PROPOSED TRADE SCHOOL
The investigation into the condition of working women and girls in Honolulu was made primarily with a view to establishing a trade school and special attention was therefore paid to community needs; for in organizing a school of this kind, it is of first importance to suit the course of training to those needs. The ideal of the present day vocational school is moreover not only to train a worker to become self-supporting in her environment, but to give her training in a sufficient variety of allied occupations to enable her to shift from one to another in case of need. In a large city, for instance, she is taught the use of electric power machine operating, which enables her in their respective seasons to work on women’s underwear, ready-made dresses, straw-sewing of men’s and women’s hats, and a variety of other occupations.
She is taught her right relation to her employer, to her fellow-worker, and to her work; to value health and how to keep it; to make use of whatever previous education she may have had: in general, to develop into a better woman as well as a better worker.
These were the ideals formulated by the founders of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City—the first trade school to be established in America, and with a curriculum applied to local needs, they will serve quite as admirably for Honolulu.
The situation seems to call more than anything else for the tying up of the threads connecting a vocational and employment bureau, a trade school and a place for marketing the product of the workers; and a curriculum which would seem to make for the greatest success along all three lines is about as follows:
If these courses could be arranged for the morning, afternoon and evening they would be available for school girls and working girls, as well as for pupils who were otherwise unoccupied. Courses Nos. 5 to 10 inclusive, might be offered morning and afternoon, and Nos. 1 to 4 inclusive, in the afternoon and evening. The two sets of courses would of course require separate staffs of instructors; I should say two instructors for each course.
An arrangement could no doubt be made with the various churches, settlements, etc., now giving elementary sewing to send to the school the girls who wish to make sewing their profession.
Practically all the trade schools include hygiene, physical training, and most of them have a basketball team. Localphysicians would no doubt be glad to give a course of lectures at the school and an arrangement might be made with one of the Settlements whereby its advance sewing course would be taken over in exchange for physical training by the Settlement instructor.
Trade schools have found it both desirable and profitable to market their output; not only because it gives the pupils an immediate earning power, but also because it encourages them to put their best efforts into their work when they know it is to have a place in the scheme of things.
If an Hawaiian shop, as suggested elsewhere, were established, it would afford a market for certain of the articles made by the pupils of the school—lauhala mats, leis, flowers, candy, preserves, cake, etc. Other articles might be disposed of at the school. This is done at both the New York and Boston Trade Schools, where sales are held periodically.
The successful establishment of an underwear factory would as time goes on, naturally offer a market for girls taking the course in Domestic Art; while a clientele for fine home-made candies could undoubtedly be built up after the manner of the Martha Washington and Mary Elizabeth shops in New York, which have developed from small beginnings with a few customers into extensive and profitable enterprises.
It would be desirable to have pupils take the entire course, both for wage-earning purposes and for their own development. The course in cultivation of flowers, fruits and vegetables ought to be of special value, for there is much space around the cottages, especially in the poorer districts, of which no use is made. Records kept by one of the schools which has done some work in home gardening show that the usual fate of the sprouting seeds was to feed the chickens. No instruction was given, however, in methods of protection against either chickens or insects. The Federal Experiment Station would help in this matter.
Roger W. Babson, statistician, economist and the last authority on the high cost of living declares that “our real need isfor more farmers and fewer politicians. When every man makes use of his own back yard, the cost of living will be reduced and the ideals talked of by the progressive will be actually accomplished—but not until then.”[2]
2. Current Literature, August, 1912, p. 166.
2. Current Literature, August, 1912, p. 166.
The course outlined is somewhat similar to the scheme of education given so successfully in Hampton Institute, Va., which is at once the pioneer and the ranking institution for the vocational training of primitive people. Their girls, while given very thorough industrial training are not given this training, however, with the idea of putting them into the trades. “The aim and purpose is primarily to develop homemakers, women who can go back to their homes in the rural districts and teach their people how to keep their homes clean and sanitary, how to care for their children and for the sick and aged, how to make and keep in repair their own clothing, and how to do the innumerable other things that should be done in a well-regulated home,” says the Commissioner of Labor in his report on Industrial Education.[3]
3. Twenty-fifth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1910, p. 321.
3. Twenty-fifth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1910, p. 321.
In this connection it is interesting to note that General Armstrong, the founder of Hampton, was the son of Hawaii’s first Commissioner of Education, whose reports advocated this same training for Hawaiians in the early missionary days.