. It needs an
organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make
adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the
supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time
and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to
teach, but who possess a firm conviction of the value and utility of
this kind of instruction. In the hands of teachers who bring to it
only the margin of interest and energy remaining after a hard day's
work in the high school, or who are unable to comprehend the radical
difference between teaching a boy in the day school 35 hours a week
and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or
evening class, the full measure of success cannot be expected. The
employment of day teachers for night school work has never been other
than a makeshift, and the insignificant results attained in night
schools throughout the country have been due in great measure to this
cause.
Apart from the fact that the interests of adolescent workers
imperatively demand the establishment of day continuation schools, an
additional argument in favor of such schools is that they would
provide a means for making the night trade-extension work effective,
through the use of continuation day school teachers for night school
work. Such a plan would mean that teachers employed on this basis
would have charge of a day continuation class during one session of
four hours, and a night class of two hours, making a total of six
hours' work per day. A plan of this kind would make possible the
establishment of the fundamental conditions for successful
trade--preparatory and trade-extension training in the night schools.
The present system is unjust to both teachers and students;--to the
students because the man or boy who sacrifices his recreation time to
attend night school has a right to the best the schools can give; to
the teachers because no teacher can work a two-hour night shift in
addition to seven or eight hours in the technical high school without
seriously impairing his efficiency.
The development of this plan would necessitate the establishment of
two centers, one located in the eastern and one in the western section
of the city. In these centers should be housed the day vocational
school, the day continuation classes, and the night vocational
classes. This would relieve the technical high schools of a task which
does not belong to them, and which by overl
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