Historically, in point of derivation and early growth, this movement for vocational training is closely related to the American system of "electives" in college instruction, if it may not rather be said to be a direct outgrowth of that pedagogical expedient.(1*) It dates back approximately to the same period for its beginnings, and much of the arguments adduced in its favour are substantially the same as have been found convincing for the system of electives. Under the elective system a considerable and increasing freedom has been allowed the student in the choice of what he will include in his curriculum; so that the colleges have in this way come to refer the choice of topics in good part to the guidance of the student's own interest. To meet the resulting range and diversity of demands, an increasing variety of courses has been offered, at the same time that a narrower specialization has also taken effect in much of the instruction offered. Among the other leadings of interest among students, and affecting their choice of electives, has also been the laudable practical interest that these young men take in their own prospective material success.(2*) So that this -- academically speaking, extraneous -- interest has come to mingle and take rank with the scholarly interests proper in shaping the schedule of instruction. A decisive voice in the ordering of the affairs of the higher learning has so been given to the novices, or rather to the untutored probationers of the undergraduate schools, whose entrance on a career of scholarship is yet a matter of speculative probability at the best.
Those who have spoken for an extensive range of electives have in a very appreciable measure made use of that expedient as a means of displacing what they have regarded as obsolete or dispensable items in the traditional college curriculum. In so advocating a wider range and freedom of choice, they have spoken for the new courses of instruction as being equally competent with the old in point of discipline and cultural value; and they have commonly not omitted to claim -- somewhat in the way of an obiter dictum, perhaps -- that these newer and more vital topics, whose claims they advocate, have also the peculiar merit of conducing in a special degree to good citizenship and the material welfare of the community. Such a line of argument has found immediate response among those pragmatic spirits within whose horizon "value" is synonymous with "pecuniary value," and to whom good citizenship means proficiency in competitive business. So it has come about that, while the initial purpose of the elective system appears to have been the sharpening of the students' scholarly interests and the cultivation of a more liberal scholarship, it has by force of circumstances served to propagate a movement at cross purposes with all scholarly aspiration.
All this advocacy of the practical in education has fallen in with the aspirations of such young men as are eager to find gratuitous help toward a gainful career, as well as with the desires of parents who are anxious to see their sons equipped for material success; and not least has it appealed to the sensibilities of those substantial citizens who are already established in business and feel the need of a free supply of trained subordinates at reasonable wages. The last mentioned is the more substantial of these incentives to gratuitous vocational training, coming in, as it does, with the endorsement of the community's most respected and most influential men. Whether it is training in any of the various lines of engineering, in commerce, in journalism, or in the mechanic and manual trades, the output of trained men from these vocational schools goes, in the main, to supply trained employees for concerns already profitably established in such lines of business as find use for this class of men; and through the gratuitous, or half gratuitous, opportunities offered by these schools, this needed supply of trained employees comes to the business concerns in question at a rate of wages lower than what they would have to pay in the absence of such gratuitous instruction.
Not that these substantial citizens, whose word counts for so much in commendation of practical education, need be greatly moved by selfish consideration of this increased ease in procuring skilled labour for use in their own pursuit of gain;but the increased and cheaper supply of such skilled workmen is "good for business," and, in the common sense estimation of these conservative businessmen, what is good for business is good, without reservation. What is good for business is felt to be serviceable for the common good; and no closer scrutiny is commonly given to that matter. While any closer scrutiny would doubtless throw serious doubt on this general proposition, such scrutiny can not but be distasteful to the successful businessmen; since it would unavoidably also throw a shadow of doubt on the meritoriousness of that business traffic in which they have achieved their success and to which they owe their preferential standing in the community.
