PRACTICAL EDUCATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
One of the most interesting aspects of the school situation in Central America and Panama is the important position occupied by commercial and industrial education in the courses of study of many institutions. Public men and teachers in Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama have taken into account the need of offering to the new generation an education which shall be completely practical, with the purpose of turning the thoughts and energies of all the youth to fruitful service of their country.
The teaching of arts and crafts, as well as that of commerce and agriculture, was formerly not begun, as in the United States, upon the student’s entering the secondary school, though there has for some time been a movement to make such instruction a part of the work of the advanced classes in the primary schools, to be continued in the liceo and the normal schools.
This universal interest in practical lines of education is a striking indication of the influences and tendencies now at work in Central America. In the different countries included under this designation there are schools and academies, workshops and laboratories, intended for the practical education of the student body. When it is remembered that the introduction of practical and industrial education in the school régime of Central America is a matter of the past few years, the progress realized is regarded as highly satisfactory. The rapid increase of the commerce of Central America, the improvementin the means of intercommunication, the travels of its people abroad, the influence of foreign elements in its territory, and the various interests thus awakened have aroused in the interior of the Republics composing it the belief that national greatness in modern times must rest upon economic and industrial foundations. The influx of foreign capital and the consequent establishment of powerful industrial enterprises have likewise emphasized the necessity of training men for work in such enterprises. The introduction of modern machinery, the increase of the different forms of the application of steam, the adoption of the inventions intended to gather up the results of labor, and numerous similar influences have given rise to a tremendous demand in this part of the continent for skilled and reliable mechanics. Central America has thus addressed itself with enthusiasm to the task of training the children of its schools for the activities of the present day.
The capitals, other important cities, and even many small towns have schools devoted to practical education, generally provided with buildings and equipment well adapted to this end. Honduras, for example, has founded a school for scientific instruction in the cultivation and preparation of tobacco and for the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes in the tobacco district around Danli. In several Provinces of the same Republic, and in Panama, where agriculture is subordinate, the Governments have founded schools for training pupils to weave hats and other objects.
The more generalized industrial schools are those of arts and crafts and the so-called practical schools for boys. Their organization presents marked differences. In some of the countries named there exist schools that receive pupils either as full or half time boarders, and offer night courses as the situation demands. In all these instruction is free. The Government generally offers a certain number of scholarships in the boarding schools for pupils approved by the different Departments or Provinces of the country. Tools, instruments, and supplies used in the schools are provided by the Government. In return the school exacts of such students certain services and thereby carries out certain work that represents a partial reimbursement for the amount spent upon their maintenance. This is the case with the schools of arts and crafts in Honduras and Panama. Some small schools of this class are maintained by means of the labor they carry on for private individuals and by the sale of the products they turn out.
These industrial schools are generally of two kinds: (1) Those in which the training in commercial subjects and in arts and crafts constitutes part of the regular course of study and (2) those devoted exclusively to the teaching of arts and crafts.
(1) In those of the first class the pupils study the ordinary subjects prescribed by the department of public instruction and devote only several hours weekly to arts and crafts. This class in its turn includes two groups of institutions. To be admitted to those of the first group the pupils must know how to read and write and apply the elementary rules of arithmetic. During the entire school year instruction is given in Spanish, geography, history, and arithmetic. The practical schools for girls and boys are generally of this kind, being especially numerous in Guatemala and Honduras. The schools conducted by the Christian Brothers in Nicaragua are also of this type. The duration of studies is from three to five years, a half day being devoted to the classes in the ordinary subjects of primary education and the other half to practical work. In the second group are comprised various institutions which require certificates from the higher elementary schools, such as the liceo and the higher colegio for women in Costa Rica, the National Institute in Salvador, the Central National Institute for Boys in Guatemala, and the normal schools in these countries and in Honduras.
(2) Of the special institutions which constitute the second category, there are to be noted two prominent instances in the schools of arts and crafts in Panama and in Honduras. In organization and purposes they are schools of mechanical arts, and not schools of manual training. Their workshops have not been established to impart general notions of manual arts or a general apprenticeship, but to train the pupils from entrance upon the line of education chosen by themselves. In these schools are taught carpentry, tanning, shoemaking, blacksmithing, cabinetmaking, electricity, installation and management of machinery, mechanics, printing and bookbinding, telegraphy, etc. All workshops in such schools are well equipped with machinery and tools.
All that has been said in regard to modern educational tendencies and influences to which boys are subject in the countries mentioned can be extended, though in less degree, to the girls and young women. Within the past few years women’s sphere of action has steadily been enlarged, and has come to include not only teaching but various employments in shops and mercantile establishments. Within the next few years their instruction must be taken into account in schools of domestic training, vocational schools, practical schools, and the technical colegios. The organization and range of these institutions does not differ materially from those for boys. The vocational school for girls is essentially a school of arts and crafts in which the pupils devote themselves from entrance to the study of a special line, such as dressmaking, embroidery, millinery, and, in certain schools, cooking, washing and ironing, etc. A certificate of proficiency is granted them upon the completion of certain assignedcourses. The other schools for girls before mentioned combine general subjects with the special apprenticeship in crafts upon which they enter as soon as they reach the higher classes of the primary school and which they continue into the high school and the normal school.