In High

"Vacation" this summer was not going to be much of a vacation in the nation's 23,000 high schools.

Vocational schools, many of them already on a year-round, 24-hour basis, are planning summer sessions, often with four daily six-hour shifts. Although "regular" high schools anticipate no great summer expansion, most are enrolling boys & girls for farm and factory work. The U.S. Office of Education Wartime Commission has asked the schools to offer training courses "tailored to the needs of the armed forces and of war production," recommending, as vacation jobs, programs for salvage and conservation, war-bond sales, defense information, nursery schools, community entertainment for service men, housing, canning. News of the nation's high schools last week:

New York City has asked its 35,000 teachers and other school employes to forfeit two weeks of their vacation, plans to use them in rotation (five groups) to teach civilian-defense precautions. One-fifth of the personnel will thus be on hand at all times, and all are to remain within 24-hour traveling distance of the city. Detroit, where most of the big motor plants have training programs of their own, also has its high schools teaching defense jobs round the clock. To qualify as factory inspectors during the summer, 325 teachers are studying shop processes.

Detroit's projected twelve-hour schools for children from three to 16 is a revolutionary move that goes to the roots of that city's big problem--housing. Detroit can't build enough soon enough to shelter labor imported from outside, proposes to draw more of Detroit's present residents--especially women--into factory work. "We found that we could get four times as many women to go into factories by taking care of school-age children as we could by taking care of pre-school chil-dren," said Miss Irene Murphy (sister of Justice Frank Murphy), secretary for the city's Committee on the Day Care of Children. "Moreover, one teacher can look after 30 school-age children while she could look after only ten pre-school children. That is important in view of the growing shortage of teachers."

Georgia has its rural high schools operating 376 canning plants on a twelve-month basis, to produce ten million cans of fruits & vegetables this year.

San Francisco has so stepped up its school program that students will graduate an estimated six months or a year ahead of time. Ship fitting is this city's vocational specialty, with many shop foremen teaching for the regular rate of $2.40 an hour.

Chicago has ten vocational schools working day & night. The biggest, recently completed, has been turned over to the Navy, will train 3,000 seamen at a time to become teachers of metalsmiths. Lane and Tilden Technical High Schools plan to offer glider courses.

San Antonio still calls it "Defense Training," but its summer schools are way out on the offensive front. Operating in the well-equipped vocational shops of the high schools, defense teachers offer 25 special classes to 500 students, plus 180 guests from the Signal Corps. The Vocational & Technical School is introducing classes in food handling, industrial hygiene, maid and waitress training, to help out with the influx of Army men, the acute shortage of servants drained off by war jobs. It also has night-school classes for 500-odd San Antonio firemen and policemen.

Los Angeles is planning "conversion training" for teachers whose specialties are no longer in demand, preparing them to teach aeronautics, drafting, science, in place of the liberal arts.

Still in the future, but visualized as a war and post-war feature of every high-school curriculum is special emphasis upon aviation. Voluntary preflight courses are planned for all New York City high schools next fall.

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