Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/381

 THE WORKING BOY 367

for carrying it into effect, pedagogues may dispute among them- selves as to which form of work is best adapted to each part of the country and each age of the child. The wisest cannot fore- tell what the ideal school will be when child study has gone farther in this direction.

There will, doubtless, always be a need for special schools, to fit boys for work in special industries, such as the woodworking schools of Northern Michigan and the Textile School of Phila- delphia. These schools of arts and crafts are maintained to meet the need, in some one branch of manufacture, for employes versed in its technicalities. Admirable for their purpose, these schools do not, are not intended to, reach the private in the industrial army. They cannot, therefore, touch in any vital way the education of the working boy.

These schools of arts and crafts bear a certain analogy to the artillery, the commissary, or the scouts, of an army. They fit a small number of pupils for a special service. They do not draft a corporal's guard, drill them, and send them into disastrous competition with the less favored battalions of the rank and file. This the trades schools are accused of doing.

The energy manifest in the movement for trades schools justifies the twofold comment, that the old trades themselves have become very precarious ; and that the absorbent power of each trade is limited. If boys are fitted for a trade which is already being supplanted, surely no service is rendered them. If trades-school graduates are poured into the narrow channels of the few remaining skilled trades, there is danger of overfilling the channels disastrously.

If, on the contrary, the public schools turn out thousands of youths with facile hands and trained judgment, the danger of overcrowding should be reduced to a minimum, for the versatility of the boys should enable them to meet all the industrial needs of the moment, to avail themselves of every sort of industrial opportunity as it presents itself. It is much to be hoped that the energy now directed to the foundation of trades schools may

on for this larger field of endeavor.