ABRIDGED REPORT of the COMMITTEE on CHEMICAL EDUCATION of the NON-COLLEGIATE TYPE OBJECTIVE NO. 2, PART 2
R. E. BOWMAN, Chairman Wilmington, Delaware
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ART One of this report was presented (1) soon after the present administration took over a t Washington. There have been good reasons for delaying discussion in a period of rapid and serious economic and social change. The types of school have not altered in the meantime but have been regaining momentum after some curtailment. The chemical companies held most of their technicians through the ebb tide or called them back to work a$ they regained ground. The National Recovery Act brought chemical codes for a time. Later legislation now brings a fixed minimum wage and maximum hours. The costs of chemical education have continued to rise, making i t more difficult for the technician to give up employment and return to school. For a time one excellent young foreman contributed seventy per cent. of his wages to the support of brothers and sisters out of work. But i t kept him from returning to the University and entirely altered his life. The work of the Committee bas both an educational and a social aspect which leads us to feel that its work should continue. One of us feels that its work is complete. Others feel that a greal deal is yet to be done. Our comments passed twice about the circle of members. Considerable changes have occurred in the industrial point of view (2). A pamphlet (3) from the Universal Oil Products Company was circulated and is referred to in the discussion, which dealt with the qualifications for operators and foremen or inspectors. To condense the opinions of six persons within the allotted space
and still do justice is not an easy task. The death of Dr. Allen Rogers, former Chairman of this Committee, t o whom we all'are greatly indebted, leads me to quote his opinions more fully than the rest. It is his last word to the Chemical Revolution, as Dr. Hale calls it. Trusting that the abridgement will be acceptable, one plunges a t once into the task. , Dr. Allen Rogers: There are two-separate problems involved-those of the laboratory technician and the plant operator. The lab technician in many cases is a boy just out of high school who by chance has obtained a job in the laboratory and finds the work interesting. He may find ways and means to get a degree from college or technical school or turn to an intensive chemistry course. If he is unable to do this, the night school, correspondence, and extension schools are tried. The unambitious boys will plod along and be satisfied with routine chemical work the rest of their lives. Every encouragement should be given to the ambitious boy, plus recognition of his accomplishment. He should never be made to feel that he is a ditch digger who can never get out of the hole. The plant operator of the old rule-of-thumb type must be replaced by a man with technical training. He is not hampered, however, by the lack of a college degree. He should understand the fundamentals of the science of chemistry, he should have a working knowledge of mathematics and the physical elements of engineering, plus horse sense. Many institutions will provide him with sound training. The technically trained man of
this type is able to work in harmony with the chemist, research man, and engineer, because they speak the same language and are not hampered by the thought of degrees. The field is wide and offers many promising opportunities for the man with technical training of the non-college type. The Committee is just starting its work. Its suggestions should be considered by manufacturers. It should appeal to them to encourage young men to advance themselves. An idea of each class of trainmg should be included in the appeal. Dr. Morris L a w a c e : The reply of Firm Number 14 (in Part One) interested me--two of this fum's best chemists had been high-school graduates who had taken correspondence courses. I wish Question One had asked more definitely as to whether the employing firms approved of correspondence school graduates. I believe it would have given some interesting results. We enrol approximately twelve hundred per year in our various chemistry courses (a list of nineteen courses follows). We also offer special courses to students who do not wish the complete courses. A third questionnaire would not justify the probable expense involved or the results obtained. Dr. A. P . Tanberg: The trend is toward the technical high school boy over eighteen years who seems best for our purpose. The will to complete a high-school course plus other characteristics is a measure of the fitness of boys to do this sort of work. Personal fitness such as indicated in Mr. Matson's summary (3) plus resourcefulness in the boy who has completed a highschool course is important, as the high school selects or sorts them hefore the boy applies for the job. The requirements of lab technicians and plant operators are not necessarily the same. Many high-school boys graduate through persistence rather than to fit themselves for a specific job. There is a confusion between fitness for a job and fitness for promotion. Courses in public speaking, rhetoric, or psycholop might help a man advance from operator to foreman or supervisor. Statistical data may be influenced by business conditions which put superior men in jobs lower than their ability levels. A married man of low educational qualifications may be retained while a young single man of higher qualifications may be laid off. Ambitious helpers frequently leave to go to college. We would be better off if we employed a less ambitious boy of less natural ability. Research helpers cannot advance very far and we seldom employ a high-grade four-year chemist. Types of evening training open to technicians and operators are seldom as good as regular college courses. Two boys worked with us from 4 to 12 P.M. to secure funds for all-day work a t the University of Delaware. Boys can be classified into those satisfied with their future and those willing to do any remunerative work to enable them to get first-class college training. My experience has been with research rather than with production. Our boys run errands, clean apparatus, make a few routine tests, and so forth. We never intention-
ally depend upon them for important observations in connection with the course of an experiment. Dr. R. E. Rose: The worth-while boy should be encouraged to get better fundamental knowledge of his occupation by further training and study, after he is sure (through employment) that he really likes the work and wants to understand i t better. Courses should not be taken for effect when there is no real willingness or capacity for additional basic information. The belief that every youngster should have facilities for deeper scientific training is unsound. An increasing per cent. of our population is condemned to routine jobs calling for no basic information beyond grade school. Technical training is no more necessary than for an elevator operator to be trained in the knowledge of electrical theory and mechanism. We must reconcile the average and below average boy to stay on a job by emphasizing the essential dignity of such work and its importance to our civilization. Existing educational facilities are quite adequate. Much high-school work should be turned iuto plain trade school preparation for overall jobs. An ambitious young man can always get the technical training he wants if be bas a little help in learning to take advantage of his opportunities. I favor advisory groups of teachers plus representative men. At present only chance determines a youngster's choice of employment. Ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred do work calling for no more than gradeschool preparation. We only harm by encouraging those of this group to think they are fitted for something better. Mental capacities are almost as fixed as life expectancies. The Franklin Union Report (4) seems typicaleof an unsound attitude of mind. It overlooks essentials and magnifies minor points. Our Committee has done all that can be expected of it although more remains to be done. It would not be wise to send questionnaires to those who have secured noncollege technical education. Dr. H. A . Emst: One technician is employed approximately for every two college men. No existing program trains them for junior positions. They drift iuto the chemical field. The industry bears the expense of weedmg out the un6t and disinterested, but the school could do so a t l e e financial and social expense. Chemistry is a strongly organized science, but no attempt has been made to determine pre-employment qualifications. The selection of boys is subjective, extremely unscientific, and therefore expensive. High-school training is selective. The weak drop by the wayside. Boys unable to enter high school for economic reasons may have more real aptitude for the chemical industry than those who do. No real conclusions can be drawn from Question C without checking the replies against state requirements. The age of eighteen is in line with the average age of the highschool graduate. One in two now attends high school on account of the economic and social situation. Many of these should be working who are now being "exposed" to formal training procedures developed for other purposes. Should the high-school course be changed to
meet the requirements of iudustry for high-school graduates? There is no proof that the mental training of the high school can be transferred to other fields of training. A survey of workers of less than college grade would lead to valueless, biased results, since they represent a selected group and their replies would be based upon too narrow a premise. Training in chemistry for boys unable to attend college or technical school should he provided. The chemical iudustry contributes its large share to the $23,768,000 per annum Smith-Hughes and George-Deen Law appropriations and the states match this money dollar for dollar, a t least. The chemical iudustry should secure better trained juniors in return for its taxes. The live wires among them will continue their training and work for associate engineering degrees. The field has not been scratched. There is still work for the Committee to do. Conclusions and recommendations should be set forth. R. E. Bowman: Social and economic forces combine to raise the age a t which an entry into iudustry is made. The normal boy has had time to complete high school or junior college. This age is steadily rising as the output per man per hour increases. "The boy or girl under eighteen who works, keeps a man or woman out of a job." Only a war emergency will lower the age. How many candidates for plant work today will have only the "ability to read, write, and make rudimentary calculations" of which Mr. Matson speaks (3)? Today one rarely meets "alertness, carefulness, and conscientiousness" coupled with educational deficiencies. But boys of mental keenness will rarely be satisfied with routine jobs unless they have definite avocational activities. "If the worker can be shown why his own operation is important and what happens if wrongly performed, he will he a more efficient worker and more contented-not in the sense of being submissive about wages hut as a harmoniously functioning individual" (5): Well-informed employes avoid indushal risks (6). Teaching safety to an uninformed workman is not enough. The employe must have correct technical information. Companies like Westinghouse, which demand a growing employe and encourage his growth, are more liable to maintain high morale than those who do not. The avenues of instruction for advancement are fairly adequate for the ambitious boy with real scientific ardor. The "credit hound" soon betrays himself. A high-school graduate can better prepare himself by a nine-mouth intensive course for chemical employment than a grade-school boy in two or three years. The "new leisure" should provide for scientific as well as artistic and literary diversion. How many communities really provide for the assistance of the boy or young man with the cellar or attic laboratory (7)? The young technician, like the young engineer, should he well mounded in the fundamentals of mathematics and th; sciences (8). He should not only be technically efficient but should he acquainted with the
social and scientific basis of his work, he able to plan for himself, have an insight into the social hearings of his plans, and able to readjust himself to changing conditions. "The industries . . . have failed or are failing to educate their employees. . . to make the most of themselves. . . and the properties for which they work.". . . "There is a vast difference between carrying out the plans of others in one's immediate work and efficiencyin forming one's own plans with an insight into their social hearings.". . . "A vocational education is to be promoted. . . which utilizes the scientific and social factors of the present system to develop an intelligence that is courageous, practical, and executive" (5). The boy incapable of mastering the fundamentals of science and mathematics is poor material for employment in either plant or laboratory. The technical high school and the trade school hope to salvage handminded boys-half of them-who seek refuge from the academic schools. Chemistry is not an aristocratic science. Its patron saint is Faraday who began as a lab boy. There is real reason to believe that chemical companies may have a place for the non-college man (9) who comes in a t the bottom, that such men can still emerge, and that they should receive encouragement to do so. If the chemical engineers are concerned about their prospective students and graduates, some one must speak for those who serve in a humbler capacity and who lack funds or encouragement to get fnrther technical education except while they earn. One disagrees that ninety-nine out of a hundred plant employes must he doomed to hopeless mechanical drudgery. Such a philosophy coufuses man and the machine. The chemical industry cannot afford t o employ drudges or dull people who press the wrong button or close the correct valve a t the wrong time. There is a need to train and educate hightype boys for jobs on the middle level as well as the upper levels of industry. Let us then, as Dr. Rogers suggested, appeal to the Chemical and Process Industries : ( A ) To establish scholarships and fellowships for deserving employes much as the Salters Institute of London (10)establishes Grants-in-Aid up to twenty pounds per year "to young menand women, employed in the chemical works in or near London, who deserve to extend their knowledge for a career in Chemical Indnstry." The steady upgrading of each employe to his mental saturation point cannot fail to he of advantage to far-sighted chemical companies. (B) To secure the real cooperation of the large companies in providing facilities for such upgrading close a t hand. (C) To standardize correspondence and extension work so as to be of greater value to those too far away from major chemical centers to secure direct training from chemical institutes and night schools. (D) To secure closer relations between correspondence schools and existing night schools (the Benton Harbor plan) to aid ambi~ousernployes. (E) To cooperate in any such survey (11) as that
of the Chemical Engineers which will secure data conceming the technician as well as the graduate chemist or chemical engineer. The interests of the humbler workers should not be forgotten. The Division should empower this Committee to make such an appeal as Dr. Rogers suggested to the chemical and process industries or make it through the Council. The Committee should keep its organization ( a ) for guidance purposes and (b) to collect and publish comments from chemical firms and teachers. The careful consideration of the Division is requested, with action a t an early date, if possible. The addenda of the original report contained quotations from the Universal Oil Products pamphlet No. 98 and "Inspec(3) concerning "The l h n a n tion"; an Associated Press article from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of December 24, 1931, concerning scientific research by employed youth in Germany, quotations from the Bulletin of the Salters Institute of London concerning their objectives, the administration of their grants-in-aid and their advisory work; quotations from the Franklin Institute Bulletin (Boston) and entitled "From No Man's Land to "Values Derived from High School Ceramics" by the Arnold Bookheim,' giving aims and course of study in a high-school ceramics course. Character qualities, good work habits, ceramic information and interest are emphasized in this last. The Franklin Institute Report states from its survey that employers feel that the human material as it 1 BOOKHB~. BUU. ~ m Cn. . Soc., 13, 271 (1934).
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to them cannot grow unaided to meet the situation which continually confronts it in their plants. They feel that "to meet change" young workers must have "technical insight" and "wilbgness to take responsibility" and that there is a need for a supervising force of men who reason from cause to effect; who apply the principles of technology and science; who comprehend them and transmit them to skilled and non-skilled workmen; in short, who are the "class room teachers" for the entire force, and the corner stone of its morale. SOURCES OR DYNAMIC LEADERS
u ~ h e testswere designed to capacity for leadership. ~h~ A and B grades were set so as to include the highest sixteen per cent. of the entire population regardless of education or background. ~h~ number of men with college background who scored A or B on the test was determined and also the number who made the same score but who had never entered college. ~h~ ratios to the total number in each group ,,,then determined, " ~ we f apply the ratios thus determined to the population a t school, in the United States probably 60,000 young men of A and B grade entercollege each year, forty per cent. of those who enter college. It appears that the number of A and B grade boys who do noten. t, is about 140,000,thirteen per cent. of the entire group. The number is large because of the great size of the non-college group. Seventy per cent. of all A and B grade boys and young men are found in the non-college group." '
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOBRUN,J. CHBM.EDUC.,11, 54 (Jan., 1934). Editorial, "Hours, wages, and chemicals," Chem. Markets, 33. 207 2nd 415 1933). --- INov.. ~MATSON, "HOWto safeguard cracking operations from accident," Booklet No. 98, Universal Oil Products Co.. 310 South Michigan Avenue. (fhicago, Illinois. 1931, p. 31. "From no man's land to Leadership," Report of the Survey Committee of Franklin Union, JBoston, Massachusetts. 1931. (5) HORNB. "The democratic philosophy of education"; cornpanion to DEWBY'S"Democracy and the democratic philosophy of education"; The Macmillan Company, New York City, 1932, pp. 443 seq.
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(6) "Dangerous economizing," Chem. Met. Eng., 38, 561 (Oct., 1931). (7) PITKIN,"The art of learning," Whittlesey House, McGrawHill Book Co., Inc., New York City, 1931, 409 pp. (8) Psasen, "Educators groping for the stars," Harper's M agasine.. 168.237 (Tan.. 1934). (9) W A S H ~ ~"Men N , a i d cogs," ~nglewood.N. J.. 1933, 298 DO.: C,f . The Nnu York Timcs Book Reuicw. (10) Catalog of the Salters Institute, St. Swithins Lane, London, England (quoted in addenda). (11) Editorial, "From the economic side," Oil. Paint,Drug Reptr., 125, p. 1 (May 21, 1934). A.
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