Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/187

Rh proportion of our children. Dr. Thorndike finds that only twenty-seven per cent, of those entering the first grade of the common school continue into the first year of the high school; and of these, thirty-seven per cent, drop out by the end of the first high-school year. The main cause of this enormous elimination from the high school has to do with the nature of the high-school course of study. Evidently a considerable number begin the high school at the age of fourteen or fifteen, an age at which little skill has been gained, yet which is favorable to its acquisition, but are discouraged by the lack of opportunity in this direction and so leave school altogether.

As is well known, it was found by the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education that "25,000 children between fourteen and sixteen years of age are at work or idle," that is, not in school; and the result of this careful investigation was to make entirely certain that these children had dropped out of school because they did not find there any possibility for training along lines which would prepare for the making of a livelihood.

We must conclude, therefore, that neither within the organization of industry itself, nor outside of it, in schools of any type, is there opportunity for the stream of growing boys and girls to gain in an economic manner that degree of vocational training which the conditions of modern industry demand.

What then is the situation which we face? First, the demand of our specialized commercial and industrial life for a larger and larger percentage of skilled workers. Secondly, a stream of foreign immigration pouring upon our shores an unskilled population much of which could not acquire skill readily, even if opportunity were presented, and which must inevitably supply largely the demand for unskilled labor. Third, a stream of growing boys and girls who must earn their living through our present complex and specialized forms of industry. Fourth, a comparatively slight chance of their gaining skill after they enter the industrial life, and no adequate opportunity to gain skill through the school before entering upon this work. What is the result? A demand for trained men and women, on the one hand, and on the other a vain beating against the bars which defend the skilled positions, by a mass of desponding, dissatisfied unskilled workers, with only the most venturesome and aggressive pushing through into skilled positions in a manner harmful and exhausting to themselves and weakening to the nation.

It is at this point that the real menace of unskill becomes clear. Much has been written and spoken about the retarding effect of unskill upon our national production, and this is indeed serious. But the real danger is more fundamental. Of greater importance than the product of labor is the worker himself. The effect upon our people of such a