In a few school districts one finds a link between school and job.
In those vocational programs organized with Smith-Hughes money, there may be a close tie between the labor union and a local employer on the one hand and the vocational teacher on the other.
In these cases a graduate may enter directly into an apprentice program, saving a year because of his vocational courses in grades 11 and 12.
The apprentice program will involve further education on a part-time basis, usually at night, perhaps using some of the same equipment of the high school.
These opportunities are to be found in certain cities in such crafts as auto mechanics, carpentry, drafting, electrical work, tool-and-die work, and sheet-metal work.

Formally organized vocational programs supported by federal funds allow high school students to gain experience in a field of work which is likely to lead to a full-time job on graduation.
The "diversified occupations" program is a part-time trade-preparatory program conducted over two school years on a cooperative basis between the school and local industrial and business employers.
The "distributive education" program operates in a similar way, with arrangements between the school and employers in merchandising fields.
In both cases the student attends school half-time and works in a regular job the other half.
He receives remuneration for his work.
In a few places cooperative programs between schools and employers in clerical work have shown the same possibilities for allowing the student, while still in school, to develop skills which are immediately marketable upon graduation.

Adult education courses, work-study programs of various sorts -- these are all evidence of a continuing interest of the schools in furthering educational opportunities for out-of-school youth.
In general, however, it may be said that when a boy or a girl leaves the high school, the school authorities play little or no part in the decision of what happens next.
If the student drops out of high school, the break with the school is even more complete.
When there is employment opportunity for youth, this arrangement -- or lack of arrangement -- works out quite well.
Indeed, in some periods of our history and in some neighborhoods the job opportunities have been so good that undoubtedly a great many boys who were potential members of the professions quit school at an early age and went to work.
Statistically this has represented a loss to the nation, although one must admit that in an individual case the decision in retrospect may have been a wise one.
I make no attempt to measure the enduring satisfaction and material well-being of a man who went to work on graduation from high school and was highly successful in the business which he entered.
He may or may not be "better off" than his classmate who went on to a college and professional school.
But in the next decades the nation needs to educate for the professions all the potential professional talent.

In a later chapter dealing with the suburban school, I shall discuss the importance of arranging a program for the academically talented and highly gifted youth in any high school where he is found.
In the Negro neighborhoods and also to some extent in the mixed neighborhoods the problem may be one of identification and motivation.
High motivation towards higher education must start early enough so that by the time the boy or girl reaches grade 9 he or she has at least developed those basic skills which are essential for academic work.
Undoubtedly far more can be done in the lower grades in this regard in the Negro schools.
However, the teacher can only go so far if the attitude of the community and the family is anti-intellectual.
And the fact remains that there are today few shining examples of Negroes in positions of intellectual leadership.
This is not due to any policy of discrimination on the part of the Northern universities.
Quite the contrary, as I can testify from personal experience as a former university president.
Rather we see here another vicious circle.
The absence of successful Negroes in the world of scholarship and science has tended to tamp down enthusiasm among Negro youth for academic careers.
I believe the situation is improving, but the success stories need to be heavily publicized.
Here again we run into the roadblock that Negroes do not like to be designated as Negroes in the press.
How can the vicious circle be broken?
This is a problem to which leaders of opinion, both Negro and white, should devote far more attention.
It is at least as important as the more dramatic attempts to break down barriers of inequality in the South.

Vocational education

I should like to underline four points I made in my first report with respect to vocational education.
First and foremost, vocational courses should not replace courses which are essential parts of the required academic program for graduation.
Second, vocational courses should be provided in grades 11 and 12 and not require more than half the student's time in those years;
however, for slow learners and prospective dropouts these courses ought to begin earlier.
Third, the significance of the vocational courses is that those enrolled are keenly interested in the work;
they realize the relevance of what they are learning to their future careers, and this sense of purpose is carried over to the academic courses which they are studying at the same time.
Fourth, the type of vocational training programs should be related to the employment opportunities in the general locality.
This last point is important because if high school pupils are aware that few, if any, graduates who have chosen a certain vocational program have obtained a job as a consequence of the training, the whole idea of relevance disappears.
Vocational training which holds no hope that the skill developed will be in fact a marketable skill becomes just another school "chore" for those whose interest in their studies has begun to falter.
Those who, because of population mobility and the reputed desire of employers to train their own employees, would limit vocational education to general rather than specific skills ought to bear in mind the importance of motivation in any kind of school experience.

I have been using the word "vocational" as a layman would at first sight think it should be used.
I intend to include under the term all the practical courses open to boys and girls.
These courses develop skills other than those we think of when we use the adjective "academic".
Practically all of these practical skills are of such a nature that a degree of mastery can be obtained in high school sufficient to enable the youth to get a job at once on the basis of the skill.
They are in this sense skills marketable immediately on graduation from high school.
To be sure, in tool-and-die work and in the building trades, the first job must be often on an apprentice basis, but two years of half-time vocational training enables the young man thus to anticipate one year of apprentice status.
Similarly, a girl who graduates with a good working knowledge of stenography and the use of clerical machines and who is able to get a job at once may wish to improve her skill and knowledge by a year or two of further study in a community college or secretarial school.
Of course, it can be argued that an ability to write English correctly and with some degree of elegance is a marketable skill.
So, too, is the mathematical competence of a college graduate who has majored in mathematics.
In a sense almost all high school and college courses could be considered as vocational to the extent that later in life the student in his vocation (which may be a profession) will be called upon to use some of the skills developed and the competence obtained.
In spite of the shading of one type of course into another, I believe it is useful to talk about vocational courses as apart from academic courses.
Perhaps a course in typewriting might be regarded as the exception which proves the rule.
Today many college bound students try to take a course in personal typing, as they feel a certain degree of mastery of this skill is almost essential for one who proposes to do academic work in college and a professional school.

Most of our largest cities have one or more separate vocational or technical high schools.
In this respect, public education in the large cities differs from education in the smaller cities and consolidated school districts.
The neighborhood high schools are not, strictly speaking, comprehensive schools, because some of the boys and girls may be attending a vocational or technical high school instead of the local school.
Indeed, one school superintendent in a large city objects to the use of the term comprehensive high school for the senior high schools in his city, because these schools do not offer strictly vocational programs.
He prefers to designate such schools as "general" high schools.
The suburban high school, it is worth noting, also is not a widely comprehensive high school because of the absence of vocational programs.
The reason is that there is a lack of interest on the part of the community.
Therefore employment and education in all the schools in a metropolitan area are related in different ways from those which are characteristic of the comprehensive high school described in my first report.

The separate vocational or technical high schools in the large cities must be reckoned as permanent institutions.
By and large their programs are satisfactorily connected both to the employment situation and to the realities of the apprentice system.
It is not often realized to what degree certain trades are in many communities closed areas of employment, except for a lucky few.
One has to talk confidentially with some of the directors of vocational high schools to realize that a boy cannot just say, "I want to be a plumber", and then, by doing good work, find a job.
It is far more difficult in many communities to obtain admission to an apprentice program which involves union approval than to get into the most selective medical school in the nation.
Two stories will illustrate what I have in mind.
One vocational instructor in a city vocational school, speaking of his course in a certain field, said he had no difficulty placing all students in jobs outside of the city.
In the city, he said, the waiting list for those who want to join the union is so long that unless a boy has an inside track he can't get in.
In a far distant part of the United States, I was talking to an instructor about a boy who in the twelfth grade was doing special work.
"What does he have in mind to do when he graduates"?
"Oh, he'll be a plumber", came the answer.
"But isn't it almost impossible to get into the union"?
I asked.
"He'll have no difficulty", I was told.
"He has very good connections".

In my view, there should be a school which offers significant vocational programs for boys within easy reach of every family in a city.
Ideally these schools should be so located that one or more should be in the area where demand for practical courses is at the highest.

An excellent example of a successful location of a new vocational high school is the Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago.
Located in a bad slum area now undergoing redevelopment, this school and its program are especially tailored to the vocational aims of its students.
Hardly a window has been broken since Dunbar first was opened (and vandalism in schools is a major problem in many slum areas).
I discovered in the course of a visit there that almost all the pupils were Negroes.
They were learning trades as diverse as shoe repairing, bricklaying, carpentry, cabinet making, auto mechanics, and airplane mechanics.
The physical facilities at Dunbar are impressive, but more impressive is the attitude of the pupils.