All trade unions which
have not adopted a scheme of technical education are advised to take
the matter up.
On the question of public-school training, the American Federation of
Labor is no less explicit and emphatic, favoring the establishment of
schools in connection with the public-school system in which pupils
between fourteen and sixteen may be taught the principles of the
trades, with local advisory boards, on which both employers and
organized labor should have seats. But by far the most fundamental
proposal is the following. After outlining the general instruction on
accepted lines, they proceed as follows:
"The shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade
represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and
biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that
trade, and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the
philosophy of collective bargaining."
The general introduction of such a plan of training would mean that
the young worker would start out on his wage-earning career with an
intelligent understanding of the modern world, and of his relations to
his employer and to his fellow-laborers, instead of, as at present,
setting forth with no knowledge of the world he is entering, and
moreover, with his mind clogged with a number of utterly out-of-date
ideas, as to his individual power of control over wages and working
conditions.
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