Hammond Technical Vocational High School - Chart Yearbook (Hammond, IN)

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FRED S. BARROWS Founder and Director of Our School Page Five

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FRED V. HKIilCt.OV, ' RICHARD O. ARXER ' ifloft r y ( ) ( en • it DR. CLARENCE E. McVEY, Pres. LEE L. CALDWELL Superintendent of Sellouts Pape Four

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VOCATIONAL EDUCATION T HERE is a saying that a democ- racy without education is dynamite in the hands of a child, and that saying is the truth, but it is also true that the type of education which was considered when this statement was made, is not the type of education which meets the needs of all of the children of all of the people at the present time. Educa- tion today must be something more than the learning of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the heads of your edu- cational system here in Hammond have long recognized the fact that not all chil- dren are academically minded. On the contrary, more than half of the children are motor-minded and the form of school training which appeals to one class has no appeal to the other. Now what do we mean by a motor- minded boy or girl. It is easier to answer that question with reference to boys. If your boy is training with a definite pro- fession in mind, and plans eventually to go to college, then your boy can be classed as academically minded, and the academic high school is the proper place for his training. But if he is the type of a boy who likes to go into the base- ment and use his hands as well as his head in making a radio set, or if he goes to the garage and spends his spare time working on the car — if he shows little interest in English, or Grammar, or His- tory, then undoubtedly yours is a motor- minded boy, and it was for his ltenefit that the Hammond Technical- Vocational School was organized. This school was started fifteen years ago and its development directed along lines which would make it of the great- est benefit to those children who could not profit by an academic education. It? has grown from a school of one teacher and one pupil housed in a garret room to a school of a thousand pupils and forty-four teachers, and it has entirely outgrown its present quarters, which in- clude nineteen shops and sixteen class rooms. I find that many people do not know what Vocational Education really is. Some of them think it is a development of the old style manual training depart- ments, a work shop in which pupils spend a few periods of the day in order to gain some knowledge of the use of tools or equipment which will better fit them for work around the home. But I can assure you tliat Vocational Education has noth- ing to do with manual training. Some others think of it as a Trade School where boys are trained to be machinists, car- penters, and electricians, and the girls trained as stenographers, typists, or in cooking and sewing, and undoubtedly they were correct five or ten years ago, but they are wrong with reference to the Hammond Technical - Vocational plan. Those in charge of your school system know that a strictly trade school is not needed, that it is useless to train for trades which are already vastly over- crowded. Then what is Vocational Education today as practiced at Hammond Tech? It has as its objective — the making of dependable men and women from the hoys and girls who enter it at fourteen. It recognized the fact that most of these bovs and girls have come with a definite interest in some trade that requires the training of the hands in making, as well as the mind in thinking. It is a well- Pape Six