In the late 19th century, American Jewish philanthropists founded a number of institutions for providing vocational training to Jewish children and teenagers, hoping to teach a new generation to work with their hands. Jenna Weissman Joselit describes the most prominent of these schools, established in New York City in 1884:
Harnessing the latest educational theories about vocational training to growing concern about the city’s steadily increasing population of immigrant Jews, the Hebrew Technical Institute for Boys sought to better their lot in the New World, lest they fail to make the most of their opportunities and flail about, unable to find a secure footing in the urban economy. To prevent that from happening, it offered “lads” between the ages of twelve-and-a-half and seventeen a three-year program in the practical arts: woodworking and metalwork, toolmaking, applied electricity, and the drafting of architectural plans.
[It also] made a point of discouraging them to follow the traditional pursuits that had for years characterized the Jewish ethnic economy such as business, law, or medicine. Referring to “diversification,” and “redistribution,” it actively steered its students away from these more typically overcrowded fields of endeavor and into brand-new arenas of “usefulness.”
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/heyday-vocational-training-jewish-schools