Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators — John Shaqi
Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for EducatorsMarot, Helen
Science
Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators
Marot, Helen
Business and education -- United States; Technical education -- United States; Working class -- Education -- United States
As a first requisite of efficiency, Germany classifies its people,
gives them a place in the scheme of things, and holds them there.
By circumscribing within definite limitations the experience of
individuals it produces specialists at the sacrifice of a larger human
development. The classification of the people and the training of them
naturally for the German purpose falls to the schools. The sorting
out of individuals begins at the early age of ten in the elementary
schools, when each child's social and economic position is practically
determined. It is decided then whether he shall be one of the great
army of wage workers or whether he shall fall into some one of the
several social classes and vocations which stand apart from the common
mass of wage earners. The children in the German schools, who are
selected at the age of ten for a more promising future than the trades
hold out, have more leeway in the making of their decision. But even
these children from the American point of view are summarily disposed
of and fatally consigned.
The telling off of children at the age of ten and assigning them to
a place in the social scheme for life is not American in spirit, nor
does it conform to our habits and institutions. But, it is complained,
the American habit of taking chances is not efficient. The habit of
letting children escape into life with their place unsettled creates
confusion and makes calculations in serious things like industry
difficult. Therefore, unfaithful to the development of our own
concepts of life we are expected to emulate Germany and to determine
the destiny of the child. Germany undertakes to eliminate the chances
of the individual and the taking of chances by the state, while the
American ideal is to leave its people free to make the most of each
new exigency that life turns up.
At the age of fourteen it is decided in Germany what industry or trade
the children shall enter, that is, the children who at ten are told
off to industry. After they enter their trade, their special education
for their job is looked after in the continuation schools as well
as in the shop. Their attendance at the continuation schools
is compulsory. This compulsory attendance does not only insure
supplementary training for a particular job, but holds the children to
the industry which was chosen for them. That is, a boy is compelled,
if he works in the dining-room of a hotel, to attend the continuation
school for waiters, until he is eighteen. He may not go to a
continuation school for butchers if he decided at the end of a year
or so in his first job that he would rather be a butcher, or that he
would rather do anything than wait.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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