SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETING. 205 



CITY HIGH SCHOOLS. 



In the cities the opportunities for a closer contact of school 

 and industry are not less evident. The so-called Fitchburg plan 

 which has passed out of the experimental stage has shown 

 conclusively that schools and shops may cooperate in giving 

 the boy an education that preserves for him the education of 

 the schools while it adds the practical value of shop application. 

 Outward traditions must yield to successful evidence of the kind 

 produced at Fitchburg. The high schools of all our large towns 

 and cities will, I believe, in the near future, pay greatly in- 

 creased attention to a study of local industries and the oppor- 

 tunities offered by them. Through extended manual courses in 

 some cases related to the trades, and through cooperative courses 

 they will open new avenues of approach by which young men 

 may enter employment with right ideals of labor's significance 

 and with such practical equipment as will lead them to more sat- 

 isfactory returns for their labor. At the same time the young 

 women will be better prepared for all the fields that may appeal 

 to them, not forgetting the chief of them all, that of home mak- 

 ing. 



DOES NOT IGNORE COLLEGE PREPARATION. 



These changes in our secondary schools are not inimical to 

 such higher education as the colleges now offer. They merely 

 indicate that the boy who will not go to college has his rights 

 which the school must recognize, on at least an equality of plane 

 with those for whom the secondary school course is college pre- 

 paratory. The public school is indeed for all the children of all 

 the people and upon any other basis it loses its claim to the sup- 

 port of all the people. 



CONTINUATION SCHOOLS. 



In addition to the things that should render our ordinary 

 schools more effective there is vast opportunity for increasing 

 the industrial capacity of the people through courses that will 

 enable those already engaged in the industries to increase their 

 capacity in them, or to change from one to another. 



To discover how general is the desire for such opportunities 

 it is not necessary to turn to the enormously successful public 



