Completion of the elementary course is required for admission and at least one year full-time in the high school is required before factory work can begin. Cincinnati requires two years. Therefore, these schools deal with a select group of pupils, at least sixteen years of age by the time factory work begins. Lewis Institute, a philanthropic school, charging tuition, has a co-operative half-time class. Pupils must be not less than sixteen years old to be eligible to attend. The Beverly half-time co-operative school receives boys fourteen years old that have completed the sixth grade in the public schools. None of the short-time co-operative schools at which attendance is voluntary receives pupils under sixteen years of age. In Cincinnati in September, 1911, attendance, four to eight hours a week, at a continuation school was made compulsory to sixteen years of age for employed youths over fourteen years of age if they left school before completing the elementary-school course. So far as I know, this is the only compulsory day continuation school now in operation in the United States. A report says, "These pupils are now being classified as to the vocation followed, and will receive expert industrial instruction on the completion of the classification." SUBJECTS STUDIED Although continuation schools were originally intended to continue the regular elementary-school subjects, they are now chiefly devoted to teaching the technical and theoretical subjects required in the trades practiced. The plan of devoting the co-operative school wholly to the acquisition of technical knowledge and trade efficiency was greatly encouraged by the example of the apprenticeship schools maintained by the large corporations, by the demands of manufacturers not maintaining their own schools, and by the desires of the pupils themselves who hoped to increase their wages by this study. The philanthropic trade schools have also for the most part limited themselves to satisfying the demands of the trade, and give no separate place on the program for the cultivation of personal, social, and civic obligations. A report of the machinists' continuation school at Cincinnati says, "The general culture work has been, perhaps, the most difficult to work out. The school authorities have felt that such work was absolutely essential, while the majority of the boys were inclined to the opinion that it was a waste of time. The problem that confronted the director was to give the culture work in such a way that the practical value would be evident." Acquiescence in dropping the formal studies of the public schools has been more ready because many that left school to work were not book-minded. Retarded two or more years, they give up and go to work because the school tasks seem beyond their powers. Such pupils can be reached and benefited only by some new method of approach. This suggests that a new application of the psychology of interest and motivation is required for our industrial schools. May not the love of creative work that enables youths to take so kindly to shop work serve to motivate the personal, social, and civic betterment subjects? May we not with profit change our requirements from memorizing books to right actions; from book civics to intelligent participation in civic life; from formal physiology to hygienic living; from economics to social service; from grammar and composition to shop records and business and social documents? We need less formality, but more concentration, effort, and self-control. Formal examination papers may give way to tests of correct action and correct attitude in the personal problems of daily living. May it not be possible, also, that the industrial school, affording the pupil abundant sense stimuli and experience in manipulating materials and machines in creative work, is a far more effective organism for promoting mental development, at least for certain types of mentality than the bookish courses of the ordinary schools? There are two great purposes in industrial education: first, to cultivate a finer industrial intelligence, a greater skill, and a higher productive efficiency as an industrial unit; second, to develop a finer social intelligence, a controlling moral purpose in action, and a consistent activity according to ability in civic affairs. Experience may prove what some of us already suspect, that these two purposes may be closely correlated. Making an honest living contains the elements of living an honest life. Industrial efficiency, functioning in the person, implies such fundamental virtues as diligence, responsibility, self-control, and co-operation. Industry and right relations with fellow-workmen are an excellent approach to right relations to the community and the state. Finally, there is a culture resulting from doing and being more vital than the culture derived from books alone. Industrial education makes this vital culture possible in greater or less degree to a class of individuals for the most part hopelessly out of reach of the traditional streams of liberal education. VII. THE CINCINNATI CONTINUATION SCHOOLS1 PLINY JOHNSTON Woodward High School, Cincinnati, Ohio. A certain sanitarium gave a test for insanity which it always claimed was absolutely conclusive. It was very simple. The patient was given a large dipper and was set to emptying a tub of water set under a hydrant with the water turned on. If the patient continued trying to empty the tub without turning the water off he was declared to be hopelessly insane. We, as schoolmen, are undertaking a similar task in our battle against ignorance, as long as we allow a stream of ignorant children to leave our schools, simply because they are fourteen years old. The continuation school has not stopped the flow. That is a subject for more aggressive action than has yet been undertaken; yet it seems to me that this sort of school has done more to retard the outgoing current than any movement yet inaugurated. We have in Cincinnati four types of continuation schools, each as well suited to the type of pupils for whom they were devised as we have been able to make them. We probably have made many mistakesmany more than we would have made had we been able to profit from the mistakes of someone else. MACHINE-SHOP CONTINUATION SCHOOL This school was at first a private venture. Two large manufacturers employed a teacher for their men, a teacher not alone of the immediate and necessary principles of their work, but one able to give them also the technical outlook of the skilled machinist. The apprentice class was the only class considered, and a few hours per week were set apart for the boys who wished to take the instruction. The author of this paper reports that he wrote to the school superintendents of the larger cities concerning the maintenance of continuation schools but failed to receive any accounts of work being done elsewhere. See A. J. Jones, "The Continuation School in the United States," Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Education, 1907, No. 1 (distributed gratis) for a discussion of the general problem.-EDITOR. Encouraged by the results, more manufacturers entered the scheme. They realized that the business of giving an education is such a responsible one that an expert who has made it his life-work should have it in charge. Consequently they consulted the Board of Education and the work was put in charge of the Superintendent of Schools in September, 1909. The school 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 shop, seeing the conditions under which they work, consulting with the foremen about the needs of the boys, and getting ideas and material for their guidance in teaching. The attendance averages about two hundred per week and about twentytwo to a class. The boys are paid their usual wages for attendance by the employers and are docked when absent or late. A weekly report is made by the school to the employers in time for their pay-rolls. Two teachers are employed, both experienced shopmen and expert teachers. The cost of the school is about $3,000 a year, or $15 per boy. Twenty-one shops co-operate with the school. The students are classified as closely as possible into four groups, according to their year of apprenticeship. The more immature come the early part of the week, and the advanced students the latter part of the week. The course is four years long, corresponding to the term of apprenticeship. Course of study.-The course of study is as follows: First year: Shop arithmetic, spelling, reading, composition, reading blueprints, drawing, geographical relations of shop materials and civics. Second year: Objective geometry, science, iron, its manufacture and founding, blue prints, mechanical and technical drawing, shop practice, shop conventionalities and necessities, civics, and the reading of the lives of the world's improvers. Third year: Geometry and algebra, physics, shop practice, foreman's question box, drawing, civics, and economic history and literature. Fourth year: Trigonometry and applied mathematics, shop chemistry, shop practice, visiting of industrial plants, and discussing observations, especially of economy and waste, culture, the man as a wage-earner and citizen, debates. All the work done in school is conducted as class study, the school not being equipped with machinery. The night school held in the near-by large high school affords an opportunity for the boys to get a training in machinery. The older men in the shop, who at first scoffed at the education of the apprentices, later made an appeal for some consideration for them. Accordingly, a night school, especially for them, was organized in the same building and by the same teachers, and the men are now studying four nights a week in order that the boys might not displace them. The fifth night the foremen attend school, and all unconsciously apprentices, mechanics, and foremen have learned what successful schoolmen have had burned into their souls, that there is no such thing as standing still, that they must advance, and that advance can only be made by hard study. At the end of the four years, if the work has been satisfactorily done, the boy receives a diploma, which stands for four years of toil scrutinized by foremen as well as teachers. PRINTERS' CONTINUATION SCHOOL An extension of this school has been made in the Printers' Continuation School, opened September, 1911. This differs, of course, somewhat from the original continuation school in its course of study, but far more in the manner in which it was suggested. This time it came from the workmen, the Allied Printing Trades Council and the Ben Franklin Club. This school meets one day per week, 7:30-11:30 A.M. and from 1:00-5:00 P.M. The boys are paid for attendance by their employers and forty-two have taken advantage of the instruction. CONTINUATION SCHOOL FOR YOUNG WOMEN The necessity of a continuation school for men is not as great as the necessity of a continuation school for women. No one who has ever engaged in any philanthropic work for girls in our large cities wonders why girls go to the bad; the wonder rather is how any of them ever remain clean. It is said that the New York shopgirl meets only one pure-minded woman in her whole city life, and that is her Sundayschool teacher. Since the Sunday-school teacher seems to be no longer a factor in the shopgirl's life, there is absolutely no influence, except accidental, that works for her good. Our girls now have one interest which they themselves have not created. Two hundred girls are now enrolled in salesmanship classes, in study of applied art and design, and of textiles and fabrics. As a part of this work there are twenty classes |