l'R.\( TifAL EDUCATION. 713 



in Switzerlaiul. In \''ienna there is a magnificent five-storey 

 building in the Pragerstrasse which is a veritable vocational 

 palace. The completeness of the arrangements may be gathered 

 from the fact that in each of the four corners of this pile is an 

 electric lift, any one of which is capable of transporting a class 

 of forty from the basement to the top floor, as, for example, 

 when the stone-dressing or plastering classes are required to 

 attend the art class in the glazed and domed halls in the roof. 

 It is not some trades that are tatight, but literally every one about 

 the town where the school is, even to waiters and cabmen. 



Britain still relies largely upon the voluntary evening school 

 and the vokmtary technical school, but these institutions, ad- 

 mirable as they are, do not deter at least nine-tenths of the 

 children from turning their backs upon avoidable knowledge at 

 fourteen. Industry is entrenched, business is powerful, and it 

 still seems to employers a long step to countenance a compulsory 

 system of part-time schools in working hours, for which they 

 have to pay. The child whose parents can afTord that it shall 

 stay a year or two longer without wage-earning, can get day- 

 training, but most apprentices must get their vocational training 

 increased by attendance at night classes. Many day trades schools 

 have been established throughout England, but these, in the 

 thoroughness of the trade training given, lag considerably behind 

 the same institutions in Holland. Many of them, indeed, give 

 but a preliminary training in general wood and metal work, such 

 as is obtainable in the Munich schools after th(^ age of ten. There 

 are others, however, and, of these I saw, I must mention the 

 excellent School of Photo Engraving and Process Block Produc- 

 tion (London County Coimcil) at Bolt Court. London, where 

 boys are given a three-year course, or until employment, which 

 fits them for employment as improvers ; the equally excellent 

 schools of girls' trades at the Borough Polytechnic, London, S.E., 

 and lastly, the newer Stanley Trades School at Norwood, Lon- 

 don, S.E., where boys are given a two-years' school and work- 

 shop course as engineers' mechanics, fitting them for employment 

 as leading apprentices in the various power tool-making works 

 along the Thames. That these schools are a success is due, I 

 am confident, to the fact that the curriculum is controlled by 

 master craftsmen and women with the trades instructors staff 

 in the ascendant ; those schools are weak in vocational result 

 v/here the headship is academic with an academic teaching staff 

 holding the power. 



I have shown in the diagram (p. 701) the children from 

 various kinds of school passing through the Juvenile Employment 

 Bureau into the labour market. In ?)ritain this is a Government 

 institution which, although its officials have little or no proper in- 

 formation about children's occupations, is doing good work by 

 acting as a clearing house between the employer with a vacancy 

 and the unemployed young worker. In Edinburgh this work is 

 undertaken by the School Board ; all teachers are supplied with 



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