Manhattan Trade School for Girls, New York; New York (N.Y.); School management and organization
The following trade teaching staff is needed: supervisors of the various
trades; forewomen to direct the school shops; trade instructors to teach
the various groups of students the specialized processes; assistants to
attend to minor matters in the workrooms; art teachers, who have had
experience in designing for the various trades represented; academic
instructors who know the working world practically and can give the
students a training which, while helping them in their trades, will
broaden their knowledge of and sympathy in the world's work. All of
these teachers must not only have had experience in trade, but must
continually keep in touch with the methods of the outside market.
Unsuccessful trade workers, who often wish to teach, or teachers who
know nothing of the needs of trade workrooms, cannot adequately prepare
students for specific trade positions. Trade knows what it wants, is a
severe critic and an unsparing judge. The trade school, therefore,
cannot afford to rely on instructors who would be themselves
unsuccessful in the market, for the result would be certain failure in
the students. Such specific training requires exceptional knowledge in
its teaching force. The usual teacher of manual training knows too
little of the ways of the workrooms and is too theoretical in her
instruction to be trusted to train workers who must satisfy trade
demands. On the other hand, the trade worker, good as she may be in her
specialty, seldom knows how to teach. She can drive her group of
workers, but she cannot train the green hands to do more than work
quickly at one thing. She can make them work, but she cannot make them
better workers. When she has orders to turn out, her lifelong training
makes her think of the rapid completion of the articles rather than the
careful development of the students who are making them. If she is not
watched she will choose the girl to do a piece of work who can do it
well and quickly (but who does not need this experience), rather than
the one who should do it in order to have practice in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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