A Tribute to the Visionaries, Prime Movers and Pioneers of Vocational Education, 1892 to 1917

As the 19th century drew to its close, the U.S. was behind the Europeans so far as training programs that would give adequate under girding to the advances taking place in the industrial world. Manual training and apprenticeship programs were inadequate. A new concept and approaches were needed to meet the demands of manufacturing. The concept of vocational education then emerged. The visionaries of vocational education sensed that the American public school was the place to develop this new approach. This manuscript recalls the early history of how vocational education became a link in America's education and pays tribute to the pioneers whose vision and work led to the phenomenon that buttress the American economy. Hopefully, this recall will encourage its readers to honor these pioneers as significant contributors of the 20th century as the close of the millennium is celebrated.

It is not the intention of this paper to minimize in any way the great industrial and technical advances this nation made and was making as the 19th century drew to its close. However, the rapid changes into an industrial-type society called for a different approach for use in training more of the population in a setting corresponding to these advances. Manual training brought the nation as far as the beginning of vocational education in the United States, but it did not sufficiently under gird the factory system so that it could stem the tide of the industrial advances. The Depression of 1892-93 revealed that the factory system needed a more functional approach for preparing workers for the developing technological society. It is to pay tribute to the people who caught the vision of what vocational education was to contribute to this nation that this paper is dedicated.

As the 20th century draws to its close, educators and students of vocational education are encouraged to pay tribute to those individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions whose efforts contributed in laying the foundation on which future vocational education/technology can advance into the 21st century. It would do us well to honor them for their efforts as we celebrate the close of the millennium.

The material presented here is intended to serve as a recall for educators and students of vocational education, but it will also serve to inform other readers of the place vocational education and the pioneers, who made it possible, hold in American education. A recall of how vocational education became a part of the curriculum of the public secondary schools reveals how these visionaries of the 19th and early 20th centuries rightly viewed the impact vocational education was to have on the economic development of this nation. Credit is given to the pioneers for the initial efforts, which developed into what is now vocational education in the United States. The work of John D. Runkle and Calvin M. Woodward, with their development of the Della Vos' method as a manual training program, has been documented by Bennett (1926) and Lannie (1967) .