Training for Navy Is Training for Occupations of Civil Life. Curtis D. Wilbur 121 Problems of New Zealand Offer Lessons for America. Mark Cohen Relation of College Curricula to Educational and Vocational Guidance. Ben D. Wood 127 Editorial: Valuable in Itself and for What It Has Stimulated. Metamorphosis of American Educational Organization Jno. J. Tigert Chicago Board Provides Classes for Adults Wherever They Are Wanted. Oxford University in the View of an American Rhodes Scholar. Avocational Education Approaches Vocational in Importance. School and Public Libraries in Small Communities of Indiana. New Books in Education. John D. Wolcott Some of the Educational and Scientific Associations Which Meet During SCHOOL LIFE is an official organ of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. It is published monthly except in July and August. The subscription price, 50 cents a year, covers only the actual cost of printing and distribution. Subscriptions should be sent to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., and not to the Bureau of Education. Single numbers are sold at 5 cents each. For postage to countries which do not recognize the mailing frank of the United States, add 25 cents a year. Specimen copies will be sent free upon application to the Commissioner of Published Monthly, except July and August, by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education VOL. X WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH, 1925 No. 7 Training for Navy is Training for Occupations of Civil Life In Equipment and Variety of Instruction Given, the United States Navy, is Greatest Industrial Training Institution in the World. Twenty-five Thousand Men Prepared Annually for Efficient Service. Recruits, Usually Ignorant of Work They Must Perform, are Developed into Skilled Seamen or Artisans. "Deck Divisions" Comprise 58 per cent of a Battleship's Complement. Ninety-six "Ratings" on a Single Ship TH HAT the Navy is constantly taking thousands of untrained men and boys from civil life and making them a part of its working personnel is so well known that it is accepted by the average person as a matter of fact. He is apt to give little thought to the tremendous problem which is involved. During the past year, about 25,000 recruits were taken into the naval service. Few of these men had any previous training in the work they must perform; most of them had never been aboard a ship. Those concerned with education will know that somewhere and somehow a tremendous problem of education and training is involved, in making these thousands of untrained men fit to serve as intelligent and effective units of the Navy's personnel. To understand fully the magnitude and complexity of the task involved, one must first have a clear conception of the modern Navy itself and of what it demands of those who make up its personnel. Intricate Machinery in Modern Vessels The Navy to-day is essentially an oilburning Navy. All the battleships, when present approved alterations are completed, the scout cruisers, destroyers, submarines, the tenders, the plane carriers, and the planes themselves burn oil in some form or other. High speed and intricate turbines, motors, and Diesel engines have replaced the old slow-moving reciprocating engines as propelling units. Destroyer turbines develop as much as 30,000 horsepower to drive their 1,500ton hulls at 35 knots. It is hardly possible to think of any activity on board ship which is not more 33407-25-1 By CURTIS D. WILBUR, Secretary of the Navy Shops Occupy Much of Space Below Decks All of the large ships are equipped with complete machine shops, carpenter shops, foundries, refrigerating plants, evaporating and distilling units. There are facilities for coppersmithing and blacksmithing. There are print shops and paint shops and machines for repairing the large amount of canvas still used in the Navy. There is a fully equipped hospital or "sick bay," where the most delicate operation can be performed, even at sea. Torpedoes, mines, machine guns, rifles, and ammunition for all calibers of guns aboard are included in the equipment of all combatant ships. All of these numerous shops, together with the boiler rooms and engine rooms, take up much of the below-deck spaces of the ship. But in addition to these, even a larger amount of this space is required for the stores normally carried. Everything that may be needed to effect repairs and to make minor alterations is carried in stock-from the smallest bolt or nut to the largest spare bearings. Tons of paint, canvas, wood, steel, fire brick, leather, lead, cement, etc., are carried in bulk, as well as thousands of all kinds and sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, rivets, etc. Storerooms have capacity enough to carry a six-months' supply of these general stores. But the 1,200 men on a modern dreadnaught must be clothed and fed. At least a 30-day supply of fresh provisions can be carried. Imagine the cold storage on a ship large enough to carry the beef, veal, pork, chicken, eggs, liver, sausage, etc., to feed 1,200 hungry sailor men for 30 days. Think how many large store rooms are required to carry flour, milk, coffee, tea, sugar, tinned and dried fruit for that same period. Even a destroyer with a hundred men aboard can carry a 30-day supply of dry provisions, together with fresh meat, eggs, etc., to feed the crew for 10 days. Submarines can cruise from New London to Panama without replenishing their supply of provisions. Every Ship a Self-supporting Unit One must be intimately associated with the development of the Navy to appreciate how complex each type of fighting ship really is, to appreciate how essential it is to the Navy itself and the Nation as a whole, to have these separate fighting units assembled into a well-trained, wellorganized, well-balanced fleet. The idea with which every ship is built, equipped, and organized is that it shall be "self-supporting." So far as the material is concerned, they are practically so in installations, equipments, and organizations. But the best material in the world is useless unless there is a skilled and trained personnel to handle it and to take proper care of it. The commissioned and en 121 listed personnel of the Navy are responsible for the condition of the ships. The training division of the Bureau of Navigation in Washington is especially entrusted with the proper training and instruction of Unless the handling of stores is properly supervised, unless the food is well cooked, the bread well baked, unless the boilers are kept clean, tight, and efficient, unless the auxiliaries and main engines are always A CLASS IN A TYPICAL NAVAL SCHOOL Six per cent of the personnel of a modern naval vessel must be trained electricians this personnel, to the end that the ships may be properly taken care of. One has only to be told that there are 137 different ratings among the enlisted men of the Navy to realize the enormous task this training division has before it. Each rating is a distinct class representing different kinds and degrees of training. Each man in any particular rating must be an expert in the work which his rate requires him to perform. ready for their maximum speed at their lowest economy, unless the guns are properly trained, elevated, and loaded, and their fire accurately directed, the ship is unreliable, unfit for service, and useless for the important work it has to perform. While the various naval installations are standardized to a large degree, no man can be considered as thoroughly qualified in his rating who knows only the equipment of his own ship. All men must be able to perform the duties required by their ratings on any type of naval vessel. In addition, they must have a thorough knowledge of naval customs and procedure. Whether a man is a machinist or a quatermaster, a radioman or boatswain mate, he must know his job thoroughly and must be so thoroughly indoctrinated in naval customs that he is equal to any emergency. The valuable equipment on every ship is entrusted to the care of the officers and men on board. The Navy can not afford to have this material carelessly handled. The personnel in charge must be experts. The safety of the ship in cruising, its preparedness for the great emergency in war time, and its value as a fighting unit in the whole naval organization depends upon the degree of perfection reached in the training of commissioned and enlisted personnel. One can hardly think of any of the technical trades and professions in civil life which is not required and used in the Navy. But the Navy at sea can not draw upon these mechanical and professional experts of civil life to do its work. The Navy must train its own experts, and the training must be continuous. There is not that permanency of personnel in the Navy which makes so much for efficiency in shore plants. Through expiration of enlistments, death, inaptitude, and physical disabilities the Navy loses 24 per cent of its personnel yearly. These are replaced by men who in most respects must be considered as untrained. These men must be assimilated into the organization and trained and instructed in the work they must perform. It can be safely said that no institution or organization in the world is called upon to do such intensive and varied training as the American Navy, and it is also Her complement of 1,200 includes men trained in nearly every trade of civil life. Nearly all of them received their training after entering the Navy true that no trade school or training institution is in a position to offer its men under instruction such complete equipment and facilities. The 25,000 men recruited annually come from all the States crews. Another 20 per cent of the ship's complement is organized into the engineer and repair forces and includes boilermakers, molders, coppersmiths, water tenders, machinists, blacksmiths, and firemen. Students of the Naval Blacksmiths' School at Hampton Roads, Va. in the Union and from all walks of life. Some are students, some farmers, some laborers, and some, a very small percentage, have no trade in civil life. These are the men who later become the Navy's expert coppersmiths, blacksmiths, boilermakers, machinists, yeomen, painters, carpenters, plumbers, storekeepers, electricians, radiomen, cooks, bakers, musicians, hospital corpsmen, and experts in many other technical trades. It is true, and naturally so, that not every one of these 25,000 recruits reaches one of the enumerated ratings. But even if he is only a seaman or a fireman, he is a trained man for a particular job. He may be a gun pointer, a gun sight setter, a member of a gun's or turret's crew; he may simply watch the boiler burn the oil pumped to it as an oil-burning fireman. But, whatever his rating, he is an individual in a well-trained, well-organized fighting unit, and as such, he must reach the highest degree of proficiency possible, if that unit is to operate at its maximum effectiveness. Considering the modern dreadnaught West Virginia, with an allowed complement of about 1,200 men, approximately 58 per cent of them are organized into deck divisions, which include men trained as quartermasters, signalmen, torpedo men, gunners' mates, boatswains' mates, and turret captains. This percentage includes the trained seamen who make up the guns' Radiomen, electricians, painters, shipfitters, carpenters, and other ship artificers ccmprise an additional 10 per cent of the complement. Cooks, bakers, and men of the messman rating make up 5 per cent of the crew. Yeomen (the clerical force), storekeepers, musicians, hospital-corpsmen comprise fully 7 per cent of the crew. On a ship like the West Virginia, 6 per cent of the entire ship complement is made up of men qualified as electricians, and probably another 3 per cent of the crew from among the seamen guns' crews are working with them to learn this trade. There are actually 96 different ratings aboard this particular ship. How does the Navy get its skilled experts? It makes them. At sea and ashore the Navy is keeping its personnel under continuous instruction. It is possible to do this by reason of the fact that the Navy uses its own trained personnel as instructors. The commissioned officers who are given four years of intensive training and education at the Naval Academy and the chief petty officers who have become experts in their particular ratings during their 16 or 20 years of service are especially fitted to do this type of instruction. At all training stations and at certain other places, such as the naval torpedo station at Newport, R. I., the naval radio laboratory at Washington, the Sperry Gyro Compass Works at Brooklyn, N. Y., the Naval Gun Factory in the Washington Navy Yard, the Navy maintains men under special trade instruction. At present there is an average of 2,000 men under such instruction in the 26 trade schools now in active operation. Two hundred and sixty petty officers with special qualifications are detailed as instructors. The courses vary in length from 4 to 38 weeks. As soon as one class finishes its course of instruction, another follows. Men are selected for these various classes of trade instruction from the particularly apt and desirable recruits who have previously been given a special aptitude and educational test and from the men of the fleet who are recommended for this instruction by their commanding officers as being particularly desirable men for a particular trade. The Navy receives annually an average MACHINE SHOP ON THE U. S. S. "PENNSYLVANIA" Nearly all the men were trained in the service of 4,000 trained men from these trade schools. Upon completion of a course the graduate goes to sea and performs the work for which he has been specially trained. But these trade schools ashore can not take care of the demand for trained men at sea. The graduates from the trade schools must have their instruction continued at sea to make them better qualified in their ratings and to prepare them for advancement, so that, in addition to these 26 trade schools ashore, every ship in the Navy maintains trade schools for instructing men it needs in special trades. The courses for these schools are furnished by the training division of the Bureau of Navigation. Seventy-four different courses of instruction grouped under the following general headings are furnished by that division for use of enlisted men: Seamanship, communications, engineering, deck artificers, special branches, and general academic subjects. These courses with the textbooks are available for all enlisted men ashore and afloat and are furnished free to them. Courses are of three kinds: (1) "Rating courses," that is a course of instruction containing the specific information a man must know before he is considered to be qualified for advancement in his particular rating, as, for example, a man advancing from radioman third class to radioman second class; (2) "general technical courses to increase Crippled Czech Girls Weave Pic- Bureau of Education's Latest Pub torial Carpet A remarkable pictorial carpet has just been completed in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. It is the work of 10 girls from the Jedlicka Institution for Crippled Children in that city. The carpet is 472 feet long by 314 feet wide, and the pile is 1 inch thick. More than 5,000,000 knots and 300 pounds of wool were required in weaving the carpet. The 10 girls labored on it from July 24 to December 16, 1924. lications The following publications have been issued recently by the United States Bureau of Education. Orders for them should be sent to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., accompanied by the price indicated. COOPERATION IN ADULT EDUCATION. Ellen C. Lombard. (Home education circular, no. 6.) 5 cents. Report of second National conference on home education, called by the U. S. Commissioner of Education, at Minneapolis, May 7, 1924. EDUCATIONAL DIRECTORY, 1925. (Bulletin, 1925, no. 1.) 25 cents. FISCAL SUPPORT OF STATE UNIVERSITIES AND STATE COLLEGES. Clarence H. Thurber. (Bulletin, 1924, no. 28.) 20 This piece of work is really a historical map of Czechoslovakia, and was made on the order of the ministry of education at a cost of $17,221. Woven in the carpet are pictures of 40 Bohemian cities, with Prague in the center. On the background are shown trees, shrubs, flowers, and animals of the country, its river system, and Czech vocational pictures, IMPROVEMENT IN TEACHING READING IN arranged in geographical order. Schools from many places made excursions to Prague to see this great work of art and industry, which will be sent as an educational exhibit to Paris before it is finally placed in the great hall of the Prague tower Hradcany, now the residence of the president of the republic.— Emanuel V. Lippert, Comenius Institute, Prague. naval skill," as, for example, a course of Developing Historical Background instruction in detail on a particular naval installation, such as a distilling plant or Curtis turbines; (3) "academic courses to further the general education of the individual," as, for example, arithmetic, chemistry, English, United States history, Spanish. Instruction by Ship's Officers Correction of papers and necessary supervision of work is done by the ship's officers. Thirty-seven thousand of these courses were distributed for use among the enlisted personnel of the Navy during the fiscal year 1924. The courses are furnished to all types of ships on all stations. The officers are interested instructors, and the enlisted men are ardent students. It is in this way that the Navy is attempting to meet the demands placed upon it by the constant turnover in its personnel. The replacement of trained men who go out into civil life at the expiration of their enlistments and the advancement of others who remain in the service requires that this training and instruction be carried on continuously. That the system of training is successful is evidenced by the increased efficiency in gunnery and engineering in the fleets and by the fact that trained men who leave the Navy for civil life are better citizens and artisans because of their training in the Navy. for Latin Study The study of ancient languages, especially Latin, is preceded in many schools by a study of the historical background. This preliminary preparation may take the form of readings in history, some acquaintance with the religion, literature, art, and architecture of the time; and, to make the study even more vivid, the clay-modeling ability of members of the class is sometimes invoked and models Imade of the Roman senate room or forum, or of other objects and places that give a living reality to the acquisition of the language of a vanished people. "Latin notes" for December, 1924, presents an excellent outline which was prepared for the use of classes in Cicero in the East High School, Rochester, N. Y Parent-teacher associations have been organized in Delaware during the past year in 327 out of the 388 school districts in the State. With the cooperation of the Delaware school auxiliary association, each of these associations has been provided with a definite program for the conduct of meetings, and a pamphlet illustrating the program, showing what has been accomplished along educational lines in Delaware and other States. cents. RURAL SCHOOLS. Maud C. Newbury. (Rural school leaflet, no. 35.) 5 cents. LEGISLATION ON THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL. Paul W. Terry and William J. Marquis. (Bulletin, 1924, no. 29.) 10 cents. Contains: 1. Legislation on the high school.-2. Analysis of junior-high-school legislation.-3. The organization of junior high schools in States having nolegislation relating explicitly thereto.-4. Reports of State departments of education concerning additional junior-high-school legislation.-5. The prob lem of legislative stimulation of the junior high school. A MANUAL OF EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATION FOR THE GUIDANCE OF COMMITTEES ON EDUCATION IN THE STATE LEGISLATURES. (Bulletin, 1924, no. 36.) 10 cents. Contents: I. Purpose and scope.-II. General analysis of school organization and administration.III. School costs and school support.-IV. School attendance and compulsory attendance laws.-V. Physical education.-VI. School grounds and buildings.-VII. The teaching staff.-VIII. Certification of teachers.-IX. School textbooks. RECOGNITION OF HEALTH AS AN OBJECTIVE. Report of a conference at Boston, October, 1923. Harriet Wedgwood. (School health studies, no. 7.) 5 cents. Contains: 1. Physical education and school health, by John Sundwall.-2. Certain adolescents in industry, by Hugh G. Rowell. SAMPLES OF TEACHER SELF-RATING CARDS. Comp. by Bertha Y. Hebb. (City school leaflet, no. 18, February, 1925.) 5 cents. A STUDY OF 260 SCHOOL CONSOLIDATIONS. J. F. Abel. (Bulletin, 1924, no. 32.) 10 cents. Contents: Introduction.-Ch. I. The typical school consolidation, comparative standards, and variations from the type.--Ch. II. Transportation of pupils, equipment for special courses, community activities.-Statistical tables. WHAT EVERY TEACHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF HER PUPILS. James F. Rogers. (Health education no. 18.) 5 cents. Offers suggestions for the teacher in order that she may do effective work in estimating the physical condition and capacity of her pupils. |