The promoters of industrial education, with some success, have made it
clear to the community generally that parents were giving heavy odds
in their gamble, but these promoters would have made this more obvious
to parents if they could have shown that the assets accruing from the
new school curriculum increased more materially than has the wage
earning capacity of their children. The results for individual
children are not sufficiently striking to advertise the departure, and
if they were, the departure would not warrant the endorsement of the
community on the ground of the higher wage, as wages are fixed by
competition. They are advanced by a general increase in productivity.
But the increase that occurs through more efficient methods in
productive enterprise is not a real increase; it does not relatively
affect the social or economic position of the wage earner.
In the last analysis, the wage return is not an educator's criterion,
in spite of the pragmatic recommendation of the Cleveland Survey. The
Survey's recommendation for a reorganization of the school system is
based on the belief that the school is, or should be, an integral
expression or reflection of the life of the community; that to
function vitally it must be contemporaneous with that life, as are all
serviceable institutions. As a school reflects the life of a community
it enriches the experience of the children and endows them with the
knowledge and power to deal with environment.
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