It is to be hoped that more effective coöperation between the Bureau and the schools can be established and that plans for a placement bureau for boys similar in method and aim to the Girls' Bureau may be realized. The matter of placement is the most difficult part of the vocational counselor's duties, and an arrangement whereby the vocational guidance departments of the various schools might serve as feeders to a central placement bureau would probably in the long run give the best results. Both guidance and placement are new things in the public schools and efficient methods of administration can be worked out only through trial and experiment.
1. The future occupations of the children in school will correspond very closely to those of the native-born adult population. The occupational distribution of the city's working population therefore constitutes the best guide as to the kinds of industrial training which can be undertaken profitably by the school system.
2. Industrial training in school has to do chiefly with preparation for work in the skilled trades. Training for semi-skilled occupations can be given more effectively and cheaply in the factories than in the schools.
3. As a rule, industrial training is not practicable in elementary schools, for the reason that the number of boys in the average elementary school who are likely to enter the skilled trades and who are also old enough to profit by industrial training is too small to permit the organization of classes.
4. The most important contribution to vocational education the elementary schools can make consists in getting the children through the course fast enough so that two or three years before the end of the compulsory attendance period they will enter an intermediate or vocational school where some kind of industrial training is possible.
5. The survey recommends the establishment of a general industrial course in the junior high school, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes. The course should also include the study of economic and working conditions in the principal industrial occupations.
6. One or two vocational schools equipped to offer specialized trade training for boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are needed. At present a gap of from one to two years exists between the end of the compulsory attendance period and the entrance age in practically all the skilled trades, which could well be employed in direct preparation for trade work. Such schools would relieve the first and second year classes of the technical high schools of many pupils these schools do not want and cannot adequately provide for. General as well as special courses should be offered, although pupils should be encouraged to select a particular occupation and devote at least one year to intensive preparation for it.