The bulletin of Atlanta University, 1908 no. 185

              Number 185                                       Atlanta, Georgia                                 November, 1908 The National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education The second annual convention of the Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education convened at Atlanta during the three days, November 19, 20 and 21. The convention opened with a banquet at the Piedmont Hotel, Thursday evening. Three general sessions were held on Friday, with a fourth series of departmental meetings; two sessions were, held on Saturday, a general meeting and the closing business meeting. In addition to the above, a mass meeting . specially arranged for the students of the colored schools of the city in connection with representative colored citizens was held at Spelman Seminary. At this meeting, an audience of a thousand colored students and citizens listened to addresses by distinguished educators in industrial and technological lines from the North, followed by a stirring and instructive address by Dr. Washington, of Tuskegee. The Exhibits The halls and galleries of the state capitol were devoted to an exhibit of trade school work, which attracted many visitors other than the delegates and citizens attending the meetings of the conference. These exhibits were varied in character, representative of both North and South, and indicative of the variety of work attempted by many different schools in different sections of the United States. Officers and Speakers The officers of the association and the speakers during the sessions were likewise widely representative sectionally and professionally. The president, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, is the president of Clark College, and the vice-president, Mr. Magnus W. Alexander, is president of the General Electric Company, Lynn, Mass. The executive committee seems to be exclusively business men. The speakers were about equally divided between men of business and educators of local and even national prominence. One is led to think that the association had its inception with business men, who called in the educators, rather  than   an  association   of educators who invited to their help the men of business. Impression on the Public Now that the sessions are closed, the question arises as to the impression made by the convention in this city of .  conventions. Perhaps the answers to the question would be as various as were the people in attendance. For the writer, the poetic moment was reached on Saturday morning in a very brief address by Mrs. Lipscomb, president of the Women's Clubs of Georgia, as she told of the work of the federation in establishing and maintaining four industrial schools in as many counties, and of the petition of the clubs to the legislature for industrial schools and compulsory education for all children of the state, both white and colored. The simplicity of the story, the directness of the petition, and the call upon the men of the state to carry it through, made a profound impression. "Industrial Education" Defined Again, the term "industrial education" has been defined, or if not defined has had something of its content made known. Industrial education recognizes the fact that into the industries of the country every year large companies of the youth of the country enter. There are twenty million children of school age, one-fifth of whom each year pass out of the schools into the army of workers. The manufacturers, the trades, all occupations are interested in an intelligent body of youth who thus annually swell the ranks of employees. Two methods are possible ; the one permits the lad or girl to find by chance an entrance into life in some form of occupation for which there may or may not be adaptability, and for which no preparation has been made. The industrial schools propose, upon a basis of manual training in the primary and grammar schools, to offer a secondary education based upon the economic conditions of the section, which shall train the youth in the principles underlying the occupation and giving practice until efficiency is achieved. Sectional Peculiarities In the South the natural industrial school will be, possibly, agricultural; in another section textile schools, perhaps; in all sections trade schools, where the journeyman of the future shall get his preparation. But the pur- , pose of all these schools is not primarily the graduating of farmers, or trades-people, or workers in textiles, so much as developing the entire man, not only as an artisan or a craftsman, but as a man who looks at his art or his craft intelligently; who sees his craft in its economic setting, in its sociologic importance; one who is not satisfied merely to turn out a finished product, but who wishes to give it an artistic character; one who not merely earns more money because of the enhanced value of his work, but who uses his increased income in a better type of living than would be possible if he came into the ranks unskilled or with the skill gotten in the chance opportunities of his career; in a word, a better citizen of the republic, because giving a finer product and living a finer life than had otherwise been possible. Development of the Individual AJ1 of this can be summed up in one sentence, namely: that in the industrial schools of the future the average student life is to be much prolonged; the special aptitudes of the individual youth are to be discovered and developed, that each shall make a finer contribution to society than the present regime offers, in which so large a portion of the boys and girls who should be in school drop out at the fourth, the seventh or the eighth grade, or who sample the high school and will have none of it. This is the impression which it seems to me has been left in Atlanta by this convention; and the city and the state should be very grateful for the presence of a body of thinkers representing such a purpose.                  E. H. Webster. Rev. Frederick J. Libby of Magnolia, Mass., paid us a brief visit last month and conducted devotions in the Chapel on the morning of October 12.