PANAMA.
Like Guatemala and Honduras, Panama has devoted special attention to industrial training. The School of Arts and Crafts of the City of Panama is one of the largest and best equipped of its kind. It is essentially a school for artisans and possesses sections of electricity, carpentry, cabinetmaking, printing and bookbinding, carving, foundry work, etc., its principal object being to train men for the separate industrial branches.
Panama also has a vocational school for girls in which a year’s instruction is given in telegraphy, one in laundry work, two in dressmaking and embroidery, two in shorthand, two in cooking, two in millinery and flower work.
It has likewise a school of agriculture, in which is given a three years’ course, for which the Government offers 30 scholarships to youths approved by local authorities. The Government has also founded from time to time specialized schools in the interior, with the object of encouraging agriculture or some other industry, such as that of the manufacture of Panama hats. Like Honduras, Panama devotes the greatest attention to special industrial schools.
For the furtherance of commercial education in Central and South America a Pan American College of Commerce, to be located at the City of Panama, is projected, under the joint auspices of the Southern Commercial Congress of the United States and the Government of the Republic of Panama. The active support of the countries of the two Americas is to be sought, and it is hoped that it may be opened on January 1, 1921, the quadricentennial year of the City of Panama, the first city to be founded by Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. The college is designed to train the youth of the two continents in practical courses of commerce, shipping, banking, and international trade relations generally.