Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place.....Academic Trade School (Jordan) 
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 April 23, 2007, 11:04 pm

Source:             Special Sesquicentennial Supplement II Columber Ledger -Enquirer
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                   Vocational Training Began Here

                           By Ken E1ldns
                        Ledger Staff Writer

  It's taking state schoof offtcials almost a century to realize what Columbus 
pUblic school fathers knew back in 1906: School children need to be trained in 
a vocation.
  A thriving textile town at the turn of the century, Columbus needed a school 
to train its youngsters in the arts of weaving, spining and dyeing. At a time 
that when cotton, in the form of fabric, was still king, "on the job" training 
Was becoming scarce and expensive. The mills that ruled over the eastern bank 
of the Chattahoochee River needed trained artisans.
  Columbus Industrial School, "an academic trade school of high school rank," 
produced those skilled workmen and women 70 years ago.
  Now Jordan Vocational High, the school was the  first public school in the 
world to offer vocational education.
  Today, after state officials discovered the importance of a vocationally 
trained graduate, guidelines mandate every high school should include 
facilities for such training - an idea pioneered right here in Columbus, Ga.
  The 28-student premiere class at Columbus Industrial took part in a "great 
educational experiment," lauded one of 1906's education leaders. Dr. James E. 
Russell, dean of Teacher's College in New York, dubbed the school "the first of 
its kind in all our history dedicated to the proposition that the common man, 
as well as his more fortunate brother, is entitled to a vocational education. " 
  But the school wasn't for "feeble-minded or indolent students," a newspaper 
article proclaimed. Instead, it was to be used in "fitting boys and girls for 
useful occupations." So, for decades, crop after crop of teen-agers were 
drilled in the fine arts of textiles, woodworking, metalurgy, home economics 
and office skills. Eight hours a day, six days a week, 11 months of the year, 
the students mixed a liberal dose of vocational training with the usual dose of 
academics.
  There, youngsters over 14 years old with at least a fifth grade education 
could get the "hands on" experience needed to find a job in the city's textile 
plants.
  Noted philanthropist George Foster Peabody acknowledged the value of the 
experiment with a $10,000 donation that helped build the school - then located 
off Hamilton Road on Rose Hill.
  After a morning of academics, the students would switch to training in 
industrial skills.
  Today, Jordan Vocational High School, in newer quarters on Howard Avenue, 
retains that principle.  
And the city's remaining five high schools, plus the two new ones that'll open 
this fall, will soon  include courses in the vocations - academics mixed with 
the fundamentals of woodworking, mechanics and other skills


Special Sesquicentennial Supplement II
Ledger- Enquirer, Sunday, April 23, 1978. S-24.



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