Vocational Training as a Preventive of Crime
- Author:
Gayler,
Superintendent of Schools, Canton
Youth, as we all know, is the name given to a pretty well-marked stage of human life beginning about the age of fourteen or fifteen and lasting about ten years to the time of complete maturity. The limits of this period are rather indefinite. It is immediately preceded by a year or two of rapid growth and great physical and spiritual change. This short period of change is the time when the boy is at the parting of the ways. He is ceasing to be a child, but is not yet a man. He is in the ‘hobble-de-hoy’ stage of life. He is just merging into manhood’s estate and for the first time he is beginning to see the world from a man’s viewpoint.
The body assumes new forms. The muscles develop rapidly, the heart and arteries are enlarged, blood pressure increases, blushing is greatly developed, the voice changes, and is at times beyond control?the whole physical being undergoes a new birth. The world now takes on new aspects and new life. New interests develop, new friendships are formed. The soul is never so sensitive again. A breath of criticism hurts. A word of commendation helps. The work of the world is now seen in a way as never before, and with this comes the desire and the will to do. There is a longing for actual work and a distaste for the preparatory training of home and school.
This is the most vital and difficult of all periods of child life after infancy, most fraught with danger and the severest test of parents and teachers. Because of these changes, because of the value of child life and the danger at this time, the boy or girl now deserves the most careful study, and the most careful handling. There must be expert guidance and supervision to insure that the youth comes through this age successfully. Here is where men and women are made or marred.
Strange to say, it is just the time when in general there is a loosening of the reins of discipline and a lack of general supervision so that the child is now thrown more than ever upon his own resources, often without any guidance whatsoever. A well-known writer upon educational topics has said, “One of the blunders of civilized countries, a blunder that has led to an enormous increase in the number of youthful vagabonds and criminals, has been to neglect the adolescent, and to act as though there were a sharply defined line separating the child from the man, and that it is wise to care for the child systematically up to fourteen and then leave him abruptly and absolutely to the tender mercies of the factory and the street.” It is generally considered that the child has arrived at the age of accountability and that he is now able to take care of himself. Because of this he is allowed the greatest freedom in thought and action which may later develop into wrong doing and often leads to a criminal life.
The average home has largely lost its authority over the child at this period. Its power of guidance in many cases is gone. The child goes or comes, works or loiters, attends school or not, as he pleases, not as the parent wills. Not always is this true,?too often it is. Sometimes parents admit, even in the presence of the child, that their authority is gone and that the child is beyond their control. The Church has been losing the children at this age, especially the boys. Nothing is there or in the Sunday School which attracts and holds them. It does not make a strong appeal to them. They do not desire to go. No authority says they must, so they remain away. It may be the fault of the boys, it probably is. It may be the fault of the management of the church, at least in part, but the fact remains that something vital is wrong. The grip is loosened. It is almost broken and it is time to take a new hold. The business world, the community (commercial, industrial, and agricultural) has been too busy making money to care for children. All of us in part, some of us in large part, have been squeezing the dollars and losing the boys and girls. Woe to the community that through a number of years neglects the boys and girls, and puts more value on factory or farm, street or store, than on children and childhood! Of necessity, they will pay for it an hundred fold later in terms of broken lives. We are now in fact reaping the reward, and this is only a prophecy of what will happen if we do not listen to the plea of leaders in the movement to care for the children at this dangerous age.
The school must bear its full share of responsibility for the loss of boys and girls at this stage of life. Studies in elimination show, both in our own schools and throughout the country, that practically 50 per cent of our children leave school at fourteen or immediately after. On the average we are turning out a sixth grade product. Not quite 20 per cent of the boys and girls enter the high school, and less than 4 per cent graduate.
A compulsory school law compels the child to remain in school until the age of fourteen. Before this age there is little desire to leave but Avith the dawn of adolescence this desire comes, and the bars are thrown down just at the time they should be up and held firmly in place. Practically 100 per cent remain until the age of fourteen?after this very few.
The attitude of school administrators and teachers, until a few years ago was to take care of just those who voluntarily attend school and to give no time and attention to the ones who withdraw. Now a general movement is on foot to care for this large number who leave school soon after the age limit is reached. We must take care of all the children of all the people.
Dr Cooley says, “It is sometimes contended that the responsibility of the public for the education of the masses ends with the elementary school. Those destined for the professions, the executive positions, and the leisure class may enter the public high schools and state universities, and obtain an education leading directly or indirectly to vocational efficiency. Not everyone however seems to be conscious of the fact that the great masses who leave school at fourteen?either from choice or from necessity?to enter into vocational life are entitled to as careful consideration in our educational plans as their more fortunate brothers. As a matter of fact, this great ninety per cent need vocational training and have as good a right to expect it at the hands of the public as their brothers who enter the so-called ‘higher vocations’. “
What has been the result of the neglect of children by home, State, Church and school during this vital and dangerous age? The jailer of Cook County in a recent article in a Chicago daily says: “It is the young man that is the criminal of today. Although crime is increasing, the work of the professional crook is on the wane. We don’t have the number of confirmed criminals in our jails of today that we had ten or even five years ago, but the number of boys and young women there are increasing every day. Just take our jail here as an example. We have seventy boys who are under twentyone years of age and they are the fellows that are charged with the daring, violent crimes, too. They will tell you, as they have told me, that they drifted into crime after being street and night loafers. Most of them wanted money to spend to have a good time. They talked things over in a pool room and two or three got together and started to rob.”
Chief Justice Harry Olson is quoted as saying in connection with the crime wave which has been sweeping over Chicago, that youthful criminals are responsible in the main for these crime conditions. The auto bandits are young men,?the leader gives his age as eighteen. Another is now twenty-five, but he commenced his career of crime eight or ten years ago, and has served time both in the John Worthy School and the Illinois Reformatory at Pontiac. The car bandits of a few years ago were young men scarcely out of their teens. Recently Chicago was shocked by two crimes, one a peculiarly atrocious offense, both committed by mere boys. Within the last year the people of Fulton County have been shocked by murders committed by young men scarcely more than boys. Hardly a day passes that we do not read of some crime committed by a youth in his teens.
In commenting on this condition of affairs one of our metropolitan papers said recently: “These offenses only emphasize the fact which the police and social workers know only too well, that a serious proportion of crime in the great cities of America is committed by youths.”
Dr Cooley in his recent book’ on “Vocational Education” while discussing the subject of crime of adolescent boys and girls, says that in the interval between 1838 and 1888 crime in general increased 133 per cent in France. The increase was 140 per cent in the case of minors less than sixteen years of age and 247 per cent in the case of minors between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. He attributes this degeneration chiefly to the decline of apprenticeship, to the lack of adequate vocational guidance and instruction. If vocational education will take care of boys and girls at this dangerous age and in that way lessen crime and the tendency to crime, it is well worth while.
Here are a few examples of head lines taken from the press for a brief period of time: “Ten Thousand Boys Arrested Last Year” (referring to one city); “Four Thousand out of the Six Thousand Arrests Last Year were Boys under Twenty” (referring to a city of less than 150,000); “Bandits Caught Mere Boys” (this is not uncommon from many cities); “Over Half the Murderers Last Year Mere Boys”; “Boy Burglars Getting Common”; “Thieving Increasing Among Children”; “Gangs Generating Thieves.” It seems impossible that there are so many youthful bandits and murderers, but as we scan the papers we find among recent issues enough to justify the assertion that a large percentage of crime is due to the youth in his teens. I quote here from “The Problem of the Children,”a pamphlet published by the Juvenile Court of Denver: “We recall the case of a young man (and it is one of hundreds) who had been in the criminal court and the police court at the age of thirteen. At the age of twenty he shot down a policeman who was heroically performing his duty. And yet suppose at the age of thirteen that boy had been studied, helped, looked after and carefully handled, at twenty would the policeman be maimed for life, or dead, a young wife and child a charge on the community, and a strong, robust young man a charge on the state for life? Perhaps not, and even so we could have felt better about it, and in the sight of God less accountability. Was the state responsible? Yes, even more than the boy, for while he was in jail he was in the plastic stage. The state had him in time and it did nothing?did not even try. The state treated him as a man, dealt with him as a man. They had tried in a day to put a man’s head on the boy’s shoulders, and in attempting to do this tried what God had forbidden. In this the state was foolish. Just as foolish as if it tried at thirteen years of age to raise him to his full stature.”
The state through its system of public schools must assume more responsibility in caring for the youth of the state. In the first place the compulsory school age limit must be raised from fourteen to sixteen so that no child can withdraw from school and spend full time working, either at home or for some employer, before he is sixteen years of age. In the second place provision must be made for the youth who must leave school at sixteen in order to support himself or in order to help support the family. These provisions must be through the establishment of part time schools, special schools running for a short period during each year, and night schools. Along with this must come a change in our course of study so as to recognize both the nature of the youth and the social need of the community?these two things should always determine the subject matter offered. The system of elementary school work for children up to the age of fourteen should be somewhat as it is now but with more emphasis upon the fundamentals, some inspirational and cultural work. These subjects should be simplified, abridged, and adapted. More time should be given to the fundamentals and a less amount of work should be attempted.
Beginning just after the age of fourteen, time and attention should be given to prevocational and vocational work. If boys and girls are to be saved to the school, the work offered must seem worth while to them. It must appeal to them as being worth their time and effort?and to do this it must have some bearing on the practical work outside of school in which they are to engage. The time has passed in this country when we can fit children into hard and fast grooves and hope to hold them in school. Instead of attempting to adapt the child to the course of study, we must adapt the course of study to the child, or forever lose him.
If we are to hold the youth in school and educate him at least in part, we must consider his newly awakened interests and instincts. Through these only can we hope to give children the culture, the preparation and the training which will make them efficient breadwinners and desirable citizens. For those who can and will remain in school after fourteen there should be offered as far as possible the six great lines of work leading to the six great avenues of life’s activities. Many schools can not offer all of these. If not all, they can offer one, two, or three of them. If it is impossible to offer any, the different subjects can be vitalized, all obsolete and impractical material can be eliminated and the subject can be made to throb with a newness of life never experienced in the old subject. It can be presented so as to be in touch with the life and thought of the modern world.
These six lines as drafted by the Illinois Educational Commission are: 1. A course leading to the speaking and writing professions with language, literature, and history as its main subjects. (We have had these subjects in our course for years. Vocational work along this line is not new.)
2. A course leading to the scientific professions, especially medicine and surgery, and devoting its chief attention to biology, physics, and chemistry, studies dealing with life and the conditions of life.
3. A course leading to the profession of farming with special reference to domesticated animals and plants, and to the soil as the sustainer of life, supported by the physical sciences and by the principles of accounting.
4. A course leading to useful and artistic construction in the building trades and in most lines of manufacture. Here manual training, mathematics, physics, and art should hold the leading place.
5. A course leading to the callings of the business world, with commercial geography, economics, industrial history, commercial arithmetic, commercial law, bookkeeping, stenography and typewriting’as its most prominent features. 6. A course dealing with the application of science and art to the affairs of the well ordered home, Here sewing, cooking, food values, marketing, serving, nursing, sanitation, textiles, home decoration, and the laws of physical, moral, and mental development in childhood are the special studies.
All this means taking care of the boys and girls who can go on with their school life after the compulsory age has been reached. Those who must leave in order to earn money on the farm, in the shop or office,?the ones who have hitherto been neglected and who have contributed largely to that class who have made our criminals,? have not been provided for in this system. This has been and is yet our weakness.
To take care of these children continuation schools in the form of short time, part time, and night schools must be established. For farm boys and girls short term schools of from four to eight weeks during the winter months could be established with special courses in agriculture and domestic science. This can be carried on in connection with grammar and high schools. Groups of students could do some night school work in the rural school buildings during the long winter evenings.
In the part time school the pupils work a part of the time and go to school a part of the time. Sometimes this is arranged so that the pupils attend school one week and work the next week. It is sometimes arranged that the student attends school from six to ten hours a week, the employer giving him time off, and in some cases paying for the time spent in school.
In the courses of study at this age practical work looking toward a vocation in life must be the center. The cultural aim, the idea of preparation for college, must be abandoned for all but a very small number of children. This does not mean that all subjects looking toward citizenship are to be abandoned. It means that the child is to be allowed and encouraged more than ever to choose what he should study in the light of what he desires to do after his schooling is over. In this way only, it seems to me, will the boys and girls be held in school during this vital and dangerous age from fourteen to twenty.
It is high time that some organized efforts in all the various social institutions were made to care for boys and girls who are passing through this vital and dangerous age. There needs to be an awakening in the home so that it will give that protection and training which the home from its very nature must give. The Church must do very much more for boys and girls of this age than it ever has done in the past, both in a social way and in a moral and religious way. The missionary spirit must permeate the Church to such an extent that it will feel the responsibility of caring for the boys and girls of the community whether these children belong to its little group or not. The school,? and here lies the larger work,?must also be missionary in its spirit, and see to it that some effort is made to hold boys and girls in school both by making school life more attractive and more worth while, and by reaching out and helping those who by force of circumstances must leave school early in order to take up the struggle of life.
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