The upper grades of the grammar school lose annually many children who would be able to profit by the help the school offers to those who can remain.  Some drop out because they see no need of remaining when the factory will employ them without further knowledge.  Others chafe at spending time on what seems to them, and what sometimes is, quite unrelated to the life they will lead and the work they will do.  Some leave reluctantly, because their help is needed in financing a large family.  Many go gladly, because they will begin to earn and to have some of the things they ardently desire.  And until yesterday the school paid little attention to their going, regarding it as one of the necessary evils.  Still less attention did it pay to what these pupils became after they left.  The school’s responsibility ended at its outer door.

Now that these conditions are being changed, the school is finding responsibilities and opportunities on every hand.  The foreign-born are taken out of the regular grades where they cannot fit, and are taught English by themselves first of all.  The subnormal children are studied for latent vocational possibilities, and where minds are deficient, hands are the more carefully trained for suitable work.  Courses are being revised with a view to holding in school the boy or girl who wants practical training for practical work.  Secondary schools have taken their eyes off college requirements long enough to consider fitting the majority of their pupils to face life without the college.  Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the concern of the school.

Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some idea of the goal to be reached.

What are the options that the grammar-school teacher may present to the girls under her care?

First of all, as we have already said, the school records must be kept with care and discrimination, so that the teacher may know the girl to whom she speaks.  With the records in hand, she will ask herself the following questions: 

  1.  Is further training at the expense of the girl’s family
     possible?  Do the girl’s abilities warrant effort on her
     parents’ part to give her further opportunity?

  2.  Could the girl’s parents continue to pay her living expenses
     during further training if the training were furnished at the
     expense of the state?

  3.  Could the girl obtain training in return for her personal
     service, either with or without pay?

  4.  Would the girl be able to repay in skill acquired the expense
     of her training, whether borne by herself, her parents, or the
     state?