Vocational Education, Work Culture, and the Children of Immigrants in 1930s Bridgeport

Abstract

In Bridgeport, Ct., a medium-sized city known as the Industrial Capital of Connecticut, public vocational education enjoyed increased popularity among young workers during the 1930s. At the State Trade School, the largest of eleven trade schools in the state, the children of the New Immigrants dominated attendance. This rising generation of young workers faced changing industrial demands, which often led them to forsake immigrant family advice and spurn the artisan world of their parents in favor of organized school instruction. According to interviews conducted by the Federal Writers' Project, students did not associate particular trades with an ethnic enclave. While the school taught such business values as individual success and careers, and local firms helped to shape the curriculum, the student's own working-class culture was a synthesis of many influences. Unions and Left politics played a significant role in local life, with skilled workers running as Socialists dominating elected Bridgeport government after 1933 led by Mayor Jasper McLevy.