That is, the pupil, when he
becomes a worker, will be thrown back into some factory groove where
his experience as an apprentice cannot be used, where he is closed
off from the chance to develop and use the knowledge or training he
received. If, as Dean Schneider asserts, "we are rapidly dividing
mankind into a staff of mental workers and an army of purely physical
workers," and if "we cannot reverse our present economic order of
things," then any apprenticeship, even this brave effort of his, is a
pseudo-apprenticeship and even in the most energizing of the trades
leads the pupil nowhere in particular. Even the skilled trade of
locomotive engineering, which Dean Schneider classes as the most
highly energized of trades, does not escape. As a spokesman for the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers observes: "The big electrical
engines which are being introduced in the railroad system are rapidly
eliminating the factors of judgment on the part of the engineer and
transforming that highly skilled trade into an automatic exercise."
The one-time value of a trade apprenticeship to a youth was that
it furnished the background for mastery of machine processes; but
apprenticeship under modern factory methods can do no more than make a
youth a good servant to machines. The Schneider system fills, as well
as can be filled, a scheme of apprenticeship in conformity with
the prevailing shop organization and requirements, but it is not a
fulfillment for youth; it is not educational.
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