Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/831

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MANUAL TRAINING.
811
Students (brought forward) 38
Technical positions: Electricity 12
Architectural draughting 6
Machine work 5
Pattern-making 3
Draughting 3
Iron inspection 2
Surveying 1
Engineering 1
Steel engraving 1
Wharf-building 1 —35
Reporters 2
Farmer 1
Collector 1
In business for themselves 4
In business with father 5
Mercantile positions 19
Without occupation, or occupation unknown 7
Dead 1
Total 112


The first thing to strike one about this list is the large number of boys who continue their education in higher institutions. One third of this particular company of graduates are now at work in the several departments of the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Drexel Institute, and in other medical, art, theological, and trade schools. The percentage is, I believe, considerably lower than in the four-year classical high schools of New England; but taking all the high schools throughout the country, and the percentage is much above the average. The result is gratifying, for it shows at least that the school has cultivated an appreciation of wisdom if it has not always succeeded in imparting it. Several factors have combined in turning the faces of so many boys toward college. In the first place, a manual-training school is a very practical school, and it does teach and illustrate the fact that if one wants to do good work one must learn how. Many of these boys have a distinct purpose in life, and they are at college in order to prepare themselves for carrying it out. Further, it so happens that a majority of the faculty are college-bred men, and have a sympathetic appreciation of college advantages. We have indeed made a special effort in this direction, and have tried to turn the most promising of our material collegeward, for we do feel that between the man who goes to college and the man who does not there is a difference of mental outlook which makes them the inhabitants of different worlds—a larger and a smaller universe. These influences within the school have been greatly strengthened by the friendly attitude of our university—an attitude constantly manifesting itself in cordial generosity and sympathy.