The meaning of specialization [editorial]

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EDITORIAL. THE MEANING OF SPECIALIZATION. Someone has defined an educated man as one who knows some thing about everything and everything about something. An application of this definition to the industrial work of the schools would indicate that the best-trained students are those who know how to do a number of things but who can do exceptionally well certain things for which they are best adapted by personal inclination, local conditions, abundance of material, and the like lihood of their being able to follow the work in the future. When the energies of a group of individuals, so trained, are being directed along definite lines for the production of certain objects there exists a good illustration of what is meant by the term specialization. Today in every phase of human enterprise, and more espe cially in the industrial world, there is a growing tendency to specialize, and men who are experts along any line are in demand. The great manufacturing concerns have learned that a man who can do one thing well is worth more to them than a number of men who can do many things poorly. These concerns are specializing because specialization leads to efficiency and to increased produc tion at a minimum cost. If the industrial work of the schools is to be a success, spe cialization is just as necessary there as in the work of any great manufacturing concern; but while the purpose of specialization in school industrial work is also a maximum production at a minimum cost, there are the additional considerations of the welfare of the producer, who in this instance is the child, and of the economic welfare of the Islands which is a consideration of no mean importance. In fact, the welfare of the child and the economic welfare of the country must give precedence to any temporary consideration of production or of cost, moreover, when the child is taught to produce a large number of articles with the least expenditure of effort he is benefited in that his producing capacity and his economic value to the country have been increased. This increase in producing capacity must not be purchased, however, at the cost of his mental development along general lines. 224

Date

1916

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

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