Most girls ultimately
come to conduct the domestic affairs of a home and it is a dubious outlook
for all concerned when they can neither cook nor sew. Every girl should know
how to prepare meals that are attractive, nutritious, wholesome and economical,
and be able to prevent waste in materials and fuel and should be skillful
enough to use the raw materials to the best ad vantage. The com- mi88ion on
Industrial and Technical Education appointed by Governor Douglass closes its
record of conclusions as follows: "The investigation has shown that that
vocation in which all other vocations have their root, namely, the care of
the home, has been overlooked in the modern system of education. In order
that the industrial life of the community may be vigorous and progressive,
the housekeepers need to be instructed in the laws of sanitations, In the
purchase, preparation, and care of foods, and in the care of children, that
the home may be a home and not merely a house."
Last year in my report I discussed briefly some of the reasons for teaching
manual training in the public schools. In place of a further discussion at
this time, I make additional extracts from the report of the Commission on
Industrial and Technical Education referred to above. "While the general
public has been strangely blind to the narrowness of the public school education,
a few people more discerning have undertaken to restore in a measure the balance
between manual and mental training which the old-time systems afforded. All
the callings in life for which children and youth need to be specially prepared
may be roughly grouped into four classes,- professional, commercial, productive
and domestic. . Of these, the professional callings are sufficiently provided
for, partly at public and. partly at private expense. The activities which
may be classed as commercial, including all that have to do with the processes
of distribution and exchange. are provided for largely at public expense.
If anything is lacking in this business training, it is special education
in the principles and practice of expert salesmanship. No instruction whatever
is furnished at public expense in the principles or practice of farming, dairying,
gardening, the building trades, cabinet making, machine shop .practice, boot
and shoe making, tanning, printing, book binding, dressmaking, millinery,
embroidery, design. Compared with the opportunities afforded in Europe for
acquiring knowledge and skill in productive industry, the work now being done
in Massachusetts, as Shown above, is strikingly and painfully inadequate."
"As a result of the public hearings and the special investigations, the
Commission has arrived at the following conclusions:-
1. " For the great majority of children who leave school to enter employments
at the age of fourteen or fifteen, the first three or four years are practically
waste years so far as the actual productive value of the child is concerned,
and so far as increasing his Indus' trial OT productive efficiency. The employment
upon which they eater demand so little intelligence and so little manual skill
that they are not educative in any sense."
"For these' children, many of whom now leave school from their own choice
at the completion of the seventh grade, further school training of a practical
character would be attractive and would be a possibility if it prepared fur
the industries. Hence any scheme of education which is to increase the child's
productive efficiency must consider the child of fourteen."
2. "Children
who continue in school until sixteen or eighteen, especially if they complete
a high school course, are able to enter upon employments of a higher grade,
usually in mercantile pursuits, and they are able by reason of greater maturity
and better mental training to learn the technique of their employment in a
shorter time; but they are wholly lacking in manual skill and in what we have
called industrial intelligence. For the purpose of training for efficiency
in productive employments the added years, which they spend in school, are
to a considerable extent lost years.
In the cases of. both classes of children the employment upon which they enter
on leaving school is determined by chance."
3. The productive industries of the State, including agriculture, manufactures
and building, depend mainly upon chance for recruiting their service. A few
apprenticeships still exist in a few industries or parts of industries, but
very few apprentices are indentured, and many so-called apprenticeships are
falsely named.