his mind an idea which tends to carry him in the direction of general culture.

If the idea is to extend the work of the high school so as to meet the needs of the same class of pupils who are now in attendance in the high school, then a technical high school or a manual-training school is the proper kind of a school for the accomplishment of this. If, however, it is desired to meet a condition which is facing the country squarely-the question of what is going to become of the 90 per cent. who drop out of the schools before they graduate from the high school-if it is desired to provide for numbers of these youths, then it is necessary to have a new kind of school-the industrial school.

The school should be conducted more as a manufacturing business would be conducted. The boys and girls in the school should be given to understand that time is money. The school should be thoroly equipped with all the machines used in the special subjects to be taught a forge shop, a carpenter shop and machine shop. These schools, instead of trying to give something which has only cultural value-educational value as it has been understood to be-should try to give all the subjects taught because of their practical value. We shall find that the youth who comes from these schools is educated in a broad sense while at the same time he has been getting things of practical value.

I have no fear that the parents will not send their children to these schools after the schools have gotten a start. My personal observation in Cambridge is quite conclusive on this point. As head of the Manual Training School, I saw it grow from 120 pupils to over 500. I know that a very large percentage of those boys entered the school because their parents believed that the school was going to teach them a trade, that is, those parents wanted the boy to have that opportunity. We would start with more than 100 in the entering class and the class in the senior year would be reduced to less than 50. Those boys dropped out of the school because the school was not giving them what they thought they wanted. They would beg and their parents would plead for the privilege of more work in the shops, and to be excused from a purely cultural subject which the boys seemed totally unable to handle because they had no interest in it.

The Massachusetts commission believes that these schools should offer as a maximum a four-years' course. For the first two years the courses would naturally be those which would very largely train the hand, and the mind through the hand, working in wood and metal-very much intensified manualtraining school or technical high-school shop courses, completing what would require four years in such schools in two years; and along with this practical work there should be given subjects which relate to industrial occupations instead of the cultural subjects which we have insisted upon in the past. Then, after these two years of general preparation, if the boy intends to become a machinist, a blacksmith, or a carpenter, specialize with him for such time. as experience demonstrates is necessary to give him the training for that par

ticular line of work. I think if these schools are started with the boy at fourteen, by the time he is sixteen you will find that it will not take him very long to become prepared to go into the industry. He is not wanted in the industry from fourteen to sixteen today except in the textile lines. The manufacturers in Massachusetts say that the fourteen-year old boy is of small value to them. They will take him at sixteen. They do not want him younger. Our feeling is that the fourteen-year old boys (and girls) are the ones that should be provided for, and that this country needs the services of those boys, who are now becoming our untrained workers, in skilled industries. The long consideration of manual training has in a great measure prepared the community for industrial training at public expense. Those who have made themselves foremost authorities on manual training are realizing most fully its industrial shortcomings and are the most enthusiastic advocates of independent industrial schools.

DISCUSSION

CARROLL G. PEARSE, superintendent of schools, Milwaukee, Wis.-Industrial education is the crying need of the day. Our schools are the outgrowth of the needs of the community and we have provided for these needs as soon as they made themselves felt. In the past the industrial needs have been supplied for the boy in the shop with the apprentice system, and for the girl in the home. These conditions have been outgrown, particularly in the towns, and I am agreed with Mr. Morse that the most pressing need of the day is a better preparation for industrial work, or, in other words, for vocational training. Heretofore industrial training has been looked upon as an interloper, but the recent meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education marks an epoch. Industrial Training, the brat of the kitchen, has been given a place in the sitting-room and made a part of the family.

In what I say I shall discuss some of the things with which I am acquainted. Certain men of Milwaukee, realizing the need for such an institution, established a School of Trades. They gave it no fancy name and sought to place at the head of it a man well trained in the trades. Two years ago the legislature passed a law placing the school under the control of the public-school board and providing for the levy of a tax for the maintenance of the school. The school board has now been in control for a little more than a year. The cost per pupil is three or four times as great as for instruction during the same time in the regular high schools, but we feel that it is well worth the price. Plumbing, pattern making, and the machinist's trade have been taught and this year we are adding a department which will teach the work of the good old-fashioned carpenter and joiner.

The boys go out from the school and do their work as well as some of the plumbers and better than others. The same thing is true of those who take up the work of the machinist and the pattern maker.

The boys are received at the age of sixteen, which is the lowest age which the law allows, tho we should like to take them at the age of fourteen. Such boys as have at least finished the eighth grade are preferred tho others are taken. Tho the exper

iment has been in operation so brief a time we feel that the results fully justify the extra expense of a trade school.

EDNA D. DAY, University of Missouri.-Tho I sympathize in the main with what has been said I feel that one omission has been made. It is not enough to be trained to earn a living but it is equally important to be trained to spend our money to the best

advantage. This can be done in the study of home economics. In this we teach the girls to buy the different foods, and the various furnishings and materials needed for the home. The boys as well as the girls need this training, as well as something of hygiene. We spend but a part of our time in work, a large portion being devoted to recreation. The school system which does not train how to utilize the leisure time to the best advantage is worthy of much blame.

BERT M. LESEUR, director of manual training, Reading, Pa.-May I ask Mr. Pearse what has been the attitude of the trade unions to the Milwaukee Trade School?

MR. PEARSE.—I am glad that question has been asked as it is a vital one. We went to the legislature with the bill to make this school a part of the public-school system and were fortunate enough to have the bill passed unanimously. There were in the legislature representatives of various labor unions. The special committee having charge is made up largely of manufacturers, though there serves upon it a business agent of a machinist's union. Of course there has been some slight opposition to the school, but this is decreasing as the work of the school becomes better known. Some of the boys going out from the school join the union, while others take up their work in the non-union shops. Perhaps more join the union than do not.

MR. LESEUR. Have any of the boys, so far as you know, been refused admission to the union?

MR. PEARSE.-No, not so far as I know.

FRANK H. BALL, director of manual arts, Public Schools, Cincinnati, O.-These papers have been of interest to one who is an old manual-training teacher and I thought that you might be interested in a phase of the problem as it is being worked out in Cincinnati by Professor Snyder. He has taken students from the classes in the technical schools and put them into the shops in alternate weeks. The plan has proved very successful and is capable of adaptation to the public schools where the expense of trade schools, were all trades provided for, would prove prohibitive.

PAUL KREUTZPOINTNER, Altoona, Pa.-How many pupils are accommodated in the Milwaukee Trade School?

MR. PEARSE.-The day classes I believe to be nearly filled to their limit, and the night classes have a large waiting list. There are accommodations for 40 in the machine shop, 20 in pattern making, 40 in carpentry and 40 in plumbing.

MR. KREUTZPOINTNER.-What are the running expenses?

MR. PEARSE.—The expense for the plumbing, including instruction and material, varies from $15 to $20 a month. For the other trades the expense will be under $15.

THE RELATION OF MANUAL TRAINING TO INDUSTRIAL

EDUCATION

M. W. MURRAY, SUPERVISOR OF MANUAL TRAINING, SPRINGFIELD, MASS. How to secure the most efficient help is the manufacturer's problem; the conditions and pay of labor constitute the trade-unionist's problem, and making the most efficient social unit of every boy and girl in the schools is the problem which we, the educators, must endeavor to solve. If we analyze the case, we shall find that all three can unite on a common ground, and that in the proper working out of these problems the manufacturer, will get better help, the trades more pay and better hours, and the schools will do more than ever before in the way of education.

According to the United States commissioner of education, a common

school education increases a man's wage-earning power 50 per cent., a highschool education 100 per cent., and college training 200 per cent. I wish to contend that every boy and girl should come within the 50 per cent. class and receive at least the equivalent of a common-school education. This cannot be done so long as practically everything is dominated by the college ideal. We must come to see that it is the absolute right of the boy who does not wish to go to high school to be equally well fitted for a mechanical line of work if he cares to pursue it, and have the same amount of money spent for his education.

The schools of Springfield, Massachusetts, are probably fairly representative of the best in our present-day system of education. Let us consider the statistics of the class which has just been graduated from the high schools of that city. When it entered the first grade, in 1895, there were 1,539 in the class. Before it had finished the ninth grade, 1,075 or 70 per cent. had left, and 1,363 or 88 per cent. had left before entering upon the senior year in the high schools. If we take into consideration the rapid growth of Springfield, and the fact that some of those entering the high schools come from surrounding towns, we shall have a loss of many more than 1,075 before they enter the high schools. We find that this class had the first year in the high schools an enrollment of 433, the second year, 248, and the third year, 236. A drop so great from the first to the second year would seem to indicate that the trouble is not entirely in the grades, and that pupils are disappointed in what they get in the high schools. Yet in Springfield there is some constructive work below the fifth grade and about the average amount in all grades above the fifth, including cooking and sewing. There is a technical high school with a commercial course, a domestic-science course and other so-called technical courses, and the schools are still falling far short of meeting the needs of all the pupils.

A further study of enrollment statistics shows where we need to begin to attack this problem. During the last year there were in the elementary schools of Springfield, 1,423 pupils fourteen years old or over, under the following classification: Fourteen years old, 801; fifteen years old, 417; sixteen years old, 164; seventeen years old, 34; eighteen years old, 7; total, 1,423. Of children between 14 and 16, there were in the city a total of 2,641. Of these, 427 or 15 per cent. were in the high schools; 1.218 or 47 per cent. were in the elementary schools; 268 or 10 per cent. were in parochial or private schools, while 727 or 28 per cent. were not attending any school. Over 700 boys and girls losing the benefits of school training, and not being fitted to do anything in particular!

Many promising remedies which we would gladly try have been suggested for these universal educational evils, but we inevitably meet with the question of expense, which not only keeps us from improving our present school system, but too often makes it next to impossible for school superintendents to maintain what is already established. Of the billion odd dollars appropriated at

the last session of Congress, the United States Bureau of Education obtained $1,250 as an addition to its appropriation over that of the previous year. Commissioner Brown was anxious to expand the work of his bureau and make it a clearing house for all educational work in this country. There was needed $50,000 more, but Congress gave the bureau practically nothing, while it spent $10,000,000 for battleships to keep the country from going to smash.

Too much stress has been laid on a broad general training, and there has been great fear lest we specialize too young. We are told that a boy in the elementary school does not know what he wants to do, and so cannot pursue a special line of work, but we have ample proof that there is one thing which many of them will not do: namely, study abstract things from books. Many fail to realize that we are already forcing boys to specialize in deviltry and idleness by driving them from school. We cannot nor do we wish to add vocational training to our already overcrowded elementary school course. We must have special courses and special classes for the boys and girls whom we are not reaching at the present time; not an addition, but a parallel to the present elementary school course. We need not fear that direct vocational training will at all upset what already exists. We are asked, "How do you know that boys will stay in school if they are given vocational work ?" Of course, we do not know that they all will, and we should probably be unable to furnish teachers and equipment for them if they did. We have had experience enough, however, with what little has been done with manual training to prove that there is a large number of these pupils who are held in school and their interests aroused through this kind of work.

Any live manual-training teacher can cite cases without number where manual training has been practically the only thing in the curriculum in which boys have been interested, and I have had many boys tell me that they would stay in school longer if they had more work with their hands. Manual training is doing a great deal as it already exists but I shall try to point out where it is falling short and what can be done to improve it.

Since its introduction, the advocates of manual training have laid emphasis chiefly on its educational value; that is they have tried to distinguish between that which is educational and that which is practical. Should we not look at education as more than the three R's and realize that anything which betters the condition of man, enabling him to earn a better living through knowing a trade, and so to make a better husband and father than he could otherwise be, is educational ?

Whatever may have been the original purpose of manual training or motor training, it has come to be pretty generally accepted as a means of general training, and in the lower grammar and primary grades as a method of instruction or a means of expression through constructive activity. With very young children in the kindergarten and primary grades it is most largely and I believe properly used to illustrate their regular work, making it clear to them