It is
the common school which makes people into machines, when it sends
them directly from books, which do not explain the working world,
out into that world to become uncomprehending appendages to
minute processes in infinitely subdivided manufacturing
organizations.
A good trade school, besides teaching the technique of the
machine, covers what Mrs. Woolman, the director of the Manhattan
School, in her wonderful report of last year called the "middle
ground" between general academic preparatory work on the one hand
and practical trade training on the other. In this "middle
ground" the pupil takes simple courses in, for instance, "Civics"
and "Industries."
"Nothing to it," says an irritated manufacturer. "Nothing to it
at all! I can't get a good office boy any more. I can't get
anybody, boy or girl, who wants to do anything but just hold down
a job and grab a pay-envelope. Too much schooling! Those
inventors and pioneers who came out of New England and made this
country from a hunting-ground into an empire--they didn't have
all this monkey-business in technical schools and trade schools.
They just went to work. That's all.
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