Mr. VAN OOT. Yes; very rapidly. I will conclude in just a minute. Those are the three kinds of work which we are stressing. In order to get instructors for these classes we always go to the industry-that is, for the trade extension and day unit classes-we always go to the industry and pick out the men who are capable of becoming good instructors, and we have organized instructor-training classes for them. The demand at the present time is so great on the staff which we have available that we can not anywhere near meet the demands of the State. We need to increase our force because of the limited number. Virginia is not a rich State. There are many industries coming into the State of Virginia. Those industries are bringing with them the skeleton organizations of skilled mechanics who are trained in other States. That skeleton organization carries it on, and the employers fill in the jobs with unskilled and semiskilled workers. Our program does this; it takes these unskilled and semiskilled workers and endeavors to train them to accupy the skilled jobs as the industry expands, and, therefore, increases the taxable wealth of the State. We believe that the prosperity of the State demands that workers shall be skilled, and, therefore, receive adequate wages, because if a man does not have a balance in his pay envelope at the end of a week, he can not buy insurance, he can not educate his children, he can not patronize the merchants, can not patronize the civic organizations, cummunity events, and so forth. In other words, we feel that the economic and social development of our State demands skilled workers and that those skilled workers receive adequate pay. Mr. SCHAFER. Do you believe that the passage of this bill will stimulate that? Mr. VAN OOT. I believe the passage of this bill will aid very materially in giving us the increased advantages we need to make the necessary surveys, and analyses, and studies, in order that we may have data upon which to organize the sound vocational educational program toward which this bill, if enacted, will greatly encourage us to build. The CHAIRMAN. The committee stands adjourned until 1.30 o'clock p. m. (Thereupon, at 12 o'clock noon, the committee adjourned to 1.30 o'clock p. m.) AFTER RECESS The committee reconvened pursuant to the taking of the recess, Hon. Daniel A. Reed, chairman, presiding. The CHAIRMAN. I desire at this time to note in the record that Congressman Bowman and Congressman Smith, of West Virginia, appeared before the committee and registered their approval of the bill. Also, if there is no objection, I will have inserted in the record at this point the chart showing the attendance of persons in the United States between the ages of 14 and 18 years, which we have been discussing this morning. FURTHER STATEMENT OF DR. EDWIN A. LEE DOCTOR LEE. Mr. Chairman, I spoke this morning of a chapter in the yearbook and I have secured a copy of that yearbook which I wish to file here. It is the chapter beginning on page 393 and going through to page 453. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be made a part of the hearing. (The matter above referred to will be found at the conclusion of Doctor Lee's statement.) Doctor LEE. I do want to say one thing which I neglected to say this morning, which I think ought to be emphasized as many times as possible: For the first time, in this bill which you have before you, recognition is given in a somewhat near adequate form to the need for aid for commercial education, which need was not recognized except most inadequately in the original Smith-Hughes bill, and I want to record my belief that is a very important provision of this bill. There is one other thing, too, which I must not forget: You asked this morning for some information relative to the help which the central Government agency had given to the States. I am informed by Mr. Wright, that he will, if you desire, have prepared a full and complete statement as to the research and help which the Federal Government, through the vocational board for education, has given to the States. Mr. KVALE. That will be fine; but, Doctor Lee, I was interested also in having the reactions of the men in the field as to what they thought of the Federal agency. I will be glad to have a full description of what the Federal chief considers his duties and responsibilities are, but I also want the reactions of the men in the field. I want to find out whether they think this is an indispensable service; I want to find out whether they think they could operate without it, or whether it is a necessary adjunct at least until the work that is being done can be carried on satisfactory without it. Doctor LEE. My answer to you showed my attitude satisfactorily, I hope. Mr. MILLER. I would like to testify now, and as often as possible, that is the very lifeblood of the program of vocational education. Mr. KVALE. You, of course, can speak as to the attitude of the State. Mr. MILLER. I am State director of vocational education in Kansas. Now, Mr. Chairman, the next person who will appear is Mr. George P. Hambrecht, State director of vocational education in Wisconsin, and president of the National Association of State Directors of Vocational Education. (The following was submitted by Mr. Lee:) VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES HISTORICAL The beginnings of vocational education in the United States may be traced in the records of congressional activity in the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. The movements finally resulted in 1862 in the passage of the first Morrill Act, a law which made possible the establishment in every State of a college of agriculture and mechanic arts. Space limitations will not permit any discussion of the part these institutions have played in the development of vocational education in the United States. It is sufficient to indicate that they have in almost all cases developed into full-fledged higher institutions, controlled largely by the aims of research and scholarship typical of schools of university grade, and that their contribution has been mainly to vocational education on the level of the professions. Their influence has, nevertheless, been of immense importance in the development of vocational education, particularly in the field of agriculture, and no student of the history of the movement should overlook the part that they have played during the sixty years of their existence. A second event of importance was the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876 to commemorate the first century of the life of the United States. At this exposition there was shown, with great skill and thoroughness, an exhibition of the Russian system of training mechanics, which had been developed by Victor della Vos in the Imperial Technical Railway School at Moscow. Almost immediately schools based on the Russian system were organized in the United States. Again, space limits the description of these schools and their growth. For a time it was believed that the "manual training schools," as they were called, would solve the problems which were emerging more and more clearly as the system of apprenticeship continued to disappear with increasing rapidity. But the manual training movement, having played its part as a forerunner of bona fide vocational education, has become an accepted part of the general education program of this country, and its leaders now make no claims for it as a means for Vocational education. It was in 1906 that a small group of individuals, interested in the vocational training of youth, banded themselves together in the organization known as the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education. This small group included educators, Congressmen, and members of the Cabinet of the President of the United States, representatives of organized labor, which had as early as 1885 taken steps looking toward a national program of vocational education,1 employers of vision, and social workers. Consistently they campaigned through conventions, committee reports, vocational surveys, and other legitimate means of propaganda for a program of education which should guarantee to every child the right to train himself to be proficient in a wage-earning occupation. They had seen the decreasing importance of apprenticeship as a means of training. They had witnessed the failure of the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts to train workers for any but the highest posts in agriculture and industry. They were aware that the manual training schools were already recognizing their limitations as vocational schools. And most of all, they interpreted the industrial revolution as being then only in its beginning, and they saw clearly the inevitable and constantly increasing problems which the industrial revolution would impose on the public schools of the United States. For eight years they labored, and in 1914 Congress heard their plea and created the Commission on National Aid for Vocational Education. This commission pursued its investigation and made its report with such effectiveness that Congress enacted, practically unchanged, the legislation which the commission had recommended. President Woodrow Wilson signed the act in February, 1917, and the United States entered upon an educational experiment which, even in the first 10 years of its life, has had a profound effect upon public education in all its aspects. What are the important characteristics of this law, the Smith-Hughes Act, as it is known? 2 Essentially it is an act to promote vocational education of less than college grade in the fields of agriculture, trades and industries, home economics, and commerce. It provides for this promotion through cooperation with the States; cooperation in a financial way, in which it shares with the States dollar for dollar, up to a certain limit, the cost of salaries of teachers and supervisors in agriculture, trades and industries, and home economics, and in the cost of maintaining an adequate program of training for vocational teachers; cooperation in leadership in that the law provides for a Federal Board for Vocational Education, whose function is to administer the provisions of the act, and to carry out programs of research and investigation in order to increase the effectiveness of vocational education throughout the country. That the United States was ready for the experiment is strikingly indicated by the events which followed the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act. The personnel of the Federal Board for Vocational Education was named by June, 1917. Before August 15 of the same year this board has named the chief members of its executive staff, with Dr. Charles A. Prosser as director. Doctor Prosser has chosen his coworkers, and they were functioning by September. The Smith-Hughes Act provided that each State, in order to share in the privileges of the act, must accept officially through its legislature the provisions of the act to establish certain administrative boards, and to present an acceptable State plan for vocational education. By January, 1918, four months after the executive staff of the Federal Board for Vocational Education had commenced to function, all but two States had met the legal requirements for inaugurating a State program of vocational education. In the case of the two remaining States it was only necessary for their governors to take action pending the next session of the legislature. It is, therefore, accurate to say that every State in the Union had actually embarked upon an approved program of vocational education within less than one year after the passage of the legislation making such action possible. At that time the world was at war, and all other events paled into insignificance, so that an item of incalculable significance to the future of the United States, if not to the whole world, was buried under the reports of the strife and carnage in Europe. Such an event occurring in times of peace would have been heralded at home and abroad as one of the most important educational steps ever taken by any nation, a prophecy which the first 10 years of experience with the act would have verified, as we may see from its record of accomplishment, cooperation, and leadership. Shortly after the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act the United States became a combatant in the war. In line with the practice of other nations engaged in the conflict, there was adopted in 1918 the Smith-Hughes Act for the vocational rehabilitation of disabled soldiers and sailors. This being an emergency measure would have no place in this chapter were it not that it paved the way and set the stage for permanent legislation for the vocational rehabilitation of civilians 1 Lee, E. A. Objectives and Problems of Vocational Education. See Ch. XIV, by A. E. Holder, pp. 367-383. 2 The reader will find fuller discussion of the Smith-Hughes Act in Hill, D. 8., Introduction to Vocational Education, Chaps. V and VI and appendix. injured in industry. The civilian vocational rehabilitation act, passed in June, 1920, had for its object "the reclamation to economic life of the physically disabled. A submerged group, a social debit, was to be transformed into a self respecting part of the producing community."3 The Federal Board for Vocational Education was designated by the act as the governmental agency to administer the law, and the policy of cooperation involved in the Smith-Hughes Act was duplicated. The scope of the problem may be indicated by quoting again from Sullivan, who states that the Federal Board conservatively estimated that 112,000 individuals would each year be sufficiently handicapped to be eligible to the kind of training contemplated in the vocational rehabilitation act.1 Thus the United States had, by 1920, adopted a national program of vocational education, which included provisions for training youth in wage-earning occupations at as early an age as 14 through part-time continuation classes and through full-time and part-time cooperative day classes; for adults, through day and evening classes; and for both youth and adults, who were physically disabled, through classes organized under the civilian vocational rehabilitation act. The extent of the program in 1928 may be shown in two ways. Table 1 shows the expenditure of money for vocational education in the year ended June 30, 1928. TABLE 1.—Expenditures for vocational education in the United States for the year ended June 30, 1928 1 U. S. Federal Board for Vocational Education, Twelfth Annual Report, 1928, p. 36. 2 Ibid., p. 39. These figures represent the minimum rather than the maximum, in that there are included only the expenditures for vocational education carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Federal act. It is not possible to estimate the expenditure for much bona fide vocational education which is carried on independently by many cities. There is, therefore, a total considerably in excess of $27,250,000 now being spent in the United States for vocational education of less than college grade. In Table 2 are shown the enrollments in vocational classes in the United States for the same year. TABLE 2.—Enrollment in vocational classes, including vocational rehabilitation, for the year ended June 30, 1928 Enrollment Number In vocational courses 1. In teacher-training classes 2 Number of rehabilitations 3. Number in process of rehabilitation 4. Total... 1 U. S. Federal Board for Vocational Education, Twelfth Annual Report, 1928, p. 28. 999, 031 17,572 5, 012 16, 393 1,038, 008. 2 Ibid., p. 35. 3 Ibid., p. 64. 4 Ibid., p. 66. Again it should be noted that these figures are minimum estimates. indicates that over 1,000,000 individuals have been reached by vocational education programs of some nature during the year under consideration.5 The total 3 Lee, E. A., Objectives and Problems of Vocational Education. See Chap. X, by Oscar M. Sullivan, pp. 265-286. 4 Ibid., p. 271. Detailed statistics are given for the various fields in the appropriate sections of this chapter. |