Maple Avenue Evening High School - Progress Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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Adult Schools Responsive To the Needs of the People From report of the California Commissioner of Industrial and Vocational Education for the biennial period ending June 30, 1922: In general, the school authorities do not attempt to decide beforehand, and finally, just what subjects will be offered, and just what the exact content of these subjects will be. In this type of school and class, such matters are usually decided by the students themselves after advising with school authorities. If they were otherwise decided, no one would attend the classes. After a school has once established one or more adult classes it usually adopts the policy of providing instruction in any subject, if a certain number of persons desire the same. The local school district must bear the entire expense of maintaining such instruction during the current school year. However, during the fol- lowing year it is partly or fully reimbursed by state or county for the cost of such instruction. Thus, any expansion of the program for adult education must depend upon the balance of local funds that may be legiti- mately applied to the work. As a matter of fact, few, if any, high school districts of the state have been able to meet all of the legitimate demands made for adult classes. Subject to financial limitations, some of the high schools have adopted the policy of setting up, at any time and for any period, instruction in any subject desired by at least fifteen residents of the district qualified for the work. These schools also follow the policy of discontinuing any class maintained, if the number of persons belonging to it falls below the num- ber mentioned above. s Without doubt, one of the greatest factors leading to the rapid devel- opment of adult education has been the policy of consulting the wishes of the prospective students as to the type of work to be maintained. Yield- Page Eighty-one

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For face lotions and cosmentics ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,--,,,,,,,,, 750,000,000 F 01' public elementary schools .... ...............,.....................,.....,.. 7 62,259,154 There are in operation at the present time in Los Angeles 181 regular elementary schools, 14 parental schools, and 27 junior and senior high schools, including the Part-Time High School. There are many more in process of construction. Interesting facts indicating the size of the Los Angeles City Schools as a business institution show that: It takes thirty clerks and stock men to handle school supplies, hard- ware and electrical repair material. Fifty men are kept busy refinishing desks, building supply cabinets and tables, kindergarten tables, playground apparatus, basketball courts, painting and finishing. There is a clock man to take care of school clocks, a head key man and two assistants to take care of locks. The warehouse and business department covers 41,000 square feet, in a five floor and basement building. The shop department employs one head and four foremen, with three hundred men of different trades in general work, repairs and improvements. All education is coordination and correlation of related qualities. Training and Life are equivalent terms. When both producers and consumers can join in insisting that the problem of life training is neither a question of how to produce the great- est number of an article at a minimum cost or of how to obtain it at the lowest price, but rather of how to so base our production upon brains, that quality shall count for more than cost or quantity, then we shall have made a beginning.-The College President. A man educated in the modern sense will forego the somewhat doubt- ful mental discipline received from formal studiesg he will be contentedly ignorant of things for learning which no better reason than tradition can be assigned. Instead his education will be obtained from studies that serve real purposes. Its content, spirit and aim will be realistic and ge- nuine, not formal or traditional . Abraham Flexner. Page Eighty ,

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ing to the demand of the students has, in vocational lines, been equivalent to yielding to the educational demands of the craft. This, and the modi- fication of the methods of instruction in language, for adult immigrants, has established a confidence on the part of the public that the schools can, and actually will, provide instruction that can be fully applied to a solution of every day problems. Adult Education meets the Demands of Life Less than a generation ago the school and education were looked upon as something apart from the common affairs of life. At that time the adult would not have thought of turning to his local public school for help in securing instruction relative to his occupation. Today he turns to it with full confidence that he can secure the help needed in better qualify- ing himself as a citizen worker. Relative Values of Subjects of Instruction in Adult Schools Part ll of Statistical Table XXVII shows that an average of 20 per cent of the persons attending the adult classes and schools had no special aim in mind other than a desire to satisfy the inner urge for more school- ing. If funds are available for the purpose, the local school is justified in maintainning instruction for such persons. If, on the other hand, the funds of the district are limited to the extent that the opporunities for adults to secure further education must be curtailed, then this group of persons should be the first to be refused service . The subjects of instruction that may be maintained by adult schools and classes are not of equal importance. All will agree that illiteracy is intolerable on the part of either an American or a foreign born person. Therefore, Whether or not opportunity is offered to adults to secure instruc- tion in other subjects, every high school district in the state ought to pro- vide the instruction necessary to completely eliminate, within its confines, illiteracy. Most persons will also agree that the employed adult who finds himself handicapped because of a lack of knowledge of the English, mathematics, science, and drawing necessary to enable him to advance in his chosen occupation, should be given an opportunity to remove these deficiencies. Likewise, any resident of the community who feels that further schooling would better qualify him as a homemaker and citizen of the community, the state, and the nation, should be given an opportunity for further study. Page Eighty-two