“The public schools of the United States are building up a nation of highbrows, ignorant of how to work and unfit to enter upon the business of making a decent living without further education in the colleges and universities,” declared Dr. John J. Tigert, United States commissioner of education, before the convention of the National Society of Vocational Education in Indianapolis. “The schools are not preparing the children or any definite trade or profession, but are centralizing their efforts on those children who plan to go to college.”
That is a serious charge, and if true should be investigated and remedied. Dr. Tigert, as commissioner of education, is in a position to know the truth about the schools of the United States, and he is hardly a man who would speak without authority, or would more especially, go to the extent of making such a statement without it were absolutely correct.
If it is true that the public schools are, as Dr. Tigert says, “not preparing the children for any definite trade or profession, but are centralizing their efforts on those children who plan to go to college,” then the public schools are falling short of the purpose for which they were created.
The aim of the public schools is, or should be, service—service rendered not to the few, but to the hundreds of thousands of children throughout the United States—children of the poorest parents who are unable to pay for the education of their children. Only a small percent of the parents are able to send their children on to college, and the public schools, therefore, partially, at least equip them for making a living. If the schools are not doing this, if it is true that their efforts are centralized on those children who are going to college, then they are not really public schools, in the strictest sense of the word.
For this is only one function of the school—this work of preparing boys and girls for college. It is an important part of the work, it is true. For those who are going to college to have this preliminary training.”
But when we consider how small a percentage of the pupils of the public schools ever have the opportunity of going to college, then we realize that this phase of the public school work is not of the first rank. Those boys and girls who are to have no further training after they complete the courses which the public schools offer, ought to have some training or a specific work in order that they will be prepared to go to work.
And there is much opportunity for vocational training in the public schools.
Dr. Tigert is no doubt correct.
From page 3 of The Goldsboro News, Saturday morning, December 20, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064755/1924-12-20/ed-1/seq-3/#words=DECEMBER+20%2C+1924
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