Postcard from the Past: Studies That “Cash In”

Vocational training is criticized as tending to classify society. Well-to-do pupils are given a “liberal” education, but those who must earn something as early as possible are shunted off into the manual and technical departments and educated to be carpenters, machinists and/or lumbers. 

There is some ground for this criticism now, but there will be none when public education is properly made over. 

The remedy will finally be found, not by stopping the so-called vocational education, but by stopping the other sort.

Public education ought to be founded squarely on modern industrial life. Schools should not make an exception of certain pupils on the theory they will be obliged to earn a living. They should deal with every pupil on the theory he or she will be obliged to earn a living.

The education, which on the whole is most suitable and most valuable for machinists, plumbers, farmers, salesmen, printers, lawyers, doctors and policemen, is the only sort the public ought to furnish.

This does not mean education should be less “liberal.” 

There is as good a road to Shakespeare through a book on gardening as through one filled with silly rules for conjugating verbs. There is far more real education in teaching a child of 12 how shoes come to be on his feet than in bewildering him by tricky problems in fractions. There is infinitely more American history in a toy steam engine than in the dates of battles.

Public education should be designed, frankly and expressly, to “cash in.” It is not so designed now – and it doesn’t. – Saturday Evening Post

The above article is from Wyoming Farm Bulletin No. 10, undated, but believed to be about 1925.