the schemes for determining what shall be the basis of calculation for the percentage of enrollment differ somewhat; but, accepting. any one of them, it appears that fifty per cent of the thirteen hundred thousand children of the state never get beyond the sixth grade; that one-third graduate from the grade schools; that only one-fifth enter the high schools; and that only one-tenth to one-twentieth of the children of the state are grad- uated from the high schools; and that only two per cent, or less, are graduated from the colleges. In view of these facts it appears that the Commissioner of Common Schools has certain supervision of the education of only the minority of the children of the state, rather than the majority; and that the educational training of this majority both for good citizenship and for industrial efficiency has been sadly overlooked and ignored. Both the present Commissioner of Schools, and his predecessor have earnestly advocated the appointment of a commission to study this subject and assist boards of education in the establishment of courses in agricultural, industrial, trade and vocational education. Numerous Ohio societies have endorsed the movement. It would seem that the time was ripe for an advance along this line. As the child can be reached by the Commissioner of Common Schools only through the boards of education, the principals and the teachers, it is essential that each and all of these units in the scale should be informed on the subject. To do this work, in addition to his other duties, is more than can be expected of any one person no matter how enthusiastic and capable he may be. The very able Commis- Sioner of Education of the State of New York, who is an expert on the subject, found himself unable to take care of the details of the 7 Division of Trade Schools, and therefore appointed a chief of the Division at a salary of $3000. The executive committee of the Ohio State Branch of the Na- tional Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education now recom- mends that the successful practice of the Division of Trade Schools of the Education Department of the State of New York be advocated and followed in the. State of Ohio, and that the general assembly be invoked to provide for a Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Education under the Commissioner of Common Schools, and that there should be two directors, one of agricultural education, and one of industrial education, each to receive a salary of not less than $2500 a year and an allowance of $750 for traveling expenses., and that they should have the joint services of a stenographer. This will mean an appropriation of about $7500. Their duties would be (1) to study the agricultural, industrial and vocational needs and conditions of the state with a view to organizing such departments in. the schools of the state in accordance with the agricultural and industrial character of the constituency; (2) to work in conjunction with the other state agencies to create a more wholesome and in- telligent respect for agriculture and the industries and in favor of agricultural, industrial and vocational education; (3) to. co-operate and assist public school officials in working out suitable courses of study, in obtaining efficient equipments, in securing competent teachers, and in the training of capable teachers of agricultural and industrial subjects, and (4) to perform such other duties as may “seem to be desirable for the education and benefit of the agricul- tural and industrial classes of the community. In view of the large expenditures made by the state for the children who are at present in school, it would not seem that this was an excessive amount for the state to spend the first year on the agricultural and industrial education of that equally large number of social and industrial units of the state for whose special education no provisions are at present generally made. LETTER FROM PROF. DYER. Superintendent F. B. Dyer, of the Cincinnati schools, sent the fol- lowing letter to Professor Magruder to be read at the annual meet- ing of the Ohio State Board of Commerce: Professor Wm, T. Magruder, Columbus, Ohio: My Dear Friend—I greatly regret that I cannot be asamert at the Columbus meeting, for the conditions of industrial education in 8 ‘ Se ee ae i a Ohio are so distressing that it seems to me important to interest so influential a body of men as you will have at your meeting. It does not seem difficult to secure good compulsory education laws; the bill passed last winter has greatly improved our legisla- tion, but how to make this education effectve for the children of Ohio does not seem to be given due consideration; it is left entirely to the schoolmaster, and the schoolmaster alone is unequal to the situation—there must be an aroused public opinion. The extension of the school age to sixteen years is sure to come, but when it does come, it should not be merely for the acquisition of a little algebra and less Latin, but to give children an opportunity to find out the work for which they have natural aptitude and to make some prepa- ration for it. Up to the age of fourteen, children are more or less typical, they belong somewhat to a common type, and can be, with occasional ex- ceptions, very well taught a common curriculum, which we call the essential, fundamental or common branches. But in the period of adolescence—from fourteen to eighteen—children rapidly vary from the type and discover special aptitude and defects. Many of them must quit school at the earliest moment allowed by law and must enter vocations. The high school course in Ohio at present is adapted for those who are going on in professional life or to higher schools, but no attention is given to the large number who must go into the industrial or commercial life as soon as possible. The ten- dency of the schools is rather to divert children from work with the hands and allure them to the professions, yet the number needed for professions is not more than five per cent of the population, while the number needed in industry and business is nearly ninety-five per cent. We are doing fine work in Ohio for the five per cent but little for the ninety-five per cent. Children who go through the country schools are in many cases not given a single lesson that will attract them to a country life or make farming interesting to them. As this has been the case for many years, the cream of the country has been skimmed and taken to the city, which seems more attractive. In the city, likewise, the children of high school age are not given courses which train them for vocations, and so they drift into their occupatons without regard to their special ability and with no special training. I do not want to convey the impression that I do not believe in the cultural work in our high schools; they are excellent for those whose needs they fit; but I believe that industrial courses should be given alongside of the cultural courses that would give students practical help. There are now hundreds of township high schools in Ohio and scarcely a dozen of them are doing anything in a practical way to improve farm conditions in Ohio. Our state is not producing the food stuff that it should; our lands are on the whole deteriorating rather than improving. Yet Ohio has as great agricultural possibili- ties as any state in the Union, and it is probable that if it were as carefully developed as ig the land in certain parts of the Old World, it could produce enough food stuff to supply the whole United States. 9 We hear the cry of high prices—of course prices are high when the supply is not equal to the demand. I had for breakfast bread, meat, potatoes, a baked apple and some grapes; the flour came from Minnesota, the beef from Nebraska, the potatoes from Michigan, the apple from New York, and the grapes from California. Ohio is not doing what it should in producing live stock, grain, fruit, vegetables, etc. It is not doing what it should in interesting country boys and girls in farm life, I believe the state should assist the township high schools in maintaining strong agri- cultural courses—not in excluson to the other scholastic courses en- tirely, but the agricultural courses should be manned with the most competent teacher possible and the equipment for instruction should be the best obtainable. The boys and girls who have quit school to go to work should be given a Saturday afternoon course, running through several years, so that they could, through continuation school work, become intelli- gently interested in ther duties. It seems strange that no oversight is given to those who go to work; that is the critical period of life; that is the time when children should be given direction of such a character that they will become interested and inteiligent workers. In order that you may know that I do not think that country schools are the only ones that should give industrial training, I am sending you the paper I am to read at Boston concerning industrial education in cities. It shows the gropings of a large city in dealing with this great problem. Very respectfully yours, (Signed) F. B. DYER, Superintendent. 10 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN CINCINNATI By F. B. DYER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CINCINNATI, OHIO For more than fifty years industrial education in Cincinnati was provided for, almost exclusively, by the ‘Ohio Mechanics Institute, a liberally endowed and splendidly equipped institution, founded in 1828. In 1906, Dean Schneider introduced into the Department of Engi- neering of the University of Cincinnati, a city university supported by taxation, his well-known plan of co-operative education, the students spending week about in school and shop for five years, working summer and winter. A new building is nearly completed for the use of this department and the permanency of the method seems to be established. In 1907 the Board of Education determined to offer an opportu- nity for vocational training and began the erection of two large high schools, each costing, including equipment, nearly one million dollars. While they are cosmopolitan high schools in which all courses are offered, they provide especially for the industrial edu- cation of both sexes. These courses are designed to discover the aptitude and give general manual dexterity in the first two years. Then students are placed in commercial shops and continue their schooling either on the alternate week plan for the next two years, or one-half day a week if the necessity of the individual case re: quires it. In the first school year the boys give three or four hours of the six-hour day to wood work, and to metal the second year. ‘fal In June of the second year, after their preference for a special trade has been discussed with their teacher, they are placed with em- ployers. If they do not make good by September, they may return to school and change their course. These schools are not trade schools, but they enable boys (or girls) to discover their aptitudes, and enter a trade intelligently at sixteen, which is practically the legal age in Ohio. The school then follows them for two years and gives them the practical knowledge, while the skill in the trade is given in’ the real shop. Of course, the school shops run at night and are open to adult workers and also to apprentices. There are 2400 enrolled at pres- ent in the industrial night classes. It was soon found, however, that night work does not attract the apprentice. Concentrated at- tention to a machine, for ten hours a day, leaves little surplus en- ergy to draw on at night. A city offers many attractions more alluring to a young mechanic than a night school. After repeated and urgent advertising in shops, we were able to get less than a hundred apprentices in the iron industry who would settle down to regular night instruction. For example, we got twenty-six pattern- maker apprentices and these soon dwindled to sixteen. They were not to blame. They had not the physical endurance. Thus we came to see that the apprentice is distinctly a day-time proposition. His education must be given not in addition to his work, but in the place of a part of his work. Some of the pro- gressive manufacturers of our city, realizing this, introduced ap- prentice schools in their factories, but they found themselves unable single handed to cope successfully with the situation for many reasons. An agreement was made with the Board of Education to establish a day school for machine-shop apprentices. The plan was ——— . submitted to Central Labor Council, to a Committee of Manufac- = turers and to the Board of Education and received the approval of all. THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL. The Continuation School for machine apprentices was opened september first, nineteen nine. It runs forty-eight weeks a year, eight hours a day, four and a half days a week besides two half days which are spent by the teachers in visiting the boys in the shops, seeing the conditions under which they work, consulting .— with the foremen about the needs of the boys, and getting ideas 12 and materials for their guidance in teaching. This is an essential part of their work, for there is no handed-down course of study as. yet. It must be worked out as tuey go along. The students keep a complete file of tneir work so that the de- tails of the course lie behind them instead of ahead of them. The course runs through four years and consists of one hour of blue- print reading, freeuand and mechanical drawing, one hour of prac- tical mathematics, one hour of -shop science and theory, and one hour tor reading, spelling, commercial geography and civics; the last hour takes the form of stereopticon talks, readings from indus- trial history, biography, and geography, and discussions of civic and labor questions. There are about two hundred students, divided into nine groups, according to proficiency. They come one-half day four hours a week and are paid their usual wage for attendance by their em- ployer and are docked for absence. The immature boys come on Monday, the most mature on Friday, and graded groups between. The grading of the students must be somewhat elastic, owing to the difficulty of arranging a program for the individual boy that will best suit the convenience of the manufacturer, and also owing to the great difference in the mental attainments of the boys—some having been in high school, and some not able to repeat the multi- plication table or spell the names of the days of the week. This necessitates having two teachers to a group of twenty to twenty- five, one to conduct the general work and the other to give much individual instruction. The entire cost of the school is about $3000 per year, or about $15 per pupil based on the average number in attendance. Teachers.—Strange as it may seem to you, the chief difficulty en- countered in the operation of continuation schools, is not in secur- ing the interest of employers, the approval of labor organizations, the willingness of boys to come, or the necessary funds from the board of Education, the chief difficulty is in securing properly qualified teachers, teachers who will command the confidence of foremen and employers by their knowledge of shop conditions, who will secure the interest of boys by their enthusiasm and skill in in- struction and who at the same time meet the demands of school authorities as to scholarship and character. We must steer clear of the charlatan on one hand, and the school pedant who has knowl edge in water-tight compartments on the other. After correspond- 13 ing with technical schools all over the country and finding no suit- able person, I settled to study the shop men of our own-city and found a man who had at one time been a teacher but had left to go into the shops where he had spent nine years, and his old teach- ing impulse had come back to him and he had been for several years teaching apprentices in the shop. He had worked over his whole scholastic outfit in terms of shop practice. He had studied the machines to see the problems they presented in mathematics, science and drawing. Elimination of waste and economy of output was the guiding principle of his investigation and instruction. He trains his own teacuers and now has three underway, who are as- sisting by night or day. The school operates at night for the im- provement of adult machinists. On Friday night the class is com posed of foremen—thirty-two at present—and their discussions illu minate all phases of shop work. Method.—The work of the scnool is closely applied to the work of the shop. It is designed for the intellectual improvement of the boys, and to give them intelligent interest in what they do in the shop, but there is no machine work in the school. For example, suppose the drill is under consideration. They first read the cata- log description (catalogs are supplied in ‘sets of 25 by the manufac- turers). The technical names of parts are noted. Different prin- ciples involved in their operation are described. This leads nat- uraity to a study of the blue prints which are supplied by the manu- ,acturers. This is followed by free-hand drawings, of one part of the machine. In the discussion, the mathematical relations re- ceived especial consideration. For instance, tue speed of the spin- dle as determined by the relation of the diameters of the cone pul leys is a problem in complex fractions, and the boys for the first time in their lives discover the use of what in the early school days was a senseless puzzle. An hour’s lesson on complex fractions fol- lows, using an arithmetic first and then a prepared sheet of exer- cises applied to tue drill press. These lessons are prepared before hand with great care by the teachers. A blue print of each lesson with the details to be worked out clearly indicated, is placed in the hands of each pupil, so that there is no waste of time. These when filled out complete what are called “dope sheets” by the boys and are filed by each boy in his large envelope. The exercises are arranged in sequence SO as to conduct the boys through arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and 14 trigonometry, using only those parts that have practical application in the shop with such essential principles as are necessary for an understanding of the shop problem. The above description will apply fairly closely to three of the four hours work a day. The last hour as indicated in the descrip- tion of the Course of Study is recreational, inspirational, informa- tional and cultural. A piano is provided, a stereopticon with hun- dreds of slides, maps and charts, sets of books on civics and indus- trial biography, ete. Results.—The employers and foremen say there is no loss in out put by the boys being out one-half day a week. They more than make up for the absence by their diligence and zeal when they are at work. When the boys start to school they are as a rule, de- pressed, indifferent, disgruntled. They look upon their employer as a bloated aristocrat, their foreman as a slave driver, their ma- chine as a treadmill and the world at large as against them. Their faces are frozen in a perpetual grouch. The path to advancement seems long and uncertain. As they feel their mind and body set- tling in a groove they become rebellious and ready to quit.. The school comes as a new interest in their lives. They can scarcely realize at first that anybody cares, but soon they thaw out and a new light shines in their eyes. They see for the first time the pur- pose of instruction which bored them in school days. They have a motive. They can put their knowledge to use. They become in- terested and intellectually awakened. Their attitude changes to- ward their employer, their foreman, their machine, the world. They are no longer mere hands, cubs, operators; they are becoming mas- ters of an honorable craft. As they are induced to go from one shop to another they have been known to make a condition that they be permitted to attend the Continuation School. A New Law.—The Board of Education and others in our city who have seen the effect on the boys of this school, persuaded the Ohio Legislature last spring to pass a law, P. 7767, School Laws, author- izing boards of education to establish Continuation Schools and re- quiring the attendance in daytime not to exceed eight hours a week, of all who go to work who are under Sixteen years of age. The Cincinnati Board has set aside $15,000 to put this law into operation in the year 1911. It is therefore evident that our experience gives us faith in the idea. It seems strange that all oversight of children ceases when they go to work. Strange that the State has not con- 15 sidered it a duty to look after their education at the critical period of their existence. Then, if ever, they need moral guidance and ideals kept steadily before them. That is the time they feel their deficiencies and need instruction and direction. Then they need to be taught to apply what they know to a practical situation. Then their attitude is determined and they will become mere drudges, ~ shirks and outcasts, or will acquire that joy in work which will © transform their task into an interesting vocation, and themselves ~ into interested, intelligent and ambitious craftsmen. o As I see it we should not wait for trade schools to catch boys and lead them to a vocation. We must catch the boy and girl when they go to work, letting them get their skill under commercial con- 4 ditions, but supplementing it as they go along with the guidance ~ and instruction they need in this crisis of their lives. 16 Date Due 3 ®@ Form 3251 1 RI59d6 \eG150 MAI LGOLOU nT DET OSITORY barter | Hi ! I Ah ¥ ae “i il i i "i