II. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY CAN BE SECURED ONLY BY PROPER RECOGNITION OF (A) INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NATIVE CAPACITIES AND IN SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, (B) THE REQUIREMENTS OF VOCATIONAL EFFICIENCY AS WELL AS OF (c) GENERAL INTELLIGENCE AND EXECUTIVE POWER

EDWARD C. ELLIOTT, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON, WIS.

The preparation of my brief contribution to this afternoon's discussion of this important topic of the place of industries in education has been carried forward with no inconsiderable apprehension. Upon first inspection the main proposition, with its several corollaries, seemed to be so axiomatic, and the character of an existing opinion regarding industrial education indicated in general such unanimity, as to render any effort at demonstration as simple and useless as shooting at the classic "barn door." A more careful examination of this apparent axiom, and a more critical analysis of the implications of contemporary educational opinion, revealed a series of problems of more or less difficulty and intricacy. Thereupon the whole question quickly changed its cloak of simplicity for one of complexity.

At the first step of our examination and analysis, we are confronted with a sharp distinction between the theory and the practice of our system of public education. The land resounds with exclamations of loyalty toward a genuinely public education-an education for and by and of the people; yet how few and far between are the parents, the teachers, the communities ready and willing to make the change of educational creed and to offer the financial sacrifice demanded by their seeming loyalty. There is, I believe, a fairly reasonable explanation of this chasm between words and deeds..

The American public school rests upon the basis of the performance of a political and not an economic function. The cabalistic symbol of democracyequality of opportunity-has possessed meaning for education only when attached to the political life. The history of the whole social movement for democracy, which has found its best expression in and thru the public school, is the history of a more or less conscious attempt to make a politically efficient people. The mediocrity of our success in the maintenance, thru education, of the condition of equity in political opportunity seems to have hastened the employment of the symbol of democracy for the maintenance of equity in economic opportunity. And with this has come the dim recognition of the probable insufficiency of the whole formula of equality. The problem of equality of religious opportunity in education has been solved by complete elimination; that of equality of political opportunity by a method of superficial inspection; that of economic opportunity by the fantasy of anticipation.

In fact, "equality of educational opportunity" bears every stamp of academic and philosophic abstraction. It never was, nor never will be, an ideal capable of realization. What we have, and shall attempt to bring about

thru our public school, is an equilibrium, a balancing, of educational opportunity. Equality is significant of similarity, identity, of reward. An equilibrium of opportunity implies that grade of reward commensurate with capacities, whether those capacities are of the endowments of nature, of the acquisitions of training, or of the fullness of family coffers. The maintenance of such an equilibrium of educational opportunity will result in giving to industry its rightful share of competence, and give to education for vocation its rightful share of social respectability; neither of which may be said to obtain today.

Viewed largely, four forces may be said to contribute to the drafting of individuals into industry and to the selection by individuals of a vocation. The social, concerned mostly with artificial distinctions of social grade and rank; the economic, dominated alone by material reward; the personal, guided by indistinct individual interests and desires; and the educational, directed by ancient traditions of intellectual discipline. Each operates consciously or unconsciously; with few exceptions unconsciously, and this unconscious mode has ever been favored by formal education.

The chief argument in support of the main proposition that some definite preparation for vocational activity, especially industrial, within our scheme. of public education, may be derived from the necessary improvement of the acknowledged selective function of the school. At the present moment, the distinct tendency is toward horizontal stratification of individuals into social classes, instead of a vertical selection according to specific efficiency. Vocational industrial education for all is no more likely to yield larger social results than the traditional, pseudo-cultural, static education of the present, unless it becomes consciously selective, unless it consciously fits the square industrial worker into the square industrial hole, the round worker into the round hole, the triangular worker into the triangular hole.

All educational reform passes thru four stages-the stage of stress, the stage of investigation, the stage of propaganda, the stage of reorganization. Of these, the stage of investigation is by far the most difficult of passage. What is needed today, before we can proceed with saneness thru the stage of propaganda on to the stage of rational reorganization, is investigation; facts, "Gradgrindian" facts pertaining to industry and to children. We need to determine, first of all, the extent of the demand for trained workers in specific fields of industry; we need to determine the character and the quality of the specific interests and capacities needed by specific industries. Above all, we need to determine the extent, actual and potential, of the individual possession of these specific interests and capacities. Here opens an entirely new field of activity for the study of social needs, and for the study of the pupils of the public school.

This study of social needs, this evaluation of industrial conditions, can be carried on successfully according to projected plans by a comparatively few trained scientists and skilled investigators. But the study of the individual vocational intelligence and interests, ideals and capacities, motives and neces

sities of the American boy and girl must be carried on, in the largest measure, by the school. Yet the school dare not assume the responsibility for such study, until there is raised up a new generation of public-school teachers— especially in the elementary schools-who know how to detect, to classify and to direct the potential industrial powers of the child. Even given such teachers, this goal is not possible until we begin to rid ourselves of the factory, piece-work system of education of our graded school. This of itself is an almost sure preventive against knowing very much about any individual pupil. The sum total of the superficial observations of eight or a dozen teachers, each of whom has an opportunity of studying and knowing the child merely thru onehalf of a year, or at the most, thru a whole year, will not equal one-tenth part of the insight that a skilled, observant teacher might obtain, did the machinery of the public school permit close contact between pupil and teacher, thru several years.

Until we possess reliable data upon which to base a rational scheme of reorganization, the public schools cannot hope to become instruments for "industrial determination;" neither will they cease to prevent the present positive misselection of individuals for their proper station of efficiency and happiness. For a rightful selection must precede and underlie the maintenance of the educational equilibrium of democracy.

III. THE MOST URGENT NEED OF OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS AN ADEQUATE PROVISION FOR THE VOCATIONAL NEEDS OF CHILDREN DESTINED FOR INDUSTRIAL AND DOMESTIC PURSUITS JAMES F. MCELROY, CONSULTING ENGINEER, CONSOLIDATED CAR-HEATING COMPANY, ALBANY, N. Y.

A study of the attendance in the schools in the cities of the state of New York shows a very rapid falling off in the enrollment in the grammar-school' grades, of which the records of the city of Albany may be taken as an example. The enrollment in 1st year of grammar school is 1551

Thus it will be seen that the list of pupils that complete the grammar-school work amounts to only 35 per cent. of the total number enrolled in the first year of the grammar-school grades. This falling off in the enrollment is a serious matter and calls for careful consideration.

The term "grammar-school" evidently includes all of the usual eight grades below the high school.[EDITOR.]

The manufacturing industries of Albany may be assumed to represent the usual trades found in cities of this class in this state. To determine the educational attainments of some of our operatives, I have had inquiry made of over one hundred workmen composed largely of machinists and hence representing a grade of intelligence higher than the average. This inquiry has developed two facts in which we are concerned at this time: First, out of 102 men there was not to be found a single graduate of a high school, nor a person who ever attended as a pupil in a high-school course. Second, out of 102 men I found only seven who had completed the course in the grammar schools. From this it appears that the education of all of these mechanics was limited to such education as is furnished by the grammar schools and that 93 per cent. of them belong to that class of pupils that drop out of school before completing the grammar-school course. On inquiry of other people interested in manufacturing, I am informed that approximately the same condition of affairs exists among people engaged in trades in their employ.

The ordinary mechanic in our manufacturing institutions is indebted to our school system for teaching him to read and write and for some instruction in mathematics, but outside of these elements of an education the schools furnish him practically nothing that is of value or helpful in the struggle which he must maintain for the rest of his life. The course of study in our schools is based upon the theory that the student will continue thruout the entire course and graduate from the high school, and this course is designed to prepare the student for admission to college. This course of study, it seems to me, is unjust, unfair, and unreasonable so far as it relates to over 65 per cent. of the total school population.

At the age of boys in the grammar schools they are fascinated with the study of mechanics and with all kinds of machines for generating or applying power. At this age a boy is much more impressed by doing things himself than by being told by other people how things are done. If our schools furnished him. the opportunity that he longs for, there would be little tendency to shirk his duties and the services of the truant officer would not be required. There would also be no temptation on the part of parents to take boys out of schools in order that they may learn something practical elsewhere. The way to keep boys in school until they are sixteen years of age is to give them a course of instruction that will interest them and fire their ambition. As it is, you cannot keep boys in school until they are sixteen years of age, not even when your school authorities are backed up by the truant office and the police force. The boy knows better, and my feeling is that the boy is nearer right than some of you would be willing to admit.

Young men, destined for industrial pursuits, not only do not receive in the schools a proper education for their life-work, but after leaving school they find no place where they can receive instruction in the trades which they may select. Our manufacturers cannot afford to maintain industrial or trade schools, and it is not their business to do so even if they could afford it. This

is work that properly belongs to the public schools. Of what interest is it to the manufacturer to establish trade schools when the mechanic will leave his employ and go off elsewhere to work the moment his trade is learned? It is to my mind clearly impracticable for the manufacturer, with a more or less changing list of employees, to carry on a system of instruction of apprentices. As you know, the apprentice system is a thing of the past. A young man cannot be bound to a manufacturer for a certain number of years of service as in the old apprentice system, but he leaves the employ of the manufacturer at will and if he has gained a good knowledge of mechanics and has become a good machinist, he readily gets employment elsewhere at good wages.

Under existing conditions, a young man learns his trade in a haphazard way and under great difficulties. The knowledge he gains comes to him a little at a time and from varying sources. Some of the knowledge is erroneous and not always consistent with things he already knows. He is not always able to distinguish error from that which is true, the wrong way from the right way. Things which he ought to know he does not learn at all. In the shop the good mechanic does not give to the poor mechanic the knowledge and results of the training which distinguish the two. The trained mechanic does not readily impart information to the beginner which would make the beginner a competing mechanic. It is under such a handicap as this that the average young man gains the simple knowledge with which his life-work is to deal. Not helped in the schools, held back and kept in ignorance by those already skilled, the result is that his knowledge at best is meager, unclassified, unsystematized, and unsatisfactory.

There is a demand for a radical change in our system of education for girls as well as boys, for the girl who is to become the mother of the household as well as the boy who is to earn the living for the family. How few graduates of our high schools or of our girls' colleges are proficient with the needle and understand the principles of cooking and the preparation of foods for the sick as well as for those who are well? What foundation is laid in our common schools for the knowledge which the mother must have in the care of her family and in the direction of her household affairs? This knowledge should be furnished by the schools at the proper time and in the proper way.

The employer of labor in this country suffers from the inefficiency of those upon whom the success of his undertakings most depends. The successful employer must have efficiency in the shop as well as in the office, in the service of manufacturing as well as in the service of management, and he is willing and ready to pay his employees in proportion to the efficiency of their service. It is for the interest of both employer and employee that men should be intelligent, as intelligence is the basis of efficiency. The characteristic feature of industry today is the demand for ability to do things, to get at results accurately and directly without unnecessary cost or loss of time. It is this ability which results in high wages to a certain class of employees and in profits to the manu