Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS IN TESTING AND TRAIN- ING FOR PROFICIENCY AND PROMISE IN THE TRADES Some of the observations made on the trades, on tradesmen and on trade practices, during the assembly and standardization of ninety army oral trade tests may be of value to anyone who would compare army methods of testing trade proficiency with school methods. The army tests were standardized on men in industry so that the following remarks apply to men in industry and not to soldiers. Vocational schools may not have been "successful" in the past owing to the fact that they were not, in spite of their claims, aiming to train workers of the kind which they claimed to be training. The vocational schools have claimed to be training tradesmen; they really were attempting to train foremen. Industry has been looking to the trade schools for tradesmen, and necessarily has been disappointed in some cases. A tradesman's training in industry is intellectually narrow in comparison with the training which the average vocational school would give him. We have already mentioned the specialization which is entering practically all industries and all trades. Trades are being split up into jobs, and jobs into operations, in order that inexperienced and unintelligent persons can quickly become competent and productive, and in order to obtain the profit accruing to the increased production made practicable by a person's being allowed to become highly skilled in one simple operation. No longer does the typical tradesman have to do much figuring for himself. He is "sent out on a job," the standard time for doing which has often been figured out in advance. On the job, a foreman directs his work at every step. If his tools get dull, he hands them in many cases to a toolgrinder; if his belt...Detailed info »« Brief info