But the Gary schools are not industry; they are a
world apart; they represent, as all schools are supposed to, moments
sacred to education and growth. They are not subjected to the test
of cooerdination in the world of industry. They give the children a
respect for productive enterprise that should be invaluable later
in effecting their resistance to the prostitution of their creative
power. They do not give them experience in the administrative side of
industry for which the children of high school age are ready and in
need. But in an admirable way they subordinate training in technique
to purpose and give the children the experience of exercising control
over their own industrial activity. As an industrial experience for
children of grammar school age, it is richer than any other school
system which has been developed.
The industrial education of Germany which was recommended for our
adoption and which we have emulated to an alarming degree in our
industrial towns, imposes prevailing methods of industry and technique
of factory processes as final and determined. As industrial history
and technique are taught in the schools, in effect they bind the
children to the current industrial practice and to the current
conditions. They stifle imagination and discourage the concept that
industry is an evolving process. The effect of technical training in
the German continuation schools (and the tendency is the same in our
own industrial education courses) is to teach the children that the
methods and processes as they are carried forward in the shop are
_right_.
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