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I have been using the word `` vocational '' as a layman would at first sight think it should be used.

I intend to include under the term all the practical courses open to boys and girls.

These courses develop skills other than those we think of when we use the adjective `` academic ''.

Practically all of these practical skills are of such a nature that a degree of mastery can be obtained in high school sufficient to enable the youth to get a job at once on the basis of the skill.

They are in this sense skills marketable immediately on graduation from high school.

To be sure, in tool-and-die work and in the building trades, the first job must be often on an apprentice basis, but two years of half-time vocational training enables the young man thus to anticipate one year of apprentice status.

Similarly, a girl who graduates with a good working knowledge of stenography and the use of clerical machines and who is able to get a job at once may wish to improve her skill and knowledge by a year or two of further study in a community college or secretarial school.

Of course, it can be argued that an ability to write English correctly and with some degree of elegance is a marketable skill.

So, too, is the mathematical competence of a college graduate who has majored in mathematics.

In a sense almost all high school and college courses could be considered as vocational to the extent that later in life the student in his vocation ( which may be a profession ) will be called upon to use some of the skills developed and the competence obtained.

In spite of the shading of one type of course into another, I believe it is useful to talk about vocational courses as apart from academic courses.

Perhaps a course in typewriting might be regarded as the exception which proves the rule.

Today many college bound students try to take a course in personal typing, as they feel a certain degree of mastery of this skill is almost essential for one who proposes to do academic work in college and a professional school.