Henry Ford Trade School students, 1946. Photo courtesy Ford Media.
The recent announcement of the GM Student Corps, a summer job and mentoring program that will provide 110 Detroit area high school students with mentoring by GM retirees and GM interns, evokes memories of a time when at least two of the Big Three in Detroit went much further in engaging and training thousands of young people for careers in the automotive industry, going so far as to establish accredited schools and colleges to fulfill that purpose.
The Henry Ford Trade School was established in 1916 as a non-profit high school by Henry Ford.
The stated purpose was to give poor boys an opportunity to not just learn marketable skills but also help support their families. I say boys because it was not a coeducational school. Girls did attend the Greenfield Village Schools that Ford set up as part of the Edison Institute, the predecessor of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. Henry Ford would periodically visit both schools. Not only was the Trade School tuition free, the boys also received stipends in the form of cash scholarships. Of course, the fact that the Trade School helped provide Ford Motor Company with trained draftsmen and technicians was completely intentional. The school was started with just six students and one instructor, but by 1931, there were 135 faculty members teaching 2,800 students. Ford equipped the three acre campus with modern shop equipment so the students could learn technical skills part of the day and a regular high school curriculum during the other part. It was a rigorous school, the curriculum for freshmen in 1927 included English, Mechanical Drawing, Civics, Auto Mechanics, Mechanical Science, Shop Arithmetic and Elementary Chemistry.
Henry Ford changed the world, but he never really left the farm of his boyhood. As America?s industries grew, in no small part due to Ford himself, people moved from rural areas to the cities in search of employment. Ford felt that much was lost in that migration, including a lot of practical knowledge needed to keep a farm going. He thought that the Trade School would teach the boys to use their hands as well as their heads, as Ford, a self-taught ?engineer,? visualized himself doing in his youth. The Henry Ford Trade School was just one of 55 educational facilities that Mr. Ford founded in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Operating as an independent school for over 30 years, in 1947 the curriculum was upgraded and the school was accredited to award high school diplomas. Before then, the 75 percent or so of Trade School students who wanted a diploma finished the requirements at the night schools then offered by public school systems.
In 1952, the Henry Ford Trade School went out of existence after merging with Dearborn Junior College, formerly Fordson Junior College, an outgrowth of Fordson High School. That probably reflected the fact that, by then, vocational training was part of the curriculum in many public high schools, so FoMoCo didn?t necessarily have to train its own technicians. Dearborn Junior College is today known as Henry Ford Community College. In its 35 years of existence, the Henry Ford Trade School graduated more than 8,000 students, many of whom went on to careers at Ford Motor Company. The Henry Ford Trade School?s original building, at 15100 Woodward, in Highland Park near Ford?s plant in that Detroit enclave, was later leased to the Lawrence Institute of Technology, now Lawrence Technological University, in suburban Southfield. Some of Detroit?s most illustrious engineers, like John Z. DeLorean, have been graduates of Lawrence.
Ford Motor Company may have effectively had its own high school, but General Motors operated its own engineering college, the General Motors Institute, usually known as GMI, today?s Kettering University. The institution was founded as The School of Automobile Trades in Flint by local industrialists in need of trained engineers and managers. Flint predated Detroit as the center of the nascent American auto industry. Four years later, it was renamed the Flint Institute of Technology, with more than 600 students taking part in their four-year cooperative education program. Co-op ed ? going to school part of the year while also working in the industry ? continues to be part of Kettering U?s curriculum.
Having doubled employment in just five years, General Motors was having a difficult time finding sufficient numbers of engineers and managers, so in 1926, the corporation took over financial support of The School of Automobile Trades, renaming it the General Motors Institute of Technology. GMI became an important part of the General Motors corporate culture, training engineers and, perhaps more importantly, managers, in the GM way. In 1945, GMI became accredited to grant academic degrees.
High school students with an aptitude or interest in engineering saw GMI as a great opportunity to get an education with almost guaranteed job prospects at the big automaker after graduation. Compared to many college students of the time, GMI students had some money to spend, since they were paid for their co-op work at the automaker. They went through a four-week rotation, spending a month in class followed by a month of co-op work at some manner of GM facility or office. A personal account of what it was like being a GMI co-op student working for General Motors can be found at the GM Heritage site. The school produced some of GM?s most successful engineers, like Ed Cole, father of the Chevrolet small-block V-8, and Elliot ?Pete? Estes, who championed the Camaro and later was president of General Motors.
Times change and as with the Henry Ford Trade School, by the 1980s America?s educational system had certainly caught up with the needs of American industry for engineers. In 1982, GM divested ownership of GMI. The cooperative education relationship between GM and the school was maintained, though, and expanded to other employers. In 1988, the school was renamed in honor of Charles Kettering, GM?s first chief engineer. In 2009, while General Motors was going through its bankruptcy, as a cost-cutting move it cut the co-op positions offered to Kettering students by more than half, from 173 to 73. Now that the industry appears to have recovered, with automotive engineers currently in high demand, it would be surprising if GM hasn?t restored some of those co-op positions for Kettering students.
The General Motors Institute was not GM?s only educational enterprise. GMI may have identified and trained engineers and managers, but it was the Fisher Body Craftsman?s Guild that identified talented designers. Starting in the 1930s, more than 8 million boys (and some girls) competed for college scholarships in the Guild?s regional and national model building competitions. At one point, the Boy Scouts of America was the only youth organization that had more members. The Guild was started when automotive styling was in its infancy. In fact, in the early years, Guild competitors had to reproduce the horse-drawn Napoleonic coach that was the Fisher Body logo. Soon, though, the Guild was expanded to include original designs, concept cars of the future, the sorts of models we?re now familiar with from student design competitions. When the Fisher Body Craftsman?s Guild was started there was really no formal school where students could learn automotive design. The Pratt Institute in New York City taught industrial design, but that was about it. Eventually, though, college level art and design schools like the Art Center College of Design in California or Detroit?s Center for Creative Studies (now the College for Creative Studies) started offering potential car designers professional training. As with the Ford Trade School and GMI, when outside educational institutions started to offer the specialized training that the auto industry needed, the need for in-house schools and educational programs for young people went away. While it lasted, though, the Craftsman?s Guild was very successful, and not just as a scholarship program. At least 60 Guild awardees went on to professional careers as automotive stylists or industrial designers. Chuck Jordan, who later headed GM Design, was the 1947 national winner.
Today, if a large car company is going to sponsor some kind of youth educational program, it is? likely to be something with a wider scope than just technical training, like GM?s Student Corps or the Henry Ford Academy charter school, co-sponsored by Ford and the Henry Ford Museum, housed in what I believe is the old Ford Laboratories building on the Museum?s campus. Technical training activities are more likely to be something like the Chrysler Academy School of Technical Training. The Chrysler Academy is the company?s umbrella organization for dealer technician training, joint programs with colleges and private trade schools, and job placement for military veterans. Chrysler?s College Automotive Program works with 27 community colleges and universities and it is a cooperative program that, like GMI/Kettering, rotates between class work and practical work, with internships at sponsoring Chrysler dealers as students fulfill the requirements for an associates degree in automotive service technology. Chrysler provides accreditation, instructor training and test equipment.
Author?s note: I?m trying to track down any similar programs that Chrysler might have operated during the era of the Henry Ford Trade School and the General Motors Institute. If you know of any such training, educational or youth programs operated by Chrysler or its divisions, please let us know in the comments.
Wade Robson powerball numbers American Idol 2013 mega millions Plumber american idol memphis grizzlies
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.