Education is a state function. Whatever is done must be by the several communities under the requirement and supervision of the state. Most states require attendance at the pub lic school of all children from the 7th to the 16th year, with, however, the important provision that after the 14th year any child may secure, if he wishes, a working certificate permitting him to leave school forever, with the further provision, in some States that he has completed the sixth grade of the common school, and in other States simply that he is able to read and write • the English language acceptably, this latter provision often being carelessly regarded.
Only one child in 30 graduates from the high school; only one in five enters the high school; only one in three finishes the high school; and only half the children who enter school finish the 6th grade. By the end of the 6th grade children have learned little or nothing of fractions, nothing of decimals, only a little local geography and nothing of the rights and obligations of citizenship and the social order. Investigation indicates that the great majority of that half of all American children who leave school by the 6th grade and the 14th year of age are not compelled to by financial circumstances. They leave because they have reached the period of adolescence, at which time the will and the creative faculties assert themselves and nature impels them to ado things,P unconsciously to imitate Him who in the six days made the world. This impulse is especially compelling with concrete- or hand-minded children. Those who continue in school are mostly the imaginative children to whom the world of books is often very real.
The mind of man is said to be uhand-made Through the hand the race has learned a great part of all it knows. Work must be inter preted and made an instrument of education for the vast number who apparently will be educated, if at all, only in and through the life of labor. Legislation might compel these workers to remain in the common schools away from labor and income for a short period longer, often without advantage, sometimes to their hurt, and never to their adequate educa tion, as education must be Aide available throughout the better years of life.
It is coming to be generally realized that each state must, following the best practice of the countries of Europe, set up and foster, financially and otherwise, educational facilities for the effective advancement of the millions of wage earners in the industries and else where, with their daily needs and experiences as the centre of interest in their educational activities. The foremost industrial nations of
Europe by apprenticeship and otherwise have for generations so trained their industrial wage earners. It is commonly conceded that Ger many took the lead in the year 1885 in a series of legislative provisions which in the following years have developed a system of industrial education as effective for her wage-earners as are the provisions common to all countries for professional training. She finally came to re quire in great sections of that empire that every working child under 16, and in the best prac tice under 18, shall be released by the employer for from 8 to 12 hours per week during work ing hours, while fresh and vigorous, for train ing in his occupation or in a better one if need be.
We speak of and hopeless jobs as the lot of our working children. Ger many discovered that there is no such thing as a ablind-alleys job; that there is no job but may lead to high accomplishment under intelli gent direction. Consequently 85 per cent of American working children are in ablind-alleri jobs, from which their elders see no way out, while in Munich 85 per cent of the working children are trained in connection with their work in ways that lead readily to high places.
France, Switzerland, Denmark and other na tions have legislated in effect like Germany but less extensively. England, impressed by the Continental practice, and especially by German methods and success, planned so to legislate in 1914 but was deterred by the World War. She paused, however, at the height of the conflict, on 8 Aug. 1918 to enact educational meas ures requiring every child to attend the regular schools from the 5th to the 14th year of age and empowering local authorities to increase the compulsory period until the 15th year. Com pulsory day continuation schools must be es tablished for all young persons, unless they are being otherwise educated, up to the age of 16, and after 1925 up to the age of 18. The mini mum number of hours of attendance per year at continuation schools shall be 280 and after 1925 shall be 320. Thus England, formerly the most backward of the great European nations in vocational training, takes an advanced posi tion, far ahead of the United States.