Читать книгу Our Schools in War Time—and After - Arthur D. Dean - Страница 8

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For ten years a group of men in America have been trying to convince Congress that we should set up a national program of secondary vocational education. As a precedent we have had a system of agricultural and mechanic-arts education of collegiate grade in existence for the last fifty years. But we have had in the past no system of national aid for promoting and maintaining a type of vocational education in agriculture, mechanic arts, and home-making, which would reach a much larger clientele than could possibly be touched through any land-grant college system. It has been an up-hill fight to get Congress to see the importance of providing vocational education for industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced providing for national aid. These bills defined vocational education as including all types of industrial, commercial, agricultural, and home-making schools, between the upper grammar grades and the college, whose controlling purpose is to fit for specific profitable employments and which receive pupils 14 years of age and over.

President Wilson in his second inaugural message called the country's attention definitely to the fact that a vocational-education bill was before Congress and that it ought to receive favorable consideration, not only on the grounds of educational advantages contained in the bill, but also on the grounds that it fitted in with a national economic and industrial policy.

Perhaps the measure would have met the fate of its predecessors if war had not been declared. Friends of the measure feared lest discussion incident to national preparedness should overshadow the vocational-education bill, but fortunately Congress saw that vocational education and national preparedness were linked together, and the bill passed almost unanimously.

The full significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill, as it will always be known by those who worked for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the surface it merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational Education and provides that federal grants shall be made for the purpose of coöperating with the states in the promotion of industrial, agricultural, and home-making teaching. But if we scratch the surface we shall see that the federal money is not paid to local communities except after their work has been approved by a state board of control on the basis of this federal act, and the principles and policies which were adopted after conference between the Federal Board and the state boards of control. It furthermore limits federal aid to definite vocational training and eliminates all aid to any dilettante or superficial types of practical-arts education which do not meet the idea of preparing young persons over 14 years of age for useful and profitable employment in agriculture, in the trades, in industries, or in home economics. It has been stated in preceding chapters, and will be emphasized more than once in succeeding chapters, that the schools which are able to serve most effectively in time of war are the schools which are serving or may serve in times of peace. It has been and will again be shown that school methods usable in meeting a war emergency are the methods not only usable but desirable under normal conditions.

There is absolutely nothing in the following discussion of the field for war service for industrial and trade-school education which does not have its direct application in promoting and administering a national system of vocational education. Definite suggestions are given for organizing day-industrial, trade, part-time and continuation schools, evening vocational schools, trade classes, and off-time courses; for transferring the teaching equipment into the factory; for transferring the technical-supervision equipment of the factory to the school; and for making commercial products. It will be seen that the service of our industrial and trade schools differs from the service of the industrial and household-arts courses in the regular schools. A comparison of what is suggested for war service with what is required by the terms of the federal grant shows that the two are in accord. For example, the latter requires that all-day industrial schools must have at least half the time given over to the actual practice of a vocation on a useful or productive basis; that agricultural schools shall arrange for directed or supervised practice in agriculture either on a farm provided by the school or on other farms for at least six months a year; that part-time schools or classes must be established if the state and the community expect to receive the full benefits of the federal grant for the salaries of teachers of the trade, home-economics, and industrial subjects; and finally, that evening classes for industrial workers are provided in which the instruction is required to be supplemental to the daily employment. However, for the duration of the war, at least, the last requirement needs modification.

War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Congress to pass the Smith-Hughes Bill. War service of our vocational schools will undoubtedly influence the vocational-education movement along right lines more than anything else which could possibly have happened.

Industrial and trade schools stand ready to make their contribution for war service. Some rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent telegrams to Washington, offering their equipment to the government. Others said that they would make ammunition. Still others announced that they would wait for the government to tell them what to do. In the early stages evidently most of them forgot that their chief, if not only, business must be, as it has been, that of training recruits for industry or giving trade extension work to those already in a chosen vocation.

Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and that while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger army is being drawn into industrial production to equip and support the army and navy directly on the lines of defense. We know that $600,000,000 has been appropriated for aëroplane construction; that from 50,000 to 100,000 shipbuilders are needed for our shipbuilding program; that tool-makers and gauge-makers are needed in large numbers; that the government military service will require large numbers of mechanics in its quartermaster's, engineering, signal, aviation, and navy corps.

In other words, there is convincing evidence that there are bound to be not only increased demands for labor but also changes in the relationship of labor demand and supply. There is going to be an enormous increase in the demand for specialist workers in metal, and considerable increase in the call for skilled all-round workers in metal; a material increase in the demand for woodworkers in shipyards; an increase in demand for workers in manufactured clothing and army equipment; a great increase in demand for electrical workers in all lines, including operators, field men, telephone and telegraph service. We know that there will be a demand for automobile mechanics, gas-engine operators, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights, steam engineers, bakers, cement workers, and gas and steam fitters. It is probable that there will be a diminution in the demand for printers; for women in dressmaking, millinery, and novelty lines; for laborers on public works, including streets, sewers, water systems, public buildings, canals, and bridges.

In short, we know that the war emergency will create an extraordinary demand for some kinds of labor, attended by a probable diminution of demand for other kinds, and there will be occasion for much shifting of labor from one occupation to another. It is obvious, furthermore, that many readjustments must be made by public and private industrial and trade schools in these days of war pressure.

To determine what adjustments are most urgent, those in charge of these schools should go directly to the industries and confer as to what service is the most desired. It is practically useless to wait for industrial managers to come to the schools for help. In many cases they will not appreciate the fact that the schools can be of help. If, in times of peace, industry has hardly recognized the full possibilities of public vocational training, it is not likely that it would recognize it in the stress of increased production. Sir Robert Blair of London states that unless the educational staff of England had made it its business to satisfy the manufacturers that it could train semiskilled workers, the vocational-training shops would have been obliged to close soon after the war started. He states that in the earliest days of the work of these training shops, the manufacturers were indisposed to believe that industry had anything to learn from trade or technical schools. The manufacturers said that these schools were "academically right and practically wrong."

What industrial and trade schools can do for manufacturing plants will, of course, vary in each community. Each manufacturing center has its own sets of activities. Proper military authorities should be approached by administrators of industrial schools to determine what can be contributed toward providing the training which is needed. Letters to military authorities in Washington will not bear so much fruit as a personal visit to a local recruiting station, camp, or cantonment for definite advice as to how schools may best serve. It is expected, however, that the National Board of Vocational Education will be helpful with suggestive material.

At the present moment the most effective contact between the school that may give the training and the place that needs it can be brought about through coöperation either with cantonment authorities or with local manufacturing plants. Industrial and technical schools in England in the early days of the war formed connections with government arsenals and began the manufacture of gauges for shell-making, mostly of the inspection type. At first the technical institutes were very diffident about undertaking the work, the standard of skill required being so high; but after a few appeals on the ground that it was a great opportunity for trade education to show its value, the institutions started the work, so that there are now something like a dozen such schools working on the manufacture of these instruments. It is to be understood that the majority of the workers thus employed were metal workers before they took up this work. Others were manual-training teachers in the elementary schools. They have turned out approximately 50,000 inspection gauges, and it is the opinion in England that the trade institutes never undertook a better work.

In general terms the shortage of help in the industries is going to be met by training operatives selected from unskilled workers; by training foremen of those operatives who will be selected from the skilled help; and by training highly skilled specialists who will be selected from the workmen already skilled. The training plan in the New England Westinghouse plant will be interesting in this connection. In this ammunition plant 80 per cent of the workers are listed as operators, the majority of whom are trained from carefully selected unskilled labor. To train these operators skilled machinists are employed as instructors. One instructor is in charge of a group averaging about thirteen men. In other words, 7¹/₂ per cent of the force in the operating departments are on the instruction staff and known as foremen, linemen (set-up men), and instructors. Instruction is given incidentally in turning out the regular product. No equipment is set aside primarily for instruction purposes; any equipment in the plant may be thus used. This method of instruction is called the group-instructor plan, in which one instructor or foreman has charge of teaching a group of operators working on an assigned task. While under instruction the group is employed on regular production. The instructor is not required to produce, but gives his entire time to group teaching. In the tool-making department, men of mechanical ability, not necessarily all-round machinists, but in some instances from other trades, are trained in making jigs and fixtures. In these cases the ratio of instructors to workers is less than one to thirteen, the helper plan being used. The helper plan is that in which a skilled worker is employed in special work, such as tool-making or gauge-making, and has under him from one to three helpers. In this case the man who gives the training does not confine his entire efforts to instruction, but is required to work at his particular occupation. If satisfactory results are to be secured, only a very limited number of helpers can be assigned to one worker.

The industrial schools will prove to be a small factor in training operatives, in view of the fact that industry itself is able to train them quickly and satisfactorily. It takes only a few days to make a Polish farm hand of Connecticut into an ammunition worker in Bridgeport. Foremen and specialists may be trained through evening and day part-time courses. Of course it is assumed that these schools will have equipment requisite for training in the kind of work for which help is needed. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Vocational School expects to shift some of its pupils from house to ship carpentry in view of the new demand for men with a knowledge of shipbuilding,—a demand which will extend, undoubtedly, over a term of years.

At least, one way for a trade school to be of service and yet not purchase additional equipment is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manufacturing plant where an organized plan for training foremen and specialists exists. This has been done by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, which coöperates in furnishing part of the instruction given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. This company is giving instruction to a selected group of workers under pay for a full industrial day of ten hours. A night shift of training for eleven hours is also given to another group of men. Instructors are training an assigned group of operators on regular production and under usual employment conditions. Some part-time instruction in technical subjects, and in some cases on special operations, is also given to certain groups of selected workers while under employment in the plant. This plan has a significance worthy of attention after the war.

General Manager Smith of this company, at a conference of state administrators of vocational schools held the middle of July in New York City, made an interesting statement as to the need of trained help in the shipyards. A summary of his remarks follows:2

For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building trades offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, as the character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so different from that in the building trades.

However, industrial and trade schools can give preliminary and thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. The course for the latter should include ship-drafting. More limited instruction can be given in other ironworkers' trades and in the shipwright trades.

Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be employed in the plant and, if so, should have full power to instruct and should not be employed on production, as the best results in instruction can only be obtained by having the instructor concentrate his mind on his work.

Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our smaller industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately met, the industry will be one of our most important ones.

Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuilding, practically one half will be expended on labor in the shipyard; the remainder is for material purchased from outside parties, but which at the works of such subcontractors is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the shipyard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to be found in this country.

In the past very little instruction in the specialized shipbuilding trades has been given in the United States, and the number of men who have served apprenticeship in these trades is small, a great supply of skilled men in these trades coming from Great Britain. There is an imperative need for a supply of men in the ironworkers' trade.

Some instruction must always be given in the shipbuilding plant, but it is possible to give a great deal in the industrial schools, and, as the wages are good, men should be readily attracted to the shipbuilding trades.

While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship-fitters, riveters, chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers, and some others are peculiar to shipbuilding as well as the shipwright's trade, the trades of plumber, pipe fitter, coppersmith, etc. are very materially different in the shipbuilding trades from what they are in the building trades.

On the other hand, it is possible to send instructors from the factories to the school. In several instances in England the manufacturers supplied the schools with instructors and all the necessary material in order to teach women and boys the identical operations which they would be called upon to carry out in the factory. In this way a number of schools combining manufacturing with training were able to supply local factories with boys and women trained in the special operations involved. This plan is also significant and has an important bearing upon the administration of public vocational training.

The question whether industrial schools should make ammunition or equipment pertaining to war service will come up. Having substantial amounts of available equipment, they will doubtless at times be tempted to use their organized day and evening classes for purposes of emergency productive work. In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers being skilled machinists and the pupils capable of turning out a substantial amount of productive work, inducements to subordinate educational ends to those of an economic nature may be expected. It is therefore suggested that industrial-school authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subordinate their rightful purpose of giving industrial education. It is clear that a certain amount of production is necessary for purposes of education, but it is important that this should never be made a primary purpose in any industrial school. A letter from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New York) Central School illustrates the productive work of one school which retains educational value.

A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with the government for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the limit, and it has found it necessary to utilize every available shop in town for making various machines used in cutting cloth for this contract. It has entered into an arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop equipment is turned over to its use under the supervision of our own instructor. Our graduate boys are employed in the shop and are now at work perfecting twelve machines for use in different parts of the country on this contract.

The public vocational schools must face, sooner or later, the question of shop production on a commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to train producers and not to make products. Are the two inconsistent? Perhaps the war service of these schools will bring this debatable issue to a head.

Obviously the industries engaged in the making of automobiles, aëroplanes, machinery, and ammunition have for some time past absorbed the available supply of skilled help. With the emergency of war preparation upon us, we must find ways of pressing thousands of workers into lines of work with which they are almost altogether unfamiliar. Except with boys who are fourteen to sixteen years old, it will be of little avail to think of giving all-round trade training. The labor supply which we now need must be trained immediately and intensively. From what has already been stated it is clear that workers may be trained in three ways: first, in day industrial or technical schools; second, in industrial plants such as have been mentioned in the case of the Westinghouse Company; third, through part-time employment in industry, with part-time attendance in industrial or technical schools.

The industrial-school authorities should send into the factories capable instructors who have had trade experience, in order to learn the needs for trained help and to analyze the trade processes for which men need to be trained. In this way the school may determine whether it can best meet the situation by training the youth in its day schools to go to work in industrial plants upon leaving school—although this is not a very immediate way of meeting the emergency—or whether it would be better to move the classes, so to speak, over to the plant and have the instructors teach a group of unskilled workers on the group-instruction plan. Perhaps the school could perform its best service by giving trade extension courses to those already engaged in productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives must be fully considered.

These instructors or trained experts, when visiting typical yards or plants in a specific industry to learn of the needs for trained help, must be able to reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training as distinct from terms of production, and out of this analysis to draw up suitable schemes for giving such training. The question of whether this training should be given entirely in the school or entirely in the plant or partly in the plant and partly in the school should be left to experts, who know best the possibilities of each of these schemes.

This is no time for industrial schools to stand on their dignity and claim that they can do all that is necessary in their day schools without coöperation with those who employ. It is readily granted that, generally speaking, directors of industrial schools know their job quite well when it comes to giving trade-preparatory training to youth before it enters industry; but at a time when the country needs thousands of workmen we are quite sure that the better plan for training operators and semiskilled workers is directly in the plant itself. In a time of great emergency this intensive, immediate training must be given in large part by the industries themselves within their own plants. They have the equipment, they have the men who need the training; all they lack is the proper instructing force, as they cannot take men away from production for instruction purposes. It follows that the instructors of our schools must give their instruction in the plants or must have the unskilled operatives and helpers come to the school for part-time work.

The present all-day industrial schools, even in normal times, need this direct contact with industry to save themselves from shop methods which savor of manual-training schools.

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial and trade schools will continue. Of course they are now largely attended by comparatively young students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment will diminish, as there is an unusual demand for boys in every branch of industry and commerce. It will be increasingly difficult to hold such boys in school in the face of financial returns rather extraordinary when one considers their youth.

In the interests of conservation of youth and the training of a suitable supply of skilled workers for the future, there should be no diminution of effort to develop and extend day-school work, even though the young people thus trained will be too young to contribute definitely to the present emergency, unless, of course, it should last more than a year or two. Nevertheless, the enrollments are likely to be less. A partial compensation for this situation is that groups of more mature workers coming from the industry itself on a part-time basis can be accommodated for special instruction, or groups of young men who are now elevator boys, messenger boys, clerks in stores, office boys, can be induced, perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and through short, intensive courses be put into the way of earning, in some factory making war supplies, a sum equal to from two to three times what they are now earning. No attempt should be made to hold such youths in the school beyond the period necessary to give them immediate and intensive training.

After the war it will be an open question whether intensive courses should not be more generally adopted in our day industrial schools.

Obviously the largest immediate service that can be rendered by industrial and trade schools will be through the readjustment and extension of evening and other off-time courses. As usual, the especially important function will be the training of men already in the trades for more skilled tasks or for directive work. Ways must be found for extending the evening-school facilities. One way is to operate the evening courses throughout the entire year. Most of our industrial schools operate only from October to April, but in this time of pressure they should be open continuously. The other way would be to carry on trade extension work not only in the evening but also early in the morning or late in the afternoon. These are technically known as off-time courses and came into existence originally in some cities which made provision for training workers from plants operating night shifts.

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there is no sound reason for ever completely closing a day industrial school. It might run during the summer as well as the winter; in the late afternoon and early morning as well as in the evening. In the middle of June, 1917, President Wilson addressed a letter to Secretary Redfield making the suggestion that the vocational-training schools of the country should be open during the summer, when it would be possible to train a large number of young men under military age, either to fill the places in our industries left by men who enlist or are withdrawn for military service, or to carry on special occupations called for by the war, such as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this connection, where the President speaks of "inspectors of material," it may be said that one of the prominent industrial-education experts of the East has been asked to train a group of men selected for special government inspection work. These men will then be responsible for organizing a force of assistant inspectors in the plant to which they are assigned, and of supervising the work of the assistant inspector under their personal direction.

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two units: one dealing with the business and accounting side of inspection and the other with the technical instruction which is given through participation in the actual work of inspection at the arsenal, observation of the manufacturing processes, and direct group instruction.

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires from four or five days to a week for its completion. The second unit is given at the Rock Island arsenal and covers eleven days as a minimum. Only the most experienced men, however, complete it in this length of time. The men enter the school at irregular intervals in groups of four or five at a time. The number in training at any one time varies from thirty-five to fifty.

The men are moved from department to department on a fixed schedule. When a man completes his training he is assigned to a plant in accordance with his qualifications as indicated by his previous experience and his record at the school. Further plans for training the inspector after he has been assigned to the field have been proposed but have not yet been put into effect. Many of the candidates for this training are instructors in vocational training.3

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers was never so great as at present, and the opportunity for schools to train them will never be greater than at present. The schools may well organize intensive short courses in practical training, as well as other courses designed to advance qualified workers to positions of directive work in the factories.

While the part-time plan offers excellent opportunities for advancing selected workers in order that they may acquire certain technical knowledge, it is doubtful whether much of this work during this emergency period can be done in the public or private industrial and trade schools. We all know that certain industrial concerns have established part-time schools in their plants. These classes in the works are especially adapted, in the present emergency, for training selected workers to become specialists and foremen. If the school is near the plant, so that industrial workers can attend for part-time day instruction for a period of six or eight hours a week without loss of time or without interfering with production, it may be possible to develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, generally speaking, it would be better for the instructors in these schools to go directly to the plants themselves and give this part-time instruction there. In another chapter mention will be made of a feasible part-time system and the necessity for some such system, but it refers only to boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen years old who belong primarily in school and not primarily at work. It is assumed that the group of which we have been thinking is the older group of workmen who wish to become foremen.