demand unless science and general discipline are the basis of the skill and the accompaniment of the skill.

The system for this training must consist of two parts. The first is the shop. It seems that the manufacturer has every reason to be satisfied with the work of the public schools so long as they adhere to teaching. such science and such knowledge as are properly taught from books and otherwise in our schoolrooms. We do not wish to duplicate this schooling at personal cost, so long as we pay to support it at such great expense and with such excellent results, especially so long as our school boards and educators are willing to change, and, in fact, are constantly changing, the courses to meet the needs of various classes of citizens.

We have good high-school courses for those who fit for college, for those who wish a business training without much foreign language or literature; and we have courses for pupils who must work during the day and are willing to study in the evening. There are many other attempts to meet the needs of the industrial portions of our communities. Is it asking too much, then, of the school board to make a half-time course, where one-half of class can be in the schoolroom one-half of the hours in a week while the other half of the class is at work in a shop? If this is reasonable, it will be granted; and if it is granted, we have secured the book-schooling and the science-teaching without additional cost to anyone, and with less cost for teachers and for room, because a room will accommodate twice as many pupils coming one-half of the time as it can if they come the whole of the time.

Now, to provide for the shop instruction constituting the other half of this proposed half-and-half school. Since we give the highest credit to teachers and educators for the great work they accomplish in the high calling of teaching school, and for giving mental training in all that pertains to the schoolroom, I assume that when an enterprise of a compound nature is to be undertaken jointly, consisting of one part book work and one part shop work, we do the school-teacher no dishonor when we propose to delegate the different parts to specialists. The mechanic or manufacturer cannot assume to teach school, while he may assume to be quite able to teach shop work and the highest skill of mechanical trades.

Herein lies the promise of sure success in education for the trades. It will come thru division of labor, followed by co-operation. Do not let us ask a school-teacher to teach trades or a mechanic to teach school. If we do, both will continue to fail. Even if we could find a combination man a good mechanic and a good school-teacher-he will fail because he cannot teach trades-such as the machinist's trade-in a schoolroom, any more than he can grow ship timber in a flower-pot or raise a cedar forest in a greenhouse. You may play at it, and you can do something at it, but you cannot make a business of it.

In order to provide for successful shop instruction we must have a real

shop. Do not be frightened at this! A real shop in the hands of shopmen of manufacturers is not difficult or impossible, but in the hands of teachers it is a burden and something to be feared. We want schools organized and conducted with a four-year course that will give us thoroly skilled men, with minds somewhat trained and disciplined. We cannot teach trades in our factories, no matter how good material you may give us for apprentices.

The shop for instructing the half-time school pupils must at present be owned and conducted as a private enterprise, incorporated as an educational institution, with the avowed purpose of teaching certain trades in a real, productive, commercial shop, where mechanics of known skill and ability for imparting skill and understanding regarding shop work are employed to make salable products, with the aid of the students, and with the sole purpose and aim of producing a class of mechanics of the highest skill pertaining to the mechanic arts.

THE DEMAND FOR TRADE SCHOOLS: FROM THE EDUCATOR'S POINT OF VIEW

ARTHUR HENRY CHAMBERLAIN, PRINCIPAL OF NORMAL SCHOOL, THROOP POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, PASADENA, CAL.

A decade past it would have been impossible to have assembled a "corporal's guard" at the National Educational Association to take part in such a discussion as we are having today. Is the increased interest a general one, or are we for the most part following the lead of the few? Is the movement due to a more intensive belief in trade schools as such, and to a closer study of their methods and the results for which they are responsible, or is there something more back of it all—something deeper and fundamental in its nature, which calls for a readjustment of presentday conditions, thru changed practice, to fit more exactly the demands of society, and which looks to a wiser and more rational application of problems and knowledge to the facts and forces of everyday life?

One has but to follow the line of the present tendencies in education, in any particular field whatsoever, to be made aware of a great change that has been taking place within the past few years. Perhaps it is not too much to say that we are now at the very threshold of an educational renaissance, and indications seem to point in the direction of an overthrow of much that has been held dear to the heart of the educator. This fact has peculiar significance in the field of industrialism and tradeteaching. What are some of these changes, and what their bearing upon. our present topic? "New times" do at least "demand new measures."

I have suggested that the thought of the value, purpose, and methods of the trade schools is changing. It has by most of us been considered

almost heretical to think of trade-teaching as existing side by side with so-called educational work, and many of those present today would undoubtedly take the ground that the elements going to make up educational practice cannot have a place in trade instruction. This leads us at once to the distinction between the two methods-trade-teaching on the one hand, and educational training upon the other.

The education we have had in mind, unconsciously perhaps, is such as for the most part has had no real, vital, or intrinsic connection with life, or has played little or no part in the future of the individual. Those of us who have stood for educational training-and this has probably been shown more clearly in the field of manual training than elsewhere in school work-seem almost to believe it a crime to prepare boys to earn their bread and butter. Education has somehow seemed distinct from living, and work having a direct bearing upon the industrial life in its many phases has been kept well away from the boy.

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The work of the trade school, on the other hand, we have classed as being possessed of a narrowing influence. The pupil of public-school age is of necessity unable to determine his fitness or capacity for special work. He must first get that broadening which comes from a general training, and upon this foundation he may later specialize.

There is, to be sure, much justice in the distinction as drawn, especially when we consider the work of the trade school of the past as contrasted with what it promises to become. What I shall say, then, as to the value and demand for trade schools will not be so much from the standpoint of such schools as now exist, but I shall have in mind a somewhat new type of institution, that would, in my judgment, prove an energizing element in the industrial and social life of the day.

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The trade school is, to my mind, essential, and its numbers should increase; but just as we must, if you please, industrialize hand-work in schools, so must we educationalize the trade school. What I mean to say is this: The demand for trade schools carries with it the demand for a certain content in curricula for such schools, brought about, in part, by our intricate and intensive industrial system, specialized and organized as it now is. The work must be educationalized by injecting into it the thought element to a greater extent than has formerly been the case. As, in dealing with traditional subjects, thought without action brings partial results only, so in the trade school, action, mechanical work, dissociated from thought, is uneducational, and in that sense not the best trade teaching. In a trade school graduate is demanded more and more not only one who can perform his particular service, but one who can plan and initiate as well; who can see reason in action, and who can, thru wise leadership, guide others successfully to perform allotted tasks. *

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In the manual-training school we are finding scores of boys who, by training or by nature, are fitted to enter one or another of the industrial arts

and to engage in some gainful occupation demanding mechanical knowledge and skill. The grammar or high-school work has not given such boys, nor can it do so, the necessary mechanical ability demanded in their work; such, for example, as was gained under the old apprenticeship system. What it has given them is a point of view, a perspective; or it has perhaps merely suggested to them certain lines along which they might successfully specialize. But what shall be done with boys of this class who are financially unable to pursue a three- or four-year highschool course, that they may then enter a technical or engineering school, or that they may have opened to them a drafting room, a machine or pattern shop, or a testing laboratory?

The manual training high school, or polytechnic institution of secondary grade, creditable tho its technique be, will not properly fit these boys for their future work, even should they be financed during their school residence. It is also a question as to how far it is desirable to carry forward the general education of a boy of this character after he has shown peculiar adaptability along certain specific lines. At present but two courses seem open to such boys: they must either drop out of school before finishing the grades (as happens in the large majority of cases), and take up some line of work for which they may not be at all fitted; or they may, perhaps, find an opportunity to enter some shop or factory, or some commercial pursuit, and learn, finally, the practice of only a particular phase of handicraft. They have thus failed utterly to get at that richer purpose of life which underlies the purely mechanical side of industrialism, and which makes it meaningfull, interesting, and uplifting. In many cases, to be sure, financial gain may result, but our standards of success are certainly not to be confined wholly to this field. Besides, it is needless to suggest that the individual made alive to both the theory and practice of his vocation is more likely to succeed than is his neighbor schooled in the latter only.

I have passed over entirely that vast army of boys who, failing to find in the common schools that which is satisfying, or at least not in sufficient quantity or intensity to hold them, and finding no school of trade or mechanical practice open to them, turn to the street. Here at once is the interest caught by industrial life in its many manifestations. The rivers and wharves, with their bustling activity, the loading and unloading of ships and cars, engines and machines in their various services, street work, building construction, and manufacturing-all are engaging at first; but the immature mind, without guidance or suggestion, soon turns to other things. And so are kept full the ranks of the improvident and unemployed-enemies to themselves and a menace to society.

Manufacturers and tradesmen will tell you that it is well-nigh impossible to find those who are competent to occupy positions of prominence. and responsibility in their establishments. Such men are no longer

willing to take boys as apprentices, and coach them thru several years; and those who now come to them are, for the most part, only partially capable of following the explicit directions laid down for them. The manual-training school graduate, on the other hand, while possessed of less skill than the boy of the trade, has back of his knowledge of practical things something of the theory underlying it all, and can more readily modify his work to meet present requirements. He can also lay out, suggest, create, initiate, new lines of action, which is the crying need of the time. Neither of these two classes of youth, however, seems to fit exactly the conditions as they are found to exist, or to fulfill the demands made upon them. They are too often misfits.

May not Germany offer us a suggestion as to a possible line of improvement? I have in mind the Fortbildungsschulen, or continuation schools, which are proving one of the most important educational elements in Germany today. There, as in America, it is the favored few only who pass from the elementary into the secondary school. Many boys must of necessity earn their own living at an early age, and are thus forced to enter some gainful pursuit. Time cannot be spared them to further carry on academic education as such, nor is it always possible or desirable to enter a trade school proper. Then, again, many boys, and even men of mature years, already in the trade, avail themselves of both scholastic and practical phases as offered by the continuation school. Permit me to quote Mr. H. Bertram, of Berlin, who writes in December, 1899, as follows:

Amid the developments of civilization among the nations, the idea of the continuation school is making its way with increasing strength. Urgently required by the conditions of social organization, and in its turn acting on them, the new institution appears in many forms. It claims its place side by side with the church and the school.

star.

Among the great number of those who enter early on the practical business of life, to whom the primary school has given only a meager education, there awakens, sooner or later, the desire to share in the stores of knowledge which human intelligence has won, in the insight into the working of the forces of nature which it has acquired and applied to industry, in the arts which ennoble and support human action; in short, to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier This desire, which opens to the diligent the way to material prosperity and inner contentment, seems for society as a whole an important incentive to industrial progress, and turns the discontent of the slaves of machinery into the happiness of men conscious of their own success. The more the old order changes, which held the work-people in the narrow bonds of tradition, the more is customary prescription replaced by education and independent judgment, by insight into existing conditions, by special excellence within a particular sphere. For this reason, the elementary school, however efficient and methodically correct its action may be, cannot suffice for the happiness of the masses, nor for the preservation of society. The instruction must come into close contact with the life of the future citizen, and must be at the command of anyone desirous to learn, as long as he seeks it. But the seeker, born amid such conditions as these, needs guidance. Public libraries, newspapers, magazines, help him the more he pushes forward; but without expert assistance he hardly finds the beginning of the path.

Such is the object of the continuation school.