PATTERNS OF WORKERS’ EDUCATION

   
  
  
   
  
   
  
  
   
 
    
  
  
 
   
  
   
  
  

 

women in industry or was it due to the particular selection of workers sent to
the School?? In 1929 a study of the situation revealed that young people
were staying in school longer than formerly because of economic and indus-
trial conditions, The raising of the school-leaving age and the extension of
educational facilities were contributing factors. The recent report of the
National Advisory Committee on Education emphasized the continuation of
the trend in the present as follows:

As late as 1890 in the United States only 3.8 percent of the number of young
people 14 to 17 years of age were enrolled in public high schools; at present
more than 60 percent of the population of high school age are enrolled in
public high schools. In 1937 for the first time the number of graduates from
high schools in a single year passed the million mark. There are now some
25,000 public high schools in which over 230,000 teachers instruct almost
6,000,000 boys and girls. . . .

All existing trends indicate that a considerably higher percentage will attend
high school in the future, particularly in areas where high school enrollments
are still low.

The nationality composition of the student body has changed during the
development of the Summer School, the shift being from foreign-born to
American-born. As late as 1930, at least half of the women were immigrants
and an additional 25 per cent were the children of immigrants. Four years
later, one-third were foreign-born and the majority of them had lived in the
United States for 10 years. In 1938, only 16 per cent were immigrants. Both
parents of approximately one-third of the native-born students had been born
in America and an additional 16 per cent had at least one native-born parent.

The increase in native-born candidates has reflected the national trend. In
1922 the country admitted 309,556 immigrants. Ten years later immigration
was the lowest in a century and only 35,576 aliens entered the United States;
in 1935 the number had dropped to 17,207.

From the outset the School has required that candidates should have had at
least three years of industrial wage-earning experience, of which two years
should have been with the tools of their trade in other than a supervisory
capacity. Naturally many have come from the great industries which employ
large numbers of women, foremost among these being the needle trades and
the textile industry. In 1926 a special group was admitted to the School from

* Report of the Educational Secretary, 1929.
*The Advisory Committee on Education, op. cit., p. 13.

* Lloyd Allen Cook, Community Background. Educati -Hi
YC 1038 nds of Education, McGraw-Hill Book Co.,

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