Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1914 — William B. Austin Talks on Vocational Education in Pasadena. [ARTICLE]

William B. Austin Talks on Vocational Education in Pasadena.

William B. Austin, of Chicago, formerly of this city, who is spending the winter months in California and the Hawaiian Islands, was called before the Woman’s Civic League of Pasadena last week to, explain what Chicago is doing along vocational educational lines. The meeting was held at the Maryland Hotel and was attended by 150 ladies. Mrs. O. Shepard Barnuim, a member of the California board of education, was the principal speaker, and she said it was a pity that in the great state of California a child had to he either feeble minded or commit some act that placed him in a correctional! 1 institution in-order to learn a trade.

Mr. Austin told of the great strides made in vocational education in Chicago where Ella Flagg Young is the superintendent. He made a man’s appeal for boys who are entitled, he said, to receive such education and training as will set them right for the practical trades they desire to adopt instead of letting them drift through an attempted classical course for which they have no liking. Mr. Austin said that Chicago was only in the first stages of vocational education but that the beginning was working a great advantage to the community. He said that he believed there should be a national system for such education and this created considerable applause and Mrs. Robert J. Burdette, who presided at the meeting, said, “our people will be pretty good folks when we have uniform vocational education and uniform divorce laws.” A note from Mr. Austin under date of Jan. 11th says: ‘This is a wonderful country > nd climate, the sun is shining brightly today and the temperature in the shade is 83. It may please you to know that the first two days of registration in this country the republicans were four to one over the progressives and five to one over the democrats.”