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ERIC Number: ED213826
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1982-Mar
Pages: 36
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
P. W. Litchfield and Early Corporate Education at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
Moore, Colleen A.
Mass production, introduced into the factories of the United States in the early 1900s, required workers who were trained to be cooperative, loyal to the company, and possessed specific job skills to operate the machinery. To produce these workers, American corporations turned away from the educational programs of the public schools, and began to create their own industrial training programs. One of the most successful of these programs was the corporate educational program begun by P. W. Litchfield at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1913. Litchfield's solution was the "Flying Squadron" training program. From this base, the corporate educational program expanded and, by the 1920s, was called the Goodyear Industrial Training Program. The formal educational program was offered through the Goodyear Industrial University, an on-site factory-sponsored educational institution. By the 1930s, this program had grown and become recognized as one of the largest of the industrial educational programs in the United States. Lists of the successful placement and promotion of squadron men in books about the era point out how very successful the corporate educational policies and programs at Goodyear were in selecting, training, and keeping men in the organization and drawing on their talents to keep the organization a unified one. Education at Goodyear continues today and the "Squadron" idea is still in use, but the ideal of corporate education as advanced by P. W. Litchfield faded after the 1930s because of declining economic conditions, union demands, and competition by the public schools. Today's training programs are specifically job-related rather than aiming at the general education of the workers. (KC)
Publication Type: Historical Materials; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A