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THE PART OF ENGINEERING
EDUCATION IN THE VOCATIONAL
WORK OF THE HIGH SCHOOL

Thesis for the. Degree of M. E.

Edward G. Cuh’er
1936

 

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THE PART OF ENGINEERING
.EDUCATION IN THE VOCATIONAL
WORK OF TEE HIGH SCHOOL

THESIS

Presented to Kichigan State College
of Agriculture and Applied Science.
For the Professional Degree, 1; E.
by
Edward Gifford Qulver,

Bay City, Michigan.

Kay 20, 1936
7.7 49¢ .
W
l

"Engineering has been defined as 'the art and science of organ-
izing and directing the efforts of men and of controlling the
materials and forces of nature for the benefit of the human race'."

Prof. C. E. Bullinger.

THESIS

THE PART OF EITGIIEEERI IIG
EDUCATION IN THE VOCATIOI‘IAL
WORK OF THE HIGH SCHOOL

(OUTLINE)

OUTLIIE OF THESIS

I Engineering education as a factor in the "finding"
courses of high schools.

(1)

(2)

Definition and description of "finding” course
as here used.

a. It is a part or a phase of other courses.

b. The outcomes expected of such work, or what
it aims to accomplish.

c. The present extent of this part of high
school work.

d. Its function is to be informative as to the
different lines of life work, rather than
guidance.

e. It seeks to give opportunities for contacts
and tryouts of as comprehensive and varied
a nature as possible.

“Finding” courses are to a great extent the basis
for the child's final choice for a life work.

a. The decision as to life work at the end of
the high school course is not a reserved
judgement made from a summing of data. It
is rather a mental attitude or tendency arriv-
ed at as a result of the eXperiences and
contacts of the past school life.

b. The young person has felt his way through school.

Courses, studies and contacts tend to either
attract or repel in the choice of studies for
the next school year.

c. A “finding" course is effective in proportion
as it aids the pupil in this progressive
choice of the different lines of school work.

d. Through the aid of good "finding" courses the
future citizen finds himself with no reserved
judgement to be made at the time of high school
graduation, but instead he finds himself with

a fairly directional mental attitude, a
well formulated opinion as to the general
type of life work he desires.

(5) Engineering and its allied subjects constitute
a very large part of the unexplored field into
which the young person must enter sooner or
later inasmuch as the entire range of success
that he may achieve lies, probably, in the four
main branches -~ engineering, agriculture, business
and the so-called professions.

(4) The field of engineering in itself is very broad,
extending far and wide to merge with.many lines
of work formerly considered entirely separate.

a. To follow engineering in its entirety one
would certainly have to live ”long and broad"
as Joseph Jefferson said in Rip Van Winkle.

b. It holds forth.promise of happy success to
many adapted ones and it should certainly be
brought within the range of their "finding“
course experience.

(5) The work of engineers and the branches of engin—
eering education being so vast and so diversified,
the problem of bringing so much.material and
experience before the view of the high school
pupils, in anything like a comprehensive manner,
requires Egg of the agencies that we can bring to
bear.

a. The vocational trade courses are not enough.
As taught at present they give but a narrow,
sad view of the great field of opportunity in
engineering work.

b. Engineering education should also enter into
and control the allied studies of physics,
chemistry, and mathematics.

c. Engineering must color more strongly all the
other branches taught, as, English, history,
geography, and arithmetic.

d. In many schools the tail wags the dog, in that
the so-called vocational classes are thought of
as the extent of engineering work, instead of
being a small factor only of the larger work

Outline of Thesis Page 2

of engineering education in its function
as a "finding" course.

e. The personnel of the teaching force must be
composed more largely of experienced
graduate engineers that they may lend the
influence of their advice, experience and
knowledge to the total of the students
experience.

II Engineering as a preparation for college work.

(1) Preliminary discussion of engineering education,
as it now exists.

a. In the vocational department classes of high
school, the junior high school and the inter-
mediate departments.

b. In the college preparatory courses.

(2) The vocational courses are not at present con-
sidered as college preparatory work but rather as
trade school or in other manners. They, the
vocational courses, are for those who for one
reason or another are 3gp going to college.

(3) The true and proper field for engineering education
is the domination of the vocational departments
in our high schools to the end that it, in
cooperation with the science, mathematics and
other departments, should be the accepted and
usual course for preparation for engineering
college work.

a. This would provide a much needed preliminary
training for the future college student in
shop, draftingeroom, and shop_experience.

b. There would be no need for separate classes in
mathematics and science. In fact, such classes
are highly undesirable. Because of the
general manner of the functioning of "finding"
work in preparatory schools, separation or
differentiation among the pupils tends to de-
feat the ideal of the widest, most comprehensive
experience. Moreover the pupils, will, as
their tastes become more pronounced, select the
phases of the courses which they most desire as
the goal of their main efforts.

(4) The establishment of the vocational department as

Outline of Thesis Page 5

the recognized course leading to engineering

college would serve in the very valuable capacity
of sorting and cutting out in time many of the
undesirable misfits who now try engineering college,
instead of functioning as now as a sort of a busy
work class for the hands of the mentally unfit.

The vocational department, in its function of
college preparation, should be a proving ground

for the selection and the preliminary training of
engineering college aspirants.

III Engineering education as a preparation for citizenship
and the life work of the non-college man.

(1) The supreme importance of this phase.

a. Here is the most important part of engineering
education in the high school, a justification
for the great amount of money spent by the state
for buildings, equipment and teaching force.

h. It is in this part of the work that engineering
effects by far the greater number of pupils,
for the non-college class-represent a large
percentage of the total number of pupils in our
high schools.

(2) The needs of the non-college man, that he may
most successfully fill his part to the best advan-
tage for all, are recognized as health, and a good
vocation. After these things are to be considered
in the order of their importance, some sort of a
hobby or avocation, as it is called, and the ability
to fit in easily and efficiently with the civic,
moral, and home life of the community.

(3) Attention is called to the fact, from.the above,
that herein are the greatest number served and also
‘in their greatest needs, aside possibly from the
matter of health. Given a well-chosen vocation and
a good avocation and we have the makings of a good,
moral, upright citizen and homemaker.

(4) Engineering education can, if properly used, go far
to supply the need of the average boy who is not
going to college, and furthermore this is one of
the all important functions of the public high school
that is at present sadly neglected.

Outline of Thesis Page 4

a. The needs of the non-college man are
neglected by the present high school in that
the great mass of the pupils leaving school
during the 10th, llth, and 12th grades are left,
each and all of them, to find their own voca-
tion as best they may, that is, so far as the
schools are concerned. On the other hand, the
entire time spent in school from the beginning
to the end of the university course leading
to the professions is carefully guided and paid
for to a very large extent by the state.
Courses are designed to fit the young for
"something better". The system serves in.many
cases to spoil good workmen and mechanics and
then fails to make them into professors.

b. Engineering education should set up the clear
objective of training in the mechanic arts for
the sons of the working classes and not mince
thextatter. The trade classes should.gg§ be
separate ones but for as large a number as
possible. Trade classes should not only fill
the need of the pre-college pupil and serve
as a "finding" course but it should serve first
of all as a real trade training class.

c. Engineering education by enriching the academic
part of the curriculum so that the pupil may gain
a fair working knowledge of the things needed
to be known by men in the trades and kindred
occupations.

IV’ The head of engineering school graduates on the high
school vocational teaching force.

(1) Emphasis placed upon the lack of real attempts to
teach elementary engineering in the high schools,
and the probable cause.

a. The present high school courses are frankly
preparation for the college courses leading
to the professions as the law, ministry,
medicine, etc.

b. The present vocational courses are acknowledged
as supplementary to the academic courses in that
they have as their objectives certain psycholo-
gical aims and outcomes such as "the co-ordina-
tion of hand and eye" and "keeping the school
interest alive.”

Outline of Thesis I Page 5

O.

No serious effort is being made along the
line of introducing courses in elementary
engineering in the high schools. This, not-
withstanding the fact that the high school
is the training ground for practically all
of our citizens and that a very large per-
centage of them will follow some trade or
business closely allied at least to engin-
eering.

There is no practical work being done to teach
trades and occupations as such, to bridge the
present terrible gap that is between the high
school or llth grade pupil and some useful
occupation.

The high school course does not specifically
attempt as it should to prepare students in an
adequate manner for engineering college, neither
does it attemp to select the specially fitted
and adapted, and to dissuade the unfitted who
are even now clogging our technical schools

and lowering the standard of the profession.

The probable cause of this condition is found
in the personnel of our high school faculties.
They and their training are the natural result
of an antiquated system, when a high school was
called a "prep school". When there were in the
eyes of the educational world just two classes--
those who went to college and the failures who
did not. Before the rise of engineering and

of the present industrial age a college course
meant usually an A. B. degree. The coming of
this industrial age and of the engineering
profession has not caused the high schools to
make any serious preparation, therefore--the
little effort that has been made has been for
the most part thwarted and turned aside into
other channels by an academically minded
faculty.

(2‘ Engineering school graduates could, if they would
enter the vocational teaching work of our high
schools, bring about a wonderful reform.

a.

They would serve to make the school system
“engineering minded"; they would replace many

of the present personnel who represent a train-
ing that might have been of value in a past
social and industrial order but is now of little
or no use in training for citizenship. Quoting
from Mr. John K. Norton's summary of discussions

Outline of Thesis Page 6

at the meeting of high school principals,
Lansing December 1-2, 1932. "They feel there
should be at least one agency in every child's
life to guarantee that he will become a good
citizen--not achieved by the school as now
organized." Also a need for "a curriculum
focused more definitely upon present problems.”
The academically trained and academically
minded teachers who believe that the springs

of good citizenship and of economic success

in this day and age have their source in Latin
verbs and ancient history must give place to
men trained in engineering college with a first
hand practical experience in some phase of
modern industrial work.

b. Reform in the school system is a matter of
growth, not of tearing down and making over.
The needs of the industrial training of high
school pupils will be much better taken care of
and the much needed changes in curriculum and
in course content are going to surely come in
a high school that has, for example, engineers
in charge of the physics, mathematics, chemis-
try, drawing, athletics and trade school
classes. The subjects taught in such a school
are sure to take on in time less of a leaning
towards the time of Cleopatra and the Renaiss-
ance and more closely approach the problems of

cars, pavements, city government a plumbing,
heating, health, roofing material and the fire

art of being a self-supporting citizen of Michigan.

Outline of Thesis Page 7

CHAPTER I
Engineering Education as a

Factor in the ”Finding" Courses of High Schools

The process of education is not simple. In the
sense in which it is now understood, it covers all of the
contacts, processes, activities, and information that produce
subjective changes in the children of the school. Such a list
of educational means will necessarily include all the complex
effects of the child's life, not only in school, but also in
the home, the church, society, and industry. Because of the
fact that children under the present system of education have
come to spend so large a proportion of their time in school
rather than as beginners in industry, educators everywhere are
striving to add to the experiences of school life such things
as will prove informative in regard to the different lines of
life work that may be available to the younger citizens. These
efforts have resulted in the adoption of the so-called ”finding"
courses.

Teachers know that a young person's view of things,
in general, is influenced as much, or more, by the nature of his
physical surroundings as by the books he studies. From this
viewpoint, a finding course may be considered as a phase, in-
corporated with one or more courses of study in such a way as
to bring the pupil into contact with the nature of different

kinds of occupations.

A finding course does not need to give direct open in-
formation about the different occupations of life. Without undue
interruption of the necessary teaching of knowledge and the ne-
cessary training, in habits and skills that custom and good sense
appear to indicate as the correct road to good citizenship, the
modern finding course seeks to give opportunities for contacts
and tryouts of as comprehensive and varied a nature as possible.
It does not seek to guide or advise, but rather to be informa-
tive as to the true nature of the different lines of life work
by means of contact and experience.

This directed effort to aid school children in formu-
lating an opinion of the desirability of different lines of life
work has been carried on in many different ways, but is very ap-
parent in all of our schools. The principal methods are the new
and excellent illustrations in textbooks, the large number of in-
dustrial moving picture films being shown in the school auditor-
iums, the trips teachers make with their classes to industrial
plants, and, of course, the different shop courses. The last
mentioned form by far the greater part of finding course effort
at present. In.many of our high schools the shop courses from
the seventh to the tenth grades inclusive stress the finding
course idea as the main objective. In all junior and senior
high school shops, the instructor has for at least one of the
course objectives the finding course idea. There is another type
of finding experience not mentioned above. It is harmful in
effect,but, nevertheless, it leads a very large number of young

people to elect some certain line of life work. I refer to the

Page 2

more or less false conceptions conveyed in the histories, English
texts, and other semi-fiction that is put into the pupifs hands.

A few illustrations will make my point clear. A boy reads a
romantic story of the brave engineer who brought in the overland
mail on time and is so profoundly affected that he receives a pro-
nounced mental set in the direction of railroad engineering.
Another youth is so carried away by the exploits of the heroes of
the airways that he detenmines to become an aircraft engineer.

A third case might be of a boy who reads in his English class an
essay on one who by the simple methOd of shining shoes and attend-
ing night school acquires a knowledge of Spanish and German,
obtains the decorations of three governments, and also becomes a
famous mining engineer. Enthusiasms awakened by such tales may
in some chance cases result in a happy placement of some in-
dividual in a suitable profession, but in most cases they are only
will 0' the wisps to lead misfits to failure.

Work in finding courses has made splendid development
in the last few years. But, I cdnclude that the movement has
very far to go if we are to see anything like an ideal condition.
The contacts and experiences offered are not nearly varied and
comprehensive enough. In many cases they are still untrue, and
because of this fact the efforts of the professional guidance
teachers who base their decisions largely on the results of the
finding courses are often rendered useless and sometimes harm-
ful.

In seeking to obtain a true conception of the needs

and importance of the finding course idea and of the assist-

Page 5

ance it can be to the guidance teachers, we should keep in
mind that the child's final choice of a life work depends al~
most entirely upon the mental set that he has acquired toward
the different occupations due to his school age contacts and
experiences. From this it follows that the question of whether
or not the adult is given a part well suited to his abilities,
whether or not he is to be an ecomomic and a social asset to
the country or a misfit and a possible liability, depends upon
this leaning toward certain lines of economic endeavor which

he has acquired during his school years.

‘We come to a keener realization.of the importance of
finding courses and their proper development with this thought;
the decision that every boy or girl must make soon after leaving
school as to what his life work is to be, is not a reserved Judge-
, ment based upon a conscious summing of data. It is not often
made as a result of advice of friends or relatives or of grad-
uation day orations or baccalaureate sermons; but it is, rather,
the result of a mental attitude or tendency that comes from the
integration of the experiences and contacts of the past school
life. The young person has felt his way through school. He
has been repelled by this course and attracted by that. He has
admired this individual and avoided that one. Studies and
contacts have served to influence his choice of new subjects
for the ensuing year. This, then, was the ideal time for pre-
senting to his mind the true facts about the requirements, ad-
vantages, and disadvantages that serve to distinguish the basic-
ly fundamental occupations one from the other; not in the form

Page 4

of lectures and figures about net incomes but by means of every
possible device that will make the pupil have a true knowledge,
however slight, of the actualities of each.main line of work,
such as will enable him to either be truly attracted or repelled
according to his natural tendencies and likings. This is not

a very easy thing in its practical accomplishment, but it is
something that must be coped with in the line of guiding and
aiding the young into suitable lines of economic endeavor.

A finding course is effective in proportion as it
aids and guides the pupil in this progressive choice of the
different lines of school work and in the formation of a true
and happy mental set at the end of the school life. Through
the aid of good finding courses, truthfully presented, the
future citizen will not find himself at the end of the school
life with half formulated and reserved Judgments to be made,
but instead, he will have a fairly directional mental atti-
tude, a well formulated opinion as to the general type of life
work that he desires to follow.

The field of engineering and its allied branches
constitute a very large part of the total field of opportunity
open to the young man who is trying to choose a life work. In
general, we can say that a young man starting in life today
must make a selection of his work from.agriculture, industry,
business, or one of the professions as law, medicine, and the
like. We may say roughly that one half of the men engaged in
economic endeavor today are in one of the industries closely

allied to engineering. All of our manufacturing, practically

Page 5

all of our transportation, a very large part of our agricul-
ture, our storage and canning, in.fact, nearly everything
that we can name of a technical or commercial nature is very
closely allied to some of the main branches of engineering.
And it is into this far flung and complex.field that the young
man today must explore his way. The profession of engineering
itself has also grown to cover a very broad field. It has been
extended far and wide to include many lines of work heretofore
considered entirely separate. Because of the vastness of the
extent of the field covered by engineering and of the occupations
allied to and controlled by engineering they should certainly
be brought within the scope of the very best kinds of finding
courses.

That there has been a marvelous and wise development
of engineering education in the United States in the last three
or four decades is true. And it accounts in large measure for
the splendid way in which American commercial development has
kept pace with the development of Germany. It is a fact that
colleges for higher education in applied science and engineer-
ing have been generously provided for and kept up. Further, the
country has seen the need for so-called industrial education
and.is striving to provide more and more therefor. But, and
this is the all important feature of the whole problem, little
enough has been done by competent teachers in charge of our
high schools to help the young to find their way into the proper
channels that lead to this vast enterprise of engineering and

industry. If we picture to ourselves the tremendous strides that

Page 6

Germany has made in commerce and industry due to her intensive
system of education in industry, science, and engineering, if

we allow ourselves to fully comprehend that, in order to survive
commercially, we, too, must strengthen and increase our industr-
ial education, and, to an extent that some educators do not as
yet dream of, then we will be shocked to find that in the matter
of guidance of Junior and senior high school pupils in the
selection of life work, little of practical accomplishment has
been dene. If technical education is necessary for our national
growth (and Germany has given a real demonstration of this
truth), then, it is even more important that finding courses
which will enable the youth of the land to find their way into
those different phases of the wast work for which they have a
liking, based upon true facts and contacts, should be provided.

I believe that the one greatest unsolved problem.before
this nation today is how to provide the means by which the great
army of school children will be brought to have a real knowledge
of the actualities and needs of the different kinds of work
waiting for their hands to do. I believe that it is coming to
be a question of whether our country is to be for the people,

a country in which a wise system enables boys and girls to find
their way cheerfully into work that they like, or whether the
selection is to be made for the young by some all-wise psycholog-
ically trained individuals under the direction of some sort of
socialist state. Whatever the answer to the above, all will agree
that happy, contented people are Just as much needed for a happy

successful state as are "contented cows" in the dairy industry,

Page?

and the surest way to have a contented workman is to give him a
Job which he has chosen himself, at leisure, with cpen eyes, and
with the truth as his guide. Our factories are not slave shops
for the intelligent american workers who are there of their own
choice and because they like to be there.

American industry, as I have said, holds forth.promise
of happy success to the adapted ones and it should certainly be
brought within the range of their finding course experience, in
all of its ramifications, while they are still young, unprejudiced,
and have the leisure to choose. -

The field of endeavor covered by the engineering pro-
fession is not only of great extent, but the kinds of work to
which its members give theirliwas vary greatly as to type, loca-
tion, and environment. Also, the educational work that is avail-
able to the student in the different technical schools is ex-
tremely varied in kind and scope; while the question of the
proper line of study for the noncollege man to take up in order
to reach full efficiency in the industries is difficult to
answer. In view of these facts, it is necessary that educators
use every possible resource at their command to give the young
people of the junior and senior high schools anything like the
comprehensive finding experience and information that they need
in order for them.to arrive at even a semblance of the truth
about the nature of the different kinds of work available or
of their own fitness and capacity for success therein.‘ With a
very large percentage of the professional men of the country

destined within the next few years to be engaged in engineering

Page 8

and technical work, and, with the full knowledge that the work-
men and experts engaged in the industries allied to or controlled
by engineers will amount to some fifty per cent of the people
gainfully employed in the nation , educators are going to find
the problem of providing the young people with.finding course
material that will conserve and develope the nation’s latent

man power along these lines in the best possible manner one of
paramount importance to all educators who wish to arrive at the
retirement age with an easy conscience and who have the good of
the country at heart.

As I have stated, the greater part, by far, of the
effort that is being put forth along the lines of finding
course work at present is in the shop classes that are being
conducted in the grades from the seventh to the tenthi But
'when I study the work being done by these classes in the Niche
igan high schools, I find that they are entirely inadequate in
scope or in the accuracy and dependability of the experiences
and the information given. As taught at present, they give
but a limited, sad view of the vast needs and opportunities for
success and service for the young man who will at an early age
begin the work of preparation and study for any one of the lines
of work available. This condition is due mainly to three causes.

The first is the great lack of accurate first-hand
knowledge on the part of the shop teachers concerning the differ-
ent kinds of occupations, trades, and lines of engineering
practice needed by the industries and by the government or

Page 9

concerning the specific types of men needed therefore, and the
preparation needed for success, or concerning the exact nature
of the different works as to location and environment. The
second is the inherent unsuitability of the shops, as organ-
ized and maintained, to even attempt to give contacts and ex-
periences of the varied nature needed even though a boy were to
take all of the shop work offered. The third lies in the fact
that the shops are used by many of the purely academic heads of
our high schools as dumping grounds for every case of maladjust-
ment and of educational misfit they may have who would not be
able to get through the usual academic subjects. This results
in a lowering of the scholarly standing and general ambition,
outlook, and industry of the groups to an extent that precludes
any chance for real contacts or experiences that will enable a
serious minded boy to form accurate opinions as to the nature
of the fields of industry and engineering.

These conditions in the shop courses would be im-
proved to a marked degree if the personnel of the teaching
force were more largely of graduate engineers experienced in
their field in order that they might lend the influence of their
attitude, advice, and knowledge to the total of the student's
contact experience. It might be objected that an engineer
would be narrow, and confined in his attitude and knowledge to
his own line of training and experience. This, I do not be-
lieve to be true. It is the teacher's attidude and mental set
as regards the branches of engineering and industry that is

Page 10

needed. Also, while I hold this brief for better finding
courses in high schools, I do not hope, nor do I argue for per-
fection in any institution dealing with human relations, and
more especially with young humans. Certainly, however, the
presence of trained, experienced engineers as teachers in a
shop would give the young people more of an opportunity to
form an opinion of whether or not their leanings were toward
engineering as a work or a profession.

It must be remembered, furthermore, that while this
is a discussion of the part of engineering education in the find-
course work there are many other lines that must find their way
into the finding course activities, lines such as pure science,
medicine, business, athletics, education, accounting, selling,’
merchandising, home economics, and agriculture. All of these
lines, and others, are and should be quite adequately repre-
sented by trained experts in each line, by men and women who in
addition to their work in teacher's college and elsewhere, have
had more than a little practical experience in the line or lines
that they are teaching. The presence of such trained teachers
should, I think, constitute one of the principal means by which
the students may obtain the desirable mental set for or against
any certain line of work.

It seems, then, no more than right and sensible to
say that, since a very large number of the students will un-
doubtedly enter some form of engineering and the allied indus-

tries as a life work, a proper sorting and selection could only

go forward with a considerable number of the faculty, engineer-
Page 11

ing experienced, minded, and trained.

Engineering education should also enter into the
allied studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, insofar
as is needed to use these courses in the best possible way as
finding courses for the engineering professions and for the
industries. In order to accomplish this in the most efficient
way, the first step should be to have at least one half of the
teachers of these subjects graduates of engineering schools and,
also, there should be a.fairly large percentage of them posessed
of considerable experience along some engineering line. There,
on the faculty these men would simply be themselves. In addition
to being the boys counselor and friend, they would be always an
example of what an engineer was like. They would create the
necessary atmosphere, emphasize the methods, and introduce the
vocabulary and writings of the engineering world. Under their
influence the library could be better supplied with.engineering
periodicals and the reference list of books would contain more
names of elementany engineering texts and handbooks. Occasions
ally engineers of note could be induced to fill in at the audi—
torium meetings to show the pupils what they were like and to
some extent, give a true picture of the nature of some well-known
engineering problem in such a way as would aid the young people
in forming an absolutely truthful picture of what it would be
like to take part in the project. These men teachers could
also enlist the aid of local engineers who would describe the
building of some local road or other project in which there was
a general interest.

Page 12

Understand that I am not advocating making these
sciences more ”practical“. Neither am I outlining a course in
elementary engineering. I am.endeavoring to show practical ways
in which engineers, as teachers, can serve to aid in the working
out of the great finding course problem, the problem of aiding'
the youth without interrupting or disrupting in any way the
present program in forming a truthful picture, an accurate con-
ception of what it would mean for him to engage in some job or
profession as a life work, to the end that each individual may
then choose, of his own volition, according to his own likes or
dislikes.

Engineering must also color more strongly (and truth-
fully) such subjects asJEnglish, history, geography, and arithme-
tic. I have mentioned in the first part of this paper the evils
that come from.too dramatic and too highly colored accounts of the
exploits of ”exceptional“ individuals when presented to English
classes in an attempt to give knowledge of occupations in America.
On the other hand, the.English class, due largely to its nature
and to the fact that eight and more semesters are devoted to the
work, offers a splendid opportunity to present the truth about
the different occupations. To illustrate: a boy could give as
a composition a description of how his father prospects for and
drills a new oil well. Under the teacher's guidance the boy
himself and his paper or speech could be a splendid picture of
what the work really meant. Some would be attracted and some
would probably think, ”I do not choose to drill for oil." If
so, we would have an almost ideal finding experience, namely a

.Page 13

self-willed choice founded on fact, rather than upon drama
and fancy. This idea of allowing the boys and girls to pose
as examples or represenatives of the personnel of the different
occupations or professions, as they tell or read their description
of the parents (or their own) duties and activities, could be
carried out to include practically all of the local occupations.
Rene of these would change the course an iota from.the objective
of teaching some part of the required English instruction. .Almost
the same amount of good could be accomplished in history and the
other subjects mentioned. 'With, the idea of watchful supervisory
care and wholehearted effort always in mind, no opportunity on
the part of the teacher would be missed to present the true view,
the accurate word picture of the world at work, in order that the
boy or girl may be aided in longing for and finding a happy
place therein. Engineers, as teachers, should and would struggle
to keep the different school subjects mentioned free from.the
untruthful descriptive matter and also work for the type of
lesson that would present the truth.{

Great as is the finding course problem, in general,
and whatever the means taken to solve it, I am convinced that
the main way in which the good work can be started in the engin-
eering profession approach, as well as in the approach to the
industries allied thereto, is to provide an increase in the number
of graduate and trained engineers on the teaching forces of our
high schools. The personnel of the teaching force in our high
schools, I repeat, should be composed nearly fifty per cent of
engineering school graduates that thay may lend the influence of

Page 14

their experience, advice, and knowledge to aid the pupils in
making a wise selection of a profession or occupation. If not,
the next few decades will see the state technical schools, trade
schools, and the profession itself along with its industries

clogged with an even larger number of ill-adapted, disappointed mis-

fits than at present.

Page 15

CHAPTER II
Engineering Education as a

Preparation for College Work

Before taking up a discussion of what part engineer-
ing education should play in the high school preparation for
college work in engineering, we will consider briefly to what
extent it now forms a part of the high school curriculum.

There are certain subjects now taught in high school
that would certainly be considered as basic and fundamental
preparation.for any course in an engineering college, if there
were any such institutions, in which the youth was entered
from.the grammar school without any high school preparation. I
can list some of the subjects as follows: elementary mineralogy,
location of engineering projects as found in geography, part of
engineering law of contracts as found in business courses.
mathematics, physics, and elementary mechanics. A.careful
study of these will lay the foundation for success even for
one who intends to study alone without the aid of a college
training; therefore, these subjects may. be considered rightfully
as being engineering preparatory subjects now being taught in
the present status quo of high school affairs. The English

department also has much of its work devoted to things that are,

of course, absolutely needed in an engineers training.
It is in the vocational high schools and in the

vocational departments of the regular high schools that we find

Page 16

the only direct and segregated effort at preparatory training

in engineering. Here the pupils are taught much about the
materials of engineering; a considerable amount of the nomencla-
ture becomes familiar to them; they learn a little of power trans-
mission,‘both electrical and mechanical; and they begin to grasp
some of the connection and correlation between design, mathematics,
production, and artisanship. Hewever, the vocational department
is not at present considered as a part of the college preparatory
work, but rather as a preparation for those who for one reason or
another are intending to enter the trades and not go to college,
and , therefore, the present status of the vocational department
is such that it cannot be considered as preparatory to engineering
college work.

A phase of preparatory engineering education, not often
thought of, is the attempt, on the part of some of the teachers,
at least, to imbue the minds of students in mathematics, physics,
and chemistry with the professional spirit of engineering. This
praiseworthy attitude of some teachers is meeting opposition.

The idea of not allowing students preparing for engineering college
to indulge themselves in the same lax study habits as do the
students preparing for the academic degrees, would be good if it
could be practically carried out in a general school in which

the science studies have to serve a dual purpose. First, they
have to serve as a sort of appreciation course of the Creator's
handwork and must be developed along broadly qualitative lines.
Second, they must be made to serve as a training course in the

Page I?

professional attitude, a tryout of the boy‘s adaptability to-
ward engineering in general, a course developed along quantita—
tive lines. Because of the above, I find that training in the
professional attitude and sure, accurate study is practically
non-existent in most high schools, especially in those schools
in which the doctrine of allowing the students to pursue the
even tenor of their ways without interference from teachers is
becoming prevalent.

In regard to the divergence of opinion existing as to
the advisability of maintaining separate courses in the sciences
in technical high schools or departments within the present high
schools, it is my opinion that a sane middle ground of teaching
in the high school science departments, coupled with the change
in teacher personnel which I advocated in the first chapter
‘would solve the problem. If the science and mathematics courses
‘were to be taught in the time-honored style with graduate engin-
eers composing some one half of the teaching force, all of the
pupils would be able to acquire a broad fundamental training for
any line of life work and at the same time receive an ideal find-
course field in their science and mathematics work. Separate
courses in "shop math“,"engineering physicsl “radio physics",
”girl's physics", ”practical chemistry" are not desirable from
the standpoint of the finding course program as I have outlined
it.

I believe that the idea of the segregation in the high
school has its roots in the success of such technical schools as_

Page 18

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
the Case School of Applied Science, the Stevens Institute of Techs
nology, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These ‘
schools have, of course, kept to akmost exclusive technical lines
and are independent of other colleges.

It must be remembered that what applies to college
stage of development education does not apply in high school. In
colleges and in beginning industry, the finding work and the
sorting have been accomplished, or at least we hope they have,
‘while the chief function of the high school both senior and jun-
ior is to serve as a finding experience, as an almost automatic
sorting field. How, I ask, are we to provide pupils with the wid-
est range of contacts, with the most comprehensive tryouts, if
we begin by narrowing where we should.broaden?

On the contrary, of the young who are interested enough
to find their way into high school mathematics and science classes
'we should make no division into groups. The finding experiences
can be made sufficiently numerous to suffice, and a properly

taught high school science course can be made to serve as a try-
out and a preparation for engineering without any disrupting of
the regular system.

From.the foregoing it is clear that, with the technical
school busy with the more professional subjects or those subjects
quite closely related thereto, a thorough preparation in language,
history, literature, economics, mathematics, and science as given

in the usual college preparatory course can be considered as a

Page 19

direct part of engineering education. The engineer must be a
broadly cultivated person and able to cope on equal footing
with.the men of other professions. These courses, then, being
an essential part of the work of the technical school training
for engineers, can, if well covered in high school, relieve the
technical school of part of its burden and thus leave more time
for the much needed technical training and experimentation. So
much for the work of the academic high.school departments in
preparing boys for the engineering profession.

I have stated that the vocational department is not
at present considered as a part of the college preparatory
course scheme, but rather in the light of a trade school. A
professor of an engineering college staff said recently that
boys from.the vocational departments and vocational high
schools did not measure up to the standards of the university
engineering courses as well as did the boys from.the regular
college preparatory courses. And yet, the true and proper
field for preparatory engineering education is in the vocation-
al departments of our high schools. Engineering education
should enter into and dominate these departments as its own
rightful field, to the end that, in cooperation with the science,
mathematics, and other departments, the vocational course would
be accepted as the usual one to take in preparation for college
‘work in engineering. I

I believe that, in general, if an engineer today can
say truthfully that his early training, from.the beginning in

Page 20

fact, was planned with an eye to the profession and the divi-
sion of the profession that has proved to be his life work, then
he is, almost without a doubt, more than averagely successful.
Such.a.man is happy and competent because of the years of suc-
cessful experience behind him. He is a credit item.in the com-
munity appraisal of man power and knowledge.

It has been noted by many observers that boys raised
on farms and ranches usually made better engineers than did e-
qually intelligent boys from the city. This is to be expected.
These boys have had an opportunity to develope resourcefulness.
They have handled tools, animals, combated the forces of nature
in an intimate manner, much.of which opportunity is denied to
the average city boy. In all probability, many of the country-
bred engineers from whose success the foregoing idea or belief
has grown were the products of the older frontier type of life
that is no longer so common. Nevertheless, self-reliance and
resourcefulness are prime requisites in the qualifications for
an engineer, and life on a farm would undoubtedly serve to de-
velope any such latent qualities or would serve to discourage
anyone not so equipped from.further effort in the strenuous
life of the engineer.

If all of the college preparatory students in en-
gineering were to take the shop courses as they should be or-
ganized, they would receive the above enumerated types of de-
velopment and tryout at the same time they received a.much

needed preliminary training for the future college work in

Page 21

shop, drafting room, and experience with materials. The ob-
jection will at once be raised that the organization of the

shop course purely as a finding course precludes any such of-
fort. The answer is that shop courses in the senior high school
should not be finding courses; that like any other course in the
senior high, the dual objective should be kept clearly in mind,
namely: to prepare for college work or to prepare for life with-
out the college.

All courses in high school should have this dual ob-
jective. The finding course should, or rather the idea should,
as I have said, be incorporated therewith as a phase without
disrupting or interrupting the main work of the course.

Some claim that the segregation of the groups would
place students in such a course in a group by themselves in
pmsics, chemistry, mathematics, and English classes. I be-
lieve this to be wrong. In fact, such separate classes would
be highly undesirable. Separation or differentiation among the
pupils tends to defeat the finding course ideal which is to pro-
vide the most varied and comprehensive contacts and experiences
for the largest number of pupils. As the tastes of the young
become more pronounced and directional as to occupation, they
will select the courses and stress the phases of those which
they most desire as the goal of their main efforts. That is,
pupils will by the time they reach the tenth grade either dis-
play a liking for shop work or a dislike for it. The same will
‘09 true of Physics: chemistry. physical geography, mechanical

Page 22

drawing. These subjects will certainly, if well taught, serve
to further the development of a definite mind set of the pupil,
but the course itself will be taught on the assumption that the
pupils taking it are there in the class because they want to be
there as a part of a presumably selfselected course. All this
may seem incoherent, impossible, to some, but remember that the
high school, more than college, is a time of physical and men-
tal growth and constant change.
”A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

We must remember that the finding process must go on
continuously and progressively for the entire six years of high
school life, that it is partly one of development and growth.
We must not try to force the issue by demanding of the youths
that they choose this road or that irrevocably. We must avoid
making a boy say, as I heard a boy say this semester, ”I took
the drafting course but I'm sorry. 0 course, it is too late to
change”.

All high school courses, I refer to the courses of
study high school has laid out, such as, college preparatory or
drafting, not to separate classes. as algebra or French, must
be kept as near alike as possible; times for final decisions
must be put off as long as possible (the nearer graduation, the
better); ways of changing from one general direction to another
in occupational tendencies must be kept open; and running through
all of the courses, must be the phase consisting of as many

Page 23

kinds and types of finding experiences and occupational con-
tacts as possible, or as ingenuity and professional skill can
devise.

The present type of shop course as I have found it in
Michigan high schools cannot fit in.with.this scheme for the
following simple reasons; First,- There is the custom of using
the vocational shops and courses as a dump to which are herded
the moronics, incorrigibles, misfits, and problem cases, thus
giving the shops a bad name scholastically, which, in turn, pre-
vents the high grade mental types from electing the shop and
other vocational courses. Second,- The fact that the shop
courses are not so arranged that the pupils taking them can
easily enter college creates the impression that they (the shop
courses) are for the individuals who for reasons of financial
or mental deficiency, or both, are not going to college.

Naturally boys of high.mental calibre or ambition
hesitate to enter them, and naturally, there has grown up an
evil condition of social and money-class difference that is,
by the way, out of place in state-owned democratic institutions.

This condition must be done away with to arrive at a
condition that squares more with common sense. The vocational
courses must be made to be the usual and recognized path.for those
who have a marked predilection for the industries whether with
or without college. The pupils from these vocational courses
must have the same place in the sun as do the other pupils in

the school with the same classes in physics, mathematics, and

Page 24

other subjects. The silly placing of mental failures in ex-
pensively equipped shops to play with expensive machinery be-
cause nothing else can be found for their hands to spoil must
stop.

The shop course should be open to all for one semes-
ter to as many as may be found time for in the students program.
Most important of all, the standard of scholarship and teacher
ability should be held to a level that will be fitting in a
course leading to college work in the applied sciences, home
economics, and engineering. Raised to such a standard as I have
outlined, the vocational courses would not only serve to aid in the
preparation of high.grade beginners in the skilled-worker class
of which I will write in the next chapter, but will also serve to
sort and cut out in time many of the undesirable misfits who now
try engineering college courses.

Instead of functioning, as now, as a sort of busy work
department for the hands of the mentally unfit, the vocational
department in its function of college preparation, should be a
most valuable proving ground for the selection and preliminary
training for the selection.of engineering college entrants.

‘ Page 25

CHAPTER III
Engineering Education as a
Preparation.for Citizenship and the
Life Work of the Non College Man

This thought has occurred to many teachers: Suppos-
ing that after years of training one of these boys should fail
in essential ways to measure up to the standards required of
men in the profession.for which he is striving, does our system
provide him.any means of real economic usefulness with.which he
'will feel somewhat satisfied after the training he has taken?
Is there, in other words, a system.of well marked stopping
places along the educational road at which those who feel that
they cannot for one reason or another advance further may stop
off and find a good economic use for the knowledge and skills
they have attained while in school?

In older times, say fifty years ago, this was cer-
tainly true. A.young person finished grade school and proceeded
to enter one of the many trades and occupations as a beginner
or as an apprentice, although the word was passing out of use
at that time. Hundreds of occupations were open to him. He
would simply choose the one he had learned to like or lean to-
ward because of personal acquaintance, contacts with working
conditions, hours, and so forth. He would begin as a helper,
”stay by it", and so reach a self-satisfying economic level.

A second class, goaded by self ambition or the urgings of

friends and family, would enter high school. Finished there,

Page 26

they taught school, read law, entered banks as clerks, or ”ac-
cepted positions" as bookkeepers or druggist's apprentices. A
third class went on to college. They became college professors,
lawyers, doctors, and ”civil" or "electrical engineers".

Times have changed, society has changed, and most of
all, and, this is the important part, occupations have changed,
changed in number, kind, requirements, and in age of entrance.
Schools have changed, but not in any sort of synchronism, phase,
or motive with the changing industrial world. Boys and girls
by state law in Michigan.complete the tenth grade, unless they
have reached the legal age limit, and all are urged to complete
high school. The number who enter industry at an early age is
growing smaller and smaller. The period of trade and industrial
training has been dropped for most. The boys and girls go to
high school instead, and prepare for college. The first exodus
from school to the industries at the end of the grammar school
grades has dwindled and now includes only those who are proba-
bly destined to fill the ranks of unskilled labor. The second
outpouring which occurs at the end of the high school career,
contains, without doubt, individuals better equipped for clerk-
ships, business,and social life in general, than were the eigth
grade graduates of the nineties. The girls still find many of
the old time clerkships, as well as homemaking, open to them;
the boys entering clerkships and minor office work, and those
taking to farming still have much the same kind of work and the
high school training seems to help.

Page 27

But for the boy entering industry things are different.
He no longer seeks a place in a country workshop or some small
factory. The boy entering industry today goes into a highly
mechanized army. Everything he meets with is engineereplanned
and engineer-controlled. He finds every conceivable degree of
skill and ability, reaching from such grades as factory piece
worker up through the grades of surveyor, draftsman, designer,
chemist, manager, and chief engineer. He looks in vain.for any
sharp dividing line between the classes. There will be practi-
cally every possible type of artist, artisan, and mechanic with
practically every possible degree of ability represented.

This great army of men.from.the generals down will be
engaged solely in one work, that of producing and transporting
goods df every kind. In numbers they will form.roughly one
half of the people who do things in the country, and the vast
majority of them are non college men.

Here, then, is the most important branch of engineer-
ing education. To prepare these young people who leave high
school and go into some form of the industries to find their
way into suitable employments for which they have natural ap-
titude, and to give them preliminary training that will con-
tain elements to replace the lost apprenticeship years, would
be a real justification.for the great amount of money spent by
the state for vocational buildings, equipment, and teaching
force. It is, therefore, in this field of engineering educa-
tion in the vocational schools that the greatest number of

Page 28

individuals can be reached and the greatest good accomplished.

In order that a.man.may be a good citizen, a good
home maker, and so be of the most value to himself and to others,
he must hays health and a vocation to which he is suited. ‘We
can visualize, I believe, the need of having each.man working
at the vocation to which he is best adapted and the great ins
crease of wealth, man-power, and general contentment among the
workers that would result therefrom, if we consider any project
or enterprize with which we have been connected in the past as
engineers and imagine all.of the different assignments changed
so as to put each worker at the particular part of the work to
'which he was least fitted. The chaos and inefficiency that
would result,along with the great financial loss and probable
breaking up and abandonment of the entire job, should serve to
indicate to us what is going on in the engineering world at
large today due to this employment everywhere of poorly pre-
pared, untrained misfits.

Further, any engineer knows the prime importance of
having all the people on a job or any undertaking supplied
'with.some sort of hobby or avocation to keep them.contented
and also the importance of having them all of a type and train-
ing that will allow them to fit in.well with the social and
religious life of the community. These requirements,when con-
sidered as applied to the whole of industry, show the import-
ance of these qualifications in the vast and complicated or-

ganization of national industry as a whole.

Page 29

Experienced graduate engineers, as teachers, knowing
the great needs of the non college man in industry and knowing,
also, the need that industry and the nation have for non college
men, can go a long way in improving the present condition. The
objectives should always be the dual ones of preparation of
some for engineering and technical school by cooperation with
the mathematics and science classes and of imparting knowledge
and skills of commercial value in every course taught, and of
having everything possible about every course serve as true
finding experiences.

The importance of having such departments in close
touch with the field of modern industry is apparent. A shop
class such as I am.describing will of necessity be taught by an
engineer with a fund of teaching and technical skill and exper-
ience. Such a teacher would need to be in close and intimate
contact with the types of work and the kind of life into which
his charges must find their way. The good that has been derived
in the past few decades from.the application of scientific and
engineering methods and knowledge to the arts and manufactories
'with the practical applications in the hands of skilled mechane
ics should teach all concerned the need of the development of this
knowledge and skill within the entire body of the industrial ar-
my. It is apparent that the only place to accomplish this is in
the high school. That the work is a dual one of training, devel-
opment, growth, and teaching, on the one hand, and choosing find-

ing, and sorting on the other.

Page 30

It is evident that the most important part of this
worszor industrial America has its outlet through the shop or
so-called vocational classes, and that in these classes by far
the most important work lies in the proper training, orienta-
tion, and guidance of the non college engineer and worker. No
organization or company can long stand the stress of incompe-
tent workers in the subordinate positions and in the shops.
Failure in either or both.of these things means failure and
bankruptcy, either partial or complete, as the result.

'What applies to a single organization applies to in-
dustry at large. The aorta, bottle neck, if you will, of the
stream supplying these workers is the high school vocational de-
partment. Nothing should be too good in the way of teacher per-
sonnel.for these institutions. The men I have described as need-
ed for teaching here would cost money, but anything would be
cheap as compared with the vast sum of wastage, incompetence,
and inefficiency that at present is indicated in the types that
plug the employment entrances and add to the overhead by incom-
petence in.management.

As the high school curriculum, teaching force, and
objectives are at present organized there is little or no
thought given to the needs of the non college man. All of the
courses of the departments other than the present so-called
vocational department have as a clear and recognized objective,
the preparation for college. Under the present system in vogue,
the boys and girls who do not attend college or prepare therefor

are considered as being something a little different, as being

Page 31

outside of the main line of the institution's endeavor. All of
this, notwithstanding the fact that only a very small percentage
of the pupils entering high school ever complete the course and
go through college. The greater part by far of the pupils leav-
ing high school do not go on to any form of future study and are
left to find their own vocation as best they may, at least, so
far as the schools are concerned. On the other hand, the grad—
uates who enter college receive training of a specific kind

that will fit them to succeed in their chosen professions or
other activities.

The reason for this condition is found in the fact
that under the present system the vocational departments are
tagged as being of something inferior to college grade, that
the principals put into them students of subnormal capacity,
misfits that the teachers have failed with, and others, thus en-
hancing the desirabilities of the college preparation courses
in the eyes of the student body, and correspondingly degrading
the desirability of the other courses.

The brightest minds both in the student'hody and on
the faculty are engaged at present in guiding and directing the
college preparatory classes. With the school's every energy
bent upon the task of preparing the entire population of the
country to be super men and women, to be sale3*managers and ex-
ecutives, to make them "succeed", it is no wonder that anything
like an occupation outside the so-called white-collar class

should fall slightly into disreputa.‘

Page 32

Inasmuch as a negligible few ever will or can find
their way into "superman” jobs or even into ”assistant super-
man“ jobs, and because the great majority of the product of our
high schools must work for a living, - that is, they will be,

'we hope, skillful "dirt" farmers, actual mechanics, bookkeepers.
draftsmen, and other varieties of plain everyday Americans —- it
'would be much.more fitting that all the energies of the school
be turned to this latter class.

The engineering profession should set up as the clear
objective, at least, within the vocational classes the frank
aimrof training the sons and daughters of the industrial classes
to have a definite and chosen occupation in the mechanic arts,
not neglecting agriculture, by which they would be able to eann
a livelihood; all this, of course, in addition to the general
knowledge and skills usually considered as comprising an ele-
mentary education. By so doing, the engineering profession can
aid in enriching the purely academic courses to the extent that
all pupils may obtain a knowledge of the things to be known and
the kind of life to be lived by the men in the trades and other

occupations.

Page 53

CHAPTER IV
The Need of Engineering School Graduates on the
High.School Vbcational Teaching Force

The courses that exist in the present high schools
of the state and the methods by which they are presented to
the pupils, along with the generally prevailing educational
atmosphere can be considered only as a preparation for such pro-
fessions as the law, medicine, teaching, or business. Little
practical training is given for engineering or the industries
connected therewith. Neither do I find any evidence of any
real attempt being made to introduce elementary engineering
teaching into the high schools. we can arrive at this conclu-
sion‘by the most cursory examination of the studies taught.

Mathematics and physics are the nearest approach.we
can.find to beginning engineering, but in most of our schools
these subjects are taught by women teachers or by men with a
purely academic background and school training. There is,
therefore, in these courses little of value as a pre-engineer-
ing finding subject. Practically no professional attitude
could be inculcated by such courses and, as in most beginning
science courses comparatively little factual knowledge is
retained, the most valuable part from the standpoint of ele-
mentary engineering is lacking. Few good professional habits
of investigation and thought and of record keeping are taught.
0n the contrary, many harmful habits of indolence, inaccur-
acy in calculation, and careless observation are formed.

Page 34

Such.classes as I have visited would possibly serve as prepar-
ation.for the more carefree life of some of the liberal arts
colleges, but they have little in common with the preparation
for engineering training or for a strenuous competitive life in
modern industry,

The English.classes come the nearest to the required
standards of engineering preparation classes. All engineers
know that training in literature and the classics enables a
:man to meet as an equal the men.of the other professions whom.
he contacts. Also, every engineer knows that accurate express-
ion and fluent command of language are indispensable in his
‘work. There is, however, little of the vocabulary of engin-
eering and little of the general style and diction of the en-
gineer in the work of the average English class.

In regard to the shop courses as they are now organ-
ized and taught, they are acknowledged as being merely supple-
mentary to the academic courses. They have as their objectives
too many psychological aims such as, for instance, the “co-
ordination of hand and eye", or that other very laudable pur-
pose of keeping the boys in school. Leaving aside any discus-
sion of the general aims of these present vocational classes
as to whether or not they are good as pre-engineering train-
ing, the students in these subjects in most high schools are
not taking courses that lead to college. The course of study
they follow does not give them, in.most cases, credits enough

to enter college. It is quite apparent, therefore, that

Page 35

there is little or no real attempt being made to train or to
give real.finding course experience7in those occupations, engi-
neering and engineering industry, that will absorb azvery large
percentage of the high school product. Nor is any serious ef-
fort being made on the part of the academically trained teaching
forces to introduce courses of study that could be called pre-
engineering courses or to rearrange and rebuild any of the exp
isting courses.

As for the causes of this condition in our schools,
we can quickly point out three that, I believe, are the prime
factors. All three of these could undoubtedly have been over-
come or ameliorated if the vocational.teacher personnel had
been different. The first is the almost complete lack of a-
greement among educators, taxpayers, legislators, parents,
and industrial men as to what constitutes the aim, the pur-
pose; and the general method of procedure to be used in our
vocational high school work. The second is the almost com-
plete lack of professional engineering background or training
among the vocational teaching force, coupled with a lack of
general education of a college grade that serves to discount
their influence and belittle their general standing among both
pupils and teachers of the high schools.. The third is due to
the fact that the superintendents, principals, department
heads, and, of course, the great majority ofthe teachers are
academically trained and minded. Their interests, their ed-
ucational activities, andtheir activities outside of teaching

Page 36

have in the great majority of cases been along the lines of

the humanities, pure science, sociology, economics, education,
and the like., thwithstanding the fact that the groups enu-
merated above represent in their number practically one hun-
dred per cent men and women who have a temperament, character,
and training that places matters of child and community welfare
above, or at least on.a par,with.their own, it would be improb-
able that these men and women should be able to see eye to eye
with engineers and industrialists either the needs in engineer-
ing education or the best means of their attainment.

I will mention a few of the many incidents and con-
versations which I have available to illustrate this lack of
unity as to aim, purpose, and methdd that exists, as I see it,
in the vocational departments. There is nothing critical in
these conversations. They are given with the one purpose of
clarifying the picture as to existing conditions. Possibly the
condition of misunderstanding and cross-purpose work is due not
so much to anything that the shop teachers have done or have
not done as it is to the antiquated system.from which they de-
rive - a system under which a high school was a state or city
supported ”prep" school, organized to give to all the benefits
that had previously been only for the sons of the wealthy. At
that time there were but two groups in a ”prep” school, those
who made the college grade and those who did not. Before the
rise of engineering and the present industrial age, a college
course usually meant the A.B. degree. The coming of the new

Page 37

age has not found all school men inclined to make the necessary
changes, and what changes have been achieved have been thwarted
and turned aside by the more aoademical of the faculties.

A superintendent told me that the main purpose of the
vocational, or as he called it, the manual training‘branch of
his system, was to aid in co-ordinating mind and hand. The
high school principal in the same system.assured me that the
main purpose of the vocational classes was to provide a means
of getting those pupils through to graduation who are mentally
or otherwise inferior and cannot get through the academic de-
partment work. This same principal brought a boy, the pitcher
on the baseball team, to the teacher of mechanical drawing and
asked if he could be taken on for an extra class in drawing,
'Ybu see he is failing in mathematics and if you can get him.thru
drawing, it will help a lot." After the boy had left he added
this, "He is very slow and dull; maybe you can get him to making
blue prints, and make a draftsman out of himf

A college professor remarked to me that one of the boys
was ”not so quick” and that he very likely would have to follow
some sort of vocation. But said he, "This other boy is showing a
mentality that will warrant something better for him." Aischool
board member criticized the high school wood shop sharply.
“Foolishness", he declared, ”They spend a hundred dollars to make
a toy broom holder that would not sell for ten cents." I talked
with a graduate of the University. He mastered in Education.
I'That stuff is about all through", he declared, "You can see what

Page 38

I mean, the people are fed up on it."

Again, we have the head of a high school speaking
of the value of the classics as a preparation for life. He quo-
ted from a recent book the story of a graduate of a famous English
school who had taken all he could of Greek, Latin, and mathemat-
ics, and Who was then placed by politics in charge of a colossal
construction Job in Russia. The job employed hundreds of men.

His efforts due to his special training were crowned with success.
As far as I could make out. it was the knowledge of human nature
gleaned from.the Greek, the direct and forceful diction derived
from the Latin study, and the mental discipline from his years

of mathematics that made him succeed where an engineer would

have failed.

I have, since beginning this work, talked with.many who,
though having, like Luther, "small.Latin and less Greek”, are,
for all that, important in the industrial world. Mr. A is a
graduate engineer and has been chief tool designer in a large
plant for some years. ”What is the chief purpose of our vocation-
al school and why is it kept up?” I asked. "It is kept up to
put the boys a little further along the line of advance in their
life work. The course should help the boys to become more suc-
cessful laborers, or, if possible, better mechanics. If they
show the natural ability it should aid them along the line of an
engineering college course." I could, I am convinced, write al-
most a book of interviews with people who have very certain ideas
as to the proper function of the vocational courses in our high
schools. In all of my experience with vocational school men,

Page 39

and with.men and boys not in school work, I have but one clear
and outstanding impression on this matter and that is this:
there is an almost complete lack of agreement among these people
as to what the vocational schools and the manual training de-
partments that have been installed at such a tremendous expense
are trying to accomplish. The condition is entirely chaotic

so far as the purpose and aim of the vocational work is con-
cerned.

There seems to be an almost complete lack of agree-
ment among and between the three classes of supporters of this
work. By the three classes I mean the patrons, the school men,
and the lawmakers who make the appropriations for these schools.
The opinions and hopes of the vocational teacher writers of
text books do not agree at all. The ideas held by the school's
patrons vary between great extremes, and there is little unity
among the law makers as to the purpose for which they make the
appropriations. The purpose stated in one founding bill for
a college was,in effect,to provide training for the sons of
the industrial classes in the mechanic arts. The technical
high school in one city was endowed by its chief backer for the
purpose of making boys into better citizens by teaching them a
trade. On the other hand, the manual training department of a
certain city was built up and is supported on the theory that
it serves to maintain interest so keeping the boys and girls in
school, acts as a try out and a contact course to aid the child-
ren in finding their life work, and also handles the problem

Page 40

pupils.
As to the patrons, the head man of a soft coal mine

was very concerned about his boy's chances for a job when he
would finish school, and whether or not he would be able to

hold his own with the other young draftsmen with whom he
would have to compete. A mother feared that her sons intense
interest in his drawing work would win him away from the work
she had selected for him, dentistry. And, as to the teachers,
a printing teacher boasts of the large number of his boys who
have followed printing as a trade. Another instructor de-
clared that it did not in the least matter what they were
doing just so long as they were contented and busy,while
still another opined that it was too bad that all this inter-
est and energy could not be directed along some educational line.
Now there is a general feeling abroad, an opposition
taking head, against the spending of more money on the vocation-
al work. Of course the determined effort to curtail school
expense is general, but one views with grave concern the unity
With.which the ire of the retrenching taxpayers is directed at
the vocational department of the high school. Practically, the
talk is about doing away with vocational work; no voice seems
to be raised against the academic department. The good people
do not know what the vocational work is for and the members of
the board cannot tell them just why they are keeping it up.
The teachers themselves seem to be able to say little in its de-
fense.

Page 41

They say that a house divided against itself cannot
stand. This is quite true and a ship without a rudder is help-
less. But even a ship without a rudder is better off than is a
ship where there are some dozen or more warring captains with
an absolute zero of correlation among themselves as to little
matters like course and destination. Of course if a boat is
just sort of going about ”contacting" other boats and things,
that is all right. This, I say, is about the condition of the
ship of the vocational school venture in Michigan. Let me carry
the figure along. In his poem, "Gloucester Moors", Mr. Moody
says, '

”I watched while her captains passed,

She were better captainless.”
A great movement in education, a great reform movement, has had
marvelous support from the tax-payers and from the lawmakers,
because it seemed to them to fill a long felt need. The move
toward industrial education is being killed from within by the
very people who are supposed to be its supporters, the teachers
and the leaders in the movement.

As a class, the vocational teachers have been false
to the trugt put in them to push the new movement ahead, to
broadenzand direct it into the proper channels, and to agree
on and clarify the statement of its purpose and objectives.
Many of the teachers in this work are there because there was
an opening.

As a class, the principals of our high schools have

Page 42

viewed with alarm the growth of the manual training idea from

a small beginning to its present great size. They have deplor-
ed the presence of a large personnel in their teaching staffs
who are not academically minded. On the other hand they have
realized that the new department has served to make the course
they run much.smoother. The schools and the graduating classes
are larger as are also their own salaries, due to a sort of
sympathetic rise along with the increased school interest and
attendance. So torn‘between fear and satisfaction they have
seen fit to designate academically trained senior teachers to be
so-called heads of the vocational departments. We can truly say
that the vocational movement is in the hands of its enemies and
not its friends. If the vocational work is to stand for a vote
of confidence from the taxpayers with its present teacher per-
sonnel and its present chaotic condition as to aims and purposes,
it is going to be more and more a case of thumbs down on appro-
priations.

There are splendid men in the vocational work who are
exactly fitted for it. And, there are in the vocational depart-
ment splendid men who would be very successful in some other
lines of work. But there is only one test of efficiency and
that is the measure of effort and accomplishment. I submit
that few efforts have had better support than has this movement.
IMoney has been spent generously. Entire new buildings have been
erected for its sole use. Equipment has been supplied with a
lavish hand. In one high school is a woodworking outfit that

greatly exceeds that which I had for use when I took my course

Page 45

at Michigan State College, and all this equipment is usedjfor
for some forty pupils. The thought of the taxpayers has been, to
make this thing a success and not to spoil it by being too eco-
nomical. To match this great outlay I can find no unity of pur-
pose and little of accomplishment. I conclude that the movement
has not been a success and that the teachers are the cause of the
failure, since they have had charge of the movement. I conclude
that the present personnel is not the right one and that a change
is imperative. Otherwise the movement will fall into a state of
disrepute with the taxpayers that will place it beyond help.

If anyone should claim that I am.gu117%y of false gen-
eralization in the following, let me say that even if the condi-
tions as Outlined do not obtain in all of the cities of the state,
nevertheless, the fact that they do obtain in the cities investi-
gated is ample cause for concern and ample substantiation for my
premise. I am convinced as a result of having called upon the
vocational departments of a very large number of the high schools
in the state and of having conferred at length with two of the
placement heads of two of our teachers colleges that the con-
ditions described as to teacher training and experience do obtain
to a deplorable extent throughout the state.

In a city school employing some twenty on the voca-
tional staff, only two or three have degrees. Several of the
group are what are known as "practical men“ who have not finish-
ed regular high school, but have supplemented their work with
some correspondence and summer school work. ‘Most of the others

Page 44

are graduates of or holders of life certificates from state
teacher's colleges. Only one member of this force is a graduate
engineer who has taken the additional work to obtain a teacher's
life certificate and a Smith-Hughes certificate. I want, in
particular, to speak of two shop teachers who have obtained
SmitheHughes certificates without having teacher's life certifi-
cates. Both.of these men are very competent mechanics, but they
are deficient in general and in technical education. It is my
opinion that the SmitheHughes certificate should be given onry
to graduate engineers who have had the required experience and .
work in teaching method in addition thereto. Conversation with
them.immediately raises the suspicion in the mind of an engi-
neer that they are lacking in background, as our academic friends
would say. Pursuant of this idea, I journeyed to one of the
state teacher's colleges. I resolved that I would visit in order
all of the shops and also the classes in any technical subject
that would serve in any way as a source of engineering learning,
contact, or from which could be derived any element of this de-
sired background. I was to be on the lookout for anything in
the way of student activity or classroom work that would serve to
make the future teacher in any way engineering-minded.

These observations I make as a result. There are few
engineers on the faculties of teacher college vacational train-
ing departments. There are few practical classes in machine
shop, forge shop, pattern.making, or foundry practice -- in
the school I visited, none. Mechanical drawing is given very

Page 45

little attention. A concrete example of a shop course offered
more recently by a state teacher's college reads as follows:
"The General Shop. 4 term hours.
This is a class-room course covering the underlying
principles, the development and the problems of the
organization known as "general shop." It is a prac-
tical course for those desiring to teach or supervise
general shop work.“
I think the words “class-room", "practical”, and "for those de-
siring to teach or supervise general shop work" are significant.
But to continue: only one small room in the basement of the
training school was given over to mechanical drawing. In this
mechanical drawing room there was a total enrollment of four
young men. The teacher was a graduate of the manual training
course of the same college. He was not a mechanical draftsman,
at least not in the commercial sense. The group interested
me and I was able to get them.all into conversation. We were
unanimous in the statement that it was easier to "place” if one
took the work in mechanical drawing. Last of all I visited a
class in manual arts. It proved to be nothing in the world
but another variation of the methods' class. Children were
making wicker work and a mixed class of men and women were observ-
ing. This I was told they did two days out of the five and
on the other three days they took up a rather detailed study of
the child and the outcomes to be expected. They also studied
keeping a class interested, costs of materials, basket weaving as

Page 46

combined with wood work, raffia and reed. The class would also
touch a little on the history of the manual training movement and
take up the matter of the value of manual training work in the
rooms for backward children.

I state it, as my opinion, that if the average graduate
of this school were to attempt to hold a job in any one of the
trades on the strength.of what he learned here, the the foreman
would be very busy all day finding jobs for him.that he could do
without help. The reason that one is unable to find signs of
much.engineering background among vocational teachers is simply
that there is none, except in isolated cases.

Please do not think that I came away from.my visit
with scorn in my mind. Nething could be farther from.the truth.
The work given there in the academic branches is of a very high
order of excellence. In the different classes in psychology and
in the methods' classes, in fact in all of the academic work it
is beyond reproach and I believe that no teacher, no matter how
well he or she may be endowed by nature for the profession, should
be placed in charge of boys and girls or, for that matter, of
college students without having first taken the required training
in modern psychology and in teaching methods.

I visited the department of mechanism, drawing, and
design of a college engineering department. I had a splendid visit
‘with.the different teachers and with the head of the department.
As I went through the great number of splendidly equipped rooms
and examined the wonderful course of study, I thought, -- “What

Page 4'7

a contrast.“ But in the midst of all this there was a distinct
jarring note. One of the teachers of drawing said to me, in
substance, apropos of a little discussion of class management;

"We use few of the education department's ideas about teaching

in our work here; we feel that the men who come here are old
enough to eat for themselves; we do not feel the need of any type
of motivation or interest gaining work; we have made up a good
course of study and if it does not suit them they will have to
leave it. All of this work must be in on time and must be exactly
like the course prescribes.“

Here, in this man, I had found the other extreme. He
had the attitude that is all too prevalent among engineering school
graduates. They feel as a class distinctly resentful at being
asked to take the additional work in education to comply with
the law, They should be willing to do more than this, they should
not let any chance go by to study and keep up with the latest
things in educational method. This extreme attitude as typified
in the college teacher has done much to bring the engineering
school graduate,as a teacher, into disrepute among the superin-
tendents of the state. At the teacher's college the idea had been
that the prime need of a teacher was to know method. On the
other hand, there is the engineering graduate with.practical

experience also to his credit who does not know and in fact,
rather scorns the idea of learning teaching method and psychol-

OSY-

The teacher's college might, of course, put in an

Page 48

adequate department to train teachers in vocational work and
engineering, but the fact I want to bring out most strongly
now is that the present graduates know practically nothing a-
bout things that are common to engineers. Yet, it is from this
class that by far the greater part of the state's teaching
force for vocational work is being recruited at this time. The
ifew engineers there are in the system seem.to be lost like ink
in a lake.

We must not forget in this discussion to notice that
of the teacher group the superintendents are, together with the
principals, the most potent in shaping the courses and in fram-
ing the methods, aims, and policies. And these individuals are,

almost to a man, academically trained and minded. To make mate
ters worse, there are the few so-called practical men whom.we
usually finfl in the school machine and forge shops. They have
obtained their Smitthughes certificates on the strength.of
their meager education and their years of practical experience.
I cannot emphasize too strongly my idea that these men should
be compelled to take adequate technical training for a Smiths
Hughes certificate.

my investigation shows that while the vocational work
is almost entirely of an engineering nature both in the high
schools and in the junior colleges, the teachers, principals,
and superintendents are usuallyacademic in training and are
almost totally lacking in engineering background and prepara-

tion, and however fine they may be as educators in other de-

Page 49

partments, they are unfitted, as a class, to serve either in
the guidance, growth, or teaching work of such a department.

I have reported conversations and have recorded my
own observations in considerable detail. I wish now to draw a
picture of an academically trained teacher at work in his school
room.shop. This will enable you to see with.my eyes and draw,
as I hope, the same general conclusions that I have drawn. It
will serve also as a further contrast with the work and opinions
of the teacher I described at the engineering college. This
teacher in a wood shop talked freely of his aims and work. The
substance of his talk follows. "Many of the parents want, and,
in fact, persistently tried, during my first years here, to get
me to make this into a kind of trade school. Some of them want-
ed a sort of employment agency in connection with the school
that would seek to place students in proper jobs. But, due to
the fact that so many of my boys go away to school and that so
few of them take up engineering work and because, of those that
stay at home, only a very few take up any form.of wood working,
the placement idea has entirely failed and I do not even consider
it any more. Then, too, I find that the groups seem to vary so
from year to year that I cannot have any definite plan or pro-
gram. ’YOu just have to keep the boys interested or they will
drop the course and it is about the only way some of them can be
kept in school. Now the last few yearssI have come to see the
matter in this way. I can tell you plainly that the aim of

this shop is general education. Mr. B , the principal, and Mr.

Page 50

C , the supervisor, both agree with.me. The main thing is in-
terest and motivation. I do not attempt any set program. Just
as soon as I can, I get them to work, and each.boy does whatever
interests him. It helps them.to grow up. It provides contacts.
It is of inestimable valuesJ' As I listened to the familiar
words, I seemed to see the teacher's college campus again --
motivation, interest, contacts, growth, self-direction, self-
activity. .

As we talked, we sought refuge in the "tool" room. A
nondescript collection of wreckage, a few screw drivers, none
of which had a preperly shaped edge and all of which looked more
like dull cold chisels, one wood chisel used "to open things”,
and other small tools that were hopelessly “no good" were scat-
tered around the bench and rack. ‘What was left of a half dozen

hand saws were here and there and none of them were in shape.
On the battered walls were neatly stenciled patterns, each with
a hook, showing where the tool keeper of old had been taught

to keep the fine assortment of tools with which the good people
of the city had started the venture.

In one corner of the tool room was an imposing looking
filing cabinet or cupboard.which was arranged to hold fifty
drawers. Each drawer was neatly arranged to hold the various
hand tools that each pupil was supposed to have assigned to him.
I examined one of these drawers, at the time doing service as a
support for a varnished pot. It had nicely arranged pockets
for square, marking gauge, back saw, bevel, nail set, hammar,

Page 51

and chisels. Now all the places for such things in the shop

were empty; most of the tools were gone. The thought came to
me that some day the curious taxpayers might want to know how
the back saws were holding out.

The shop, however, was the teacher's pride. A belt
sander some twelve feet in length, a large band saw, a smaller.
bench band saw, a dish sander relegated to a corner, a newer
type in use, an automatic saw filer, several electric glue pots,
a large assortment of paints, stains, and varnishes, a splendid
circular saw with all attachments, a jointer which I can only
describe as expensive looking, a mortise machine, a post drill,
a boring machine, a double wheel chisel grinder, an extra large
wood lathe, twelve smaller wood lathes made up the lish.of vis-
ible machines. Then, there were twenty-four cabinet maker's
'benches of the familiar student type.

As we talked,a bell rang-and the class dropped what-
ever they were doing and clustered around the door. Another
ring and away they went. The two who had been playing with
the band-saw left it running, and also left the odds and ends
of wood, which had served them.with.much "self-activity” and
nearly, I surmise, provided for a genuine contact, lying with the
saw dust on the table. All of the machines, by the way, were
individual motor drive.

I felt that this man.must at times suffer in his
:mechanic's soul at the sight of so much waste and ruin and in-
efficiency. How could even his practiced eye pick out from such

Page 52

a discouraging student mass those of promise, much less find
means to encourage them to continue their work in college?
Surely for such an engineer his slide rule, his hand books, his
drawing tools, and his engineering school memories must be of a
seemingly distant past. How could he bear to see such futile
childish effort and waste of time and material as he called to
mind the days of his own apprenticeship and the splendid patterns
and other pieces of work that he himself had made during his
years of commercial shop training? So I made inquiry. From
the same high school in which he was employed, he had graduated
from the college preparatory course and having completed the
required two years at a normal college he had returned to his
native walks and had served as vocational instructor ever since.
Now, does it not seem reasonable that there is a
middle ground between the above and the college professor who
took the ground that he was a tradesman and a commercial drafts-
:man in addition to his educational work in technology, that he
stood ready to instruct those who asked forinstruction, that he
and his colleagues had made up a course which had met with the
approval of the head of his department, that this prescribed
course of study and drawings, which were to be made in a certain
prescribed manner, even to the exact size of the title, in the
study room and in a certain prescribed time, must be completed
before the aspirant could receive his degree, and that ideas
of the student as to how and when he would like to draw would
not be tolerated? Surely, between these extremes, there is a

Page 53

qualification for teachers, a course of study, a common aim.for
vocational work, and a common standard of accomplishment.

Of course, what I have said so far is subject to just
criticism. Those who find themselves in the line of my fire
will be able to point out many discrepancies, and above all, they
will say that my cases are not of necessity general, that many
teachers are not of the category I have described. In reply, I
submit it as my opinion based on quite a few years in school,
work in different parts of the state and based, also, on consid-
erable investigation in preparation for this discussion, that
the conditions are very bad and that the taxpayers are becoming
seriously aroused.

_ The graduates of engineering schools such.as Michigan
State College or the University of Michigan could, if they would.
enter the vocational teaching work of our high schools, bring
about a wonderful reform. In the first place, as I have shown
through this paper, they would serve to make the students and
faculty engineering-minded. They would of necessity displace
a part of the present faculty members who represent a type of
training that may have been of value in the past social and in-
dustrial order that is now of little or no use in training for
citizenship.

At a meeting of the high school principals held at
Lansing, Michigan, Dec. 1—2, 1932, the discussions and papers
were very interesting. I am inserting here a portion of the
summary of the discussions approximately as it was reported by

Page 54

a school Journal. They feel, "that there should be at least one
agency in every child's life to guarantee that he shall become

a good citizen, -- not achieved by the school as now organized."
Also a need was mentioned for "a form.of curriculum focused more
definitely upon present school problems.” These changes in our-
rioulum.and in general aims will come very quickly after about
one half of the members of the present faculty have'been replaced
by the engineers with experience and a strong natural leaning
toward the practical things of social life, of economic life

and of preparation therefor.

The schools need very much at this time, not an influx
of Philistines, of uneducated mechanics, of expugilists, of
communists, of socialists or other radical reformers as teachers,
'but instead they need an influx of level-headed practical Ameri-
cans, men trained in the best that our engineering colleges can
give, thus guaranteeing the highest type of mental capacity and
integrity, men trained, also, in the latesttypes of teaching
method and psychological knowledge and with this training an eXe
perience of several years in some field of engineering. fiany
of the above type of teachers will have to supplant those who
believe that the source of the springs of economic welfare. good
citizenship, and good family life lies in a study of classical
languages, pure mathematics, and ancient history. With such new
teachers in charge there will be less of repolishing the dead
'bones of men and ideas and more of study and practice in being a
good self-supporting citizen of Eichigan.

Page 55

Reform in a school system is a matter of growth, not
a process of tearing down and making over. The engineers with
whom I advocate our teaching force should be rejuvenated should
not and would not act as "reformers". These men would simply
carry on and strive at all times for the things which their
training and background would naturally lead them to strive.

The needs of young people in the way of industrial training,
both as a vocation and as work preparatory to college, would
naturally be more intimately watched over by teachers more com-
petent to judge, guide, and help; while on the other hand, the
opportunities for contacts, finding information and experiences,
occupational knowledge would be greatly increased in number and
variety. Reform in the school aims, method,and course content
would be slow but it would be sure, once the engineer trained
and minded teachers were put in charge of the classes which.
seem.to be quite naturally theirs: namely, physics, athletics, and
shop.

The attitudes and aims of such a school would surely
take on in time less of a leaning towards the worries and happen-
ings of the world extending from Cleopatra and Caesar through
the Renaissance and more closely approach the problems of the
present work-a-day world. The schools would come in time to
be interested in the things that concern our life and happiness
as a nation, such as cars, pavements, city government, plumbing.
heating, roofing material, and health. For the "finer" things

Page 56

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of life, they would study the fine art of being a self-supporting
citizen of Michigan.

Page 57

Bibliography

American Association of Engineers.
Edited by J. A. L. Waddell, Chairman,
Frank'W. Skinner, Harold.E. Wessman.
Vocational Guidance in Engineering.Lines.

Easton, Pa., The Mack Printing Company. l933.

Thomas, Frank W. Principles and Technique of Teaching.

New'York, Houghton Mifflin Company. 1927.

Brewster, Edwin Tenney. Vocational Guidance for

the Professions. Chicago, Rand McNally'& Company. 1917.

.Newell, F. H. and Drayer, C. E., Editors.
Engineering as a Career. A series of papers
by eminent engineers. New'York.

D. Van Nostrand Company. 1919.

Swain, George Fillmore. The Young Kan and Civil

Engineering. New'York. The MacMillan Company. 1924.

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