Work Experience Education During World War II

Even before the beginning of World War II, due to the stepped-up production designed to support a program of national preparedness employment opportunities for youth became plentiful and attractive. Many high school students were dropping out of school as soon as the legal school-leaving age was reached. Some were dissatisfied with what the schools had to offer, and a number of younger pupils were looking forward to the time when they could leave school. At the same time, industrial, military, and civilian leaders were stressing the need for further education for all youth. School and industrial agencies recognized the ever increasing need of manpower for producing goods and services essential for the all-out war effort.

To forestall the early school-leaving tendency of young people and to yield at the same time to the patriotic appeal for war production workers, many principals rearranged school programs in order to free young workers for a half day of work each day and at the same time allow them to continue their high school education. Part-time school and work programs had been in operation in many schools under the Smith-Hughes and later Federal vocational education provisions. These programs, which by statutes were limited to a vocational objective, had been considered educationally sound. As the new work experience programs were established, they could not be promulgated as vocational programs, and as administrators, principals, teachers, and guidance workers gained experience with the programs they saw the work-study experience as a resource for the adjustment of individual students, and began to recognize in the new programs many general educational advantages in addition to vocational preparation. Under the structure of the National Vocational Education Acts, the Congress recognizing the importance of the public schools in a war emergency in 1940 approved a series of emergency acts beginning with Public Law 668 and Public Law 812, 66th Congress and a subsequent series of annual acts up to Public Law 124, 79th Congress. These were known as the Vocational Training for War Production Workers' Acts. Funds were granted to State boards for vocational education to cover the total cost of training war production workers for defense industries through the facilities of the public schools. Among the various preemployment courses financed under these acts were programs for the training for part-time employment of secondary school students in cooperating defense industries and in occupations declared to be essential to war production. As a result, work experience programs were initiated in almost all large cities. The critical manpower shortage made it posisble for schools to place a large number of students. Organizational patterns for the most part

called for students to work a half day and attend school a half day. The hasty introduction of extensive programs of school and work resulted in many forms of administration and operation. In some cities a central administrative agency made all contacts with employers and supervised all placements. This plan facilitated the operation of the program where students from several schools might work for the same employer. Supervision in some of the large cities was also a central agency function under which plan on-the-job supervision often became the responsibility of a person who was totally unacquainted with the student and who in many cases was not a member of the staff of the student's school.

A direct outcome of wartime work experience programs was the establishment in many cities of committees appointed to evaluate the wartime programs and to determine their future use in the local school systems.

Work Experience Education Since World War II

The peak wartime enrollment in work experience programs was reached in 1944. For example, in that year nearly 9,000 Los Angeles high school students were working 4 hours per day under school supervision during school-released time.10 In 1947 the number had been reduced to 4,327 students from 38 high schools working at 570 different kinds of jobs. In 1947 the research division of the National Education Association conducted a survey and located 140 schools in which more than 22,000 students were enrolled in work experience programs." This was about 10 percent of the total number of pupils enrolled in these schools. Only 22 percent of these programs were available to ninth-grade pupils. Specific enrollment data were reported for the following cities: Seattle had more than 400 enrolled in work experience programs; Hillsborough County, Fla., 119; Parkersburg, W. Va., 40; and Philadelphia, 1,200 students.

Brockmann's 12 study of 56 schools made in 1945 where work experience programs were in operation indicated that 41 percent were not federally aided and that coordinators were used in 82 percent of the schools. According to Schmaelzle 13 more than 1,000 students were participating in the "work experience for credit" program in San Francisco in 1943-44. In 1945, a careful evaluation of this educa

Harold J. Dillon. Work Experience in Secondary Education. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1946. P. 30.

10 American Association of School Administrators. The Expanding Role of Education. Washington: The Association, 26th Yearbook, 1948. P. 158.

u Ibid., pp. 164-169.

13 Louis O. Brockmann. Inauguration and Development of Cooperative Work Experience Education in Secondary Schools. Bulletin of the NASSP, 30: 39-60, January 1946.

13 Otto I. Schmaelzle. How a Work Experience Program Works. California Journal of Secondary Education, 24: 168-71, March 1949.

tional plan was completed. By 1948, the number of work experience students had dropped to about 370 in 8 senior high schools. In 1949, Margaret P. McIntosh 14 found that a major part of work experience in the same city was in sales jobs. Anderson 15 reported that 1,593 students from 36 high schools in the Los Angeles City school district were enrolled in work experience programs in the 1949-50 school year. The need for research in the field of work experience education was emphasized by Jessie Graham and Claude Owen 16 in a 1952 report concerned with 106 work experience programs in 65 secondary schools, all in the field of business education. The range of variations in practice is probably greatest in the field of business education. For example, the amount of time devoted to work experience in business education courses varied from 2 or 3 weeks to 2 semesters and the hours per week from 5 to 40. Wolfe" reported that 742 students were enrolled in Detroit cooperative work experience programs during the 1952-53 school year. Of these students from 7 high schools, 51 percent were in office training, 30 percent in industrial courses, and 19 percent were in retailing courses. Marie Martin 18 found in a 1954 study that 40 percent of Los Angeles pupils left school between the 9th and 12th grades. Work experience courses attracted from 2 to 13 percent of the pupils enrolled in the several city high schools. Grace Brennan,19 who directs all cooperative enrollments in the New York City schools, summarized the program in that city by saying that during the 1954-55 school year 4,000 students from 33 high schools worked for 350 participating firms. This program is vocational in purpose and has been in operation continuously since 1915. A report from the Michigan State Department of Public Instruction 20 showed that 8,595 trainees were enrolled in high school cooperative occupational training programs in that State in 1953-54. Of this number, 42.1 percent were in office occupations classes, 31.3 percent were in distributive occupations classes, and 26.6 percent were in trade and industrial cooperative programs.

14 Margaret Phidelia McIntosh.

The Work Experience Program in San Francisco High Schools. Doctoral Dissertation, Palo Alto, Calif.; Leland Standard University, 1949. 15 Stuart A. Anderson. The Case for Work Experience. The American Vocational Journal, 25: 7-8, December 1950.

16 Jessie Graham and Claude Owen. Report of UBEA Research Foundation Study on Work Experience in Business Education. National Business Education Quarterly, 21: 56-71. Spring 1953.

17 Charles J. Wolfe. A Study of Cooperative Work Experience Programs in the Detroit Public Schools. Doctoral Dissertation, Detroit: Wayne University, 1954.

18 Marie Young Martin. An Evaluation of the Work Experience Program in the Los Angeles City High Schools. Doctoral Dissertation, Los Angeles: The University of Southern California, 1954. 406 p.

19 Grace Brennan. Cooperative Education in New York City. Journal of the National Education Association, 44: 304-305, May 1955.

20 Michigan. 1953-54 Enrollment in Michigan Programs of Cooperative Occupational Training. Lansing: State Department of Public Instruction. A 1-page duplicated summary.

In Tyler's" study of work experience education in California in the 1954-55 school year, 149 of 166 schools where this program is offered reported 7,044 students enrolled in these courses. This number does not include vocational agriculture students.

Two mimeographed reports from New York State show that 1,489 pupils were enrolled during the 1954-55 school year in vocational industrial cooperative programs and that 6,328 students were in cooperative office skills and distributive education programs.

" Henry T. Tyler. Report of the Study of Work Experience Programs in California High Schools and Junior Colleges. Sacramento: The State Department of Education (Preliminary Edition), 1955. P. 40.

III. Types of Work Experience Programs

HERE ARE several types of schoolwork programs in operation in American secondary schools. In some schools, any physical activity which results in the production of goods or services is classified as work experience. However, a work experience education program should be planned cooperatively by representatives of the school and the community to achieve predetermined education goals.

A Six-Type Classification of Work Experience
Programs for Secondary Schools

Work experience programs can be classified in six categories or types. In each type, the work experience program is organized and operated under the following controls: (1) The students perform socially useful tasks; (2) the work is done during school-released time; (3) it is supervised by a school official; (4) credit toward high school graduation is given for the work; (5) the student may or may not receive remuneration for his work; (6) the coordinator or supervisor may (or should) meet the work experience pupils in a special class in which problems of job success are considered; (7) all local, State, and National labor laws and regulations pertaining to youth employment are known and observed; (8) care is taken by local administrators that no exploitation of student labor results from their employment. The six types of work experience programs are—

1. Inschool, Nonremunerative General Education Work Experience Programs.

2. Out-of-School, Nonremunerative General Education Work Experience Programs.

3. Remunerative General Education Work Experience Programs for Pupils in Junior High Schools (Grades 7, 8, and 9).

4. Remunerative General Education Work Experience Programs for Pupils in the High School (Grades 9 to 12 or 10 to 12).

5. Remunerative Vocational Work Experience Programs in High Schools, Not Subsidized from Federal Vocational Education Funds.

(a) Business education.

(b) Diversified occupations.

6. Remunerative Vocational Work Experience Programs in High Schools, Subsidized from Federal Vocational Education Funds.

(a) Trade and industrial education.

(b) Distributive occupations.

In each of these six types of formal work experience education programs, well-organized school guidance and placement services are essential to their successful operation. In the succeeding pages of