Deductions Relative to Education 



135 



ferent parts of the country have been so ''surveyed." It is con- 

 tended by the writer that local surveys cannot answer the question 

 as to the type courses needed in the pre-vocational period because 

 education in this period cannot be assumed to be for fitting the 

 particular pupils of the community for the local pursuits carried 

 on in the community at the time such surveys were made, con- 

 sidering the local community to be bounded by the corporate limits 

 of the city, town, or school district. 



Interpreting the term ''community" as being bounded by the 

 horizon of the pupil and his parents, then there is more justifica- 

 tion for stating that pre-vocational courses must be adapted to 

 community needs. Dr. Ayres* has shown that of the fathers 

 living in seventy-eight cities only one in six is now living in the 

 city in which he was born, and that of the boys only a little 

 more than one-half are living in the city of their birth. Another 

 conditioning factor is that the existence of an industry or a pur- 

 suit or a type of industries or pursuits in a community today does 

 not insure its or their presence twenty years from today. We 

 know further that if the local pursuits are limited in variety, that 

 the pupils' interests, capacities, and potentialities will represent a 

 greater range of distribution than the occupational opportunities 

 for employment within the community. There are sufficient facts to 

 justify the statement that, though local surveys are important, such 

 surveys cannot condition and prescribe in the final analysis the 

 proper types of courses for schools of the pre-vocational period. 

 State surveys will yield more dependable data, and a national sur- 

 vey would be even more satisfactory. Herein lies the value of Dr. 

 Ay res' study of Constant and Variable Occupations^^ for it at- 

 tempts to show the pursuits common to all communities and those 

 largely localized in particular sections. 



Considering the fact that up to 1910 about 74 per cent of the 

 people born in Indiana were still living in Indiana, and that the 

 pursuits of Indiana are in the main not very different from those 

 found in the States to which the 26 per cent have migrated, it is 

 safe to conclude that the lines of pursuits found within the State 

 of Indiana constitute a safe and sane basis for courses in pre- 

 vocational schools. 



* Leonard P. Ayres, Some Conditions Affecting Problems of Industrial Educa- 

 tion in Seventy-eight American School Systems. Russell Sage Foundation, N. Y. 



tLeonard P. Ayres, Constant and VariaMe Occupations and Their Bearing on 

 ProMems of Vocational Education. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. 



