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Supporters and Critics
Previous | Contents | Resources | Next The Center had not been in operation very long when we were visited by professional educators from schools around the area. They were astounded at the blue print that had been established and especially coming from non-professional sources. Dorothy Canfield Fisher in this connection told of how little was publicly known about it, even by educators. She recorded a meeting with the president of the National Education Association who "on hearing the name of the NYA resident centers exclaimed blankly, resident centers? where older boys and girls live while they get vocational training in the trades? Never heard of such schools." For those working with the NYA, it was a mystery why something like their blue print had not been developed by regular educators. It may have been a case of not seeing the forest because of the trees. They were so concerned with their immediate work, they failed to glimpse what was possible on the horizon of their profession as it sought to deal with the real world beyond the school. In early March of 1942, Dorothy Canfield Fisher and her husband, who was the chairman of the Vermont State Board of Education, spent a couple of days at the Lima Center. She said it was one of the finest projects she had ever seen. She repeated over and over as she toured the various shop and saw the residential activities, how unfortunate it was not better known by the American public. Her husband was so impressed with what he saw that he said on his return to Vermont he was going to urge that a similar new educational program should be adopted there. In May 1941, the Government took measures to strengthen the out-of-school phase of the NYA when President Roosevelt requested a supplementary appropriation of twenty-two and a half million dollars specifically for the work experience centers. Further, along with the money request, he stressed that this program of the NYA had 300,000 young people in training for vital industrial work. As 1941 passed, the storm clouds of war darkened. After Pearl Harbor much of our shop work and job orders were related to military needs. Visits by representatives of the personnel departments of major Rochester and Buffalo industries quickened. The pressure for adequately trained and experienced skilled manpower became critical. It was a tribute to the Lima Center that it was recognized as a source of such material after only a short time in existence. Like much of the Roosevelt New Deal, this project of the NYA had its critics. It was attacked as a boondoggle, extravagant, coddling of youth, insidious, even subversive. As being extravagant, the payment of wages to the employees was shown to cost the government only twenty cents per employee per day. The Center business manager recorded the cost of the food at forty three cents per person per day.
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