Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/186

180 regard to the second source of our industrial life. What is the tendency to skill and the opportunity to acquire it among our own children who must soon enter industry? It is impossible to state this problem in a statistical fashion; but a fair idea may be obtained from a study of the industrial situation. Skill may be gained through two, and only two, methods. It must come either in connection with industry itself or in some way of preparation outside it; either through a system of apprenticeship or by way of vocational schools or school studies. In the older state of industry, the apprentice system of the guilds constituted a logical and efficient method of training. Boys became skilled workers under direction of a master and in the actual work of production. The apprentice system was the great industrial school of the past, and not only because it led to industrial skill, but also because it gave at least something of that mental discipline and power which we associate with the idea of a school.

This system, as is well known, is largely a thing of the past. It is true that apprentices are now received in some industrial plants, but the number so received is entirely inadequate to furnish a supply of skilled labor for the many lines of trade and industry. It is enough to say that the modern factory with its great specialization, is not as a rule, willing to train its skilled workers. It wishes its workers to come to it already skilled.

If training can not be gained as a part of the actual productive process, may it be acquired outside that process? Or, to state it differently, does our school system give the members of the growing generation a training which fits them to enter the industrial life as skilled workers?

We have in this country a considerable and growing number of trade schools and technical schools. We also find evening schools where vocational training may be obtained; and there are other opportunities of a similar sort. But it is not necessary to prove that there is but a scant beginning in this direction, as this is admitted by all students of the subject. It is clear that our present means of training for trade and industry through special schools is entirely inadequate, and it is equally well admitted that our common school system does not meet the need in this direction. Its curriculum has been determined by other interests than the economic needs of a constantly increasing industrial population.

In the excellent study by Professor Thorndike, based upon returns from schools of twenty-three cities having a population of 25,000 or more, it is demonstrated beyond a doubt that the lack of opportunity for vocational training is a great cause of that heavy dropping out of school in early grades which thereby closes school education to a large