Vocational Guidance
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
Adams Puffer, Director of the Beacon Vocation
Bureau, Boston. New York: Rand, McNally and Company, 1914. Pp. 306. In primitive communities, artisans received their training by being raised in the midst of those activities which would occupy them to the end of their lives. With modern industrial conditions, however, the workman may never in the course of his childhood have any contact with the operations by which he will become a productive member of the community. The parent’s work is now in the factory, separated almost entirely from the life of the child, whose education, on the other hand, is supervised and controlled by an authority who is not likely to be familiar with any of the activities in which the boy will eventually engage. Thus there is no longer in this modern community that correlation between the boy’s early and later life which prevailed in more primitive groups.
To effect this correlation and make the individual’s life efficient through continuous development is the aim of the vocational guide. But in order to obtain the most efficient development it is necessary to have the individual’s work adapted to his inherent capacities and inclinations. One person might have from the beginning the training necessary for a lawyer or a physician, and yet, because of inherent incapacity, be nothing more than a day laborer. Another individual, having the genius of a Pestalozzi, a Wagner, or a Mill, but not displaying these capacities early, might be initiated into the mechanical work of a blacksmith, plumber, or bricklayer. With these facts in view, “Vocational guidance means getting a proper job for the youth; and it also means getting the proper youth for the job.”
This guidance must be given by one well versed in the methods of science, one who will apply these methods rather than depending only upon a general insight into human nature. The place where there is a monopoly of the necessary characteristics is the schoolroom, and the persons holding this monopoly are the school teachers. The professional vocational guides are the logical persons to entrust with the duty, but of these there are so few, and the conduct of the individual child in their presence is so far from natural that the best results are not obtainable. “But the teacher has the child under daily observation. She sees him off his guard, at play, under varying conditions of fatigue or of health; and if herself an expert in child nature she comes to understand him more profoundly than any other human being can. She takes the pupil young, in time to correct the evil tendencies and foster the good. She is, of all persons, most likely to have the full confidence of both the child and his parents. The vocational impulse no longer comes of itself, as once it did. Neither the home nor the church is so likely as the school to develop it.”
Undoubtedly if the teacher had the other abilities necessary, this familiarity ? with the youth in his various activities would be the crowning qualification; but the difficulty is that the ordinary teacher is not so equipped. The majority of our teachers are technically trained in so far as the normal school is able to accomplish that end. Further qualifications they are not required to have, and in fact, not even for this do they receive adequate remuneration. In order to have a sufficiently large number of people qualified for the important task, it will be absolutely necessary to furnish a much more extensive training, and to provide salaries large enough to repay them for undertaking such training. To understand how extensive the training must be, it is only necessary to realize that for an advisor successfully to interpret the activities of an individual, a thoroughly systematic course in psychology is only one of the requisites. It is necessary to know the racial characteristics as well, to know that the individual is taught in the manner best adapted to develop him.
These abilities are indispensable as a beginning. Further requirements are that the guides have a thorough knowledge, not only of the different trades and professions, but also of the qualifications necessary for success in any of these occupations. Considering that in the United States census more than a hundred occupations are listed, it is almost impossible to imagine one person familiar with all. In order to obtain satisfactory results the method of trial and error is adopted. “Especially relevant for self-discovery is the trying-out process which accompanies every sort of practical work, together with certain types of play, either in or out of school. There is a grammar of industrial processes through which every child ought to be put, in part at home and in part under formal instruction. He should have a chance to try his hand at drawing and painting, at wood, at metal, at clay, at caring for plants and animals, and, in the case of the girl, at sewing, cooking, and housework also. School gardens have proved not only interesting and instructive but diagnostic of the child’s capacities. The ball field may suggest self-reliance or capacity for leadership which would otherwise be unsuspected. The wider and more varied the test, the better for all concerned.”
This statement of principle seems to the reviewer to be most satisfactory and most likely to give results. Not by any method of predetermination, nor by an ability to judge what the child should do in a profession or trade by what he does in the ordinary school work or play, but by actually putting the child at the various types of work and observing what he does best, shall one determine what he should do as his life work. When this is established, it would only be necessary to make it possible for that child to become proficient in his own line. For this purpose, a knowledge of the qualifications necessary for any or all trades and professions will not be required on the part of the guide, but the much more simple knowledge of the location and opportunities in the various classes of employment. This knowledge is not difficult to obtain, and the teachers now engaged can without great effort acquire it. To assist them in doing so, this book seems valuable, for it includes discussions on various types of employment, information as to where certain industries are located, and estimates of the probability that the youth in certain communities will enter certain occupations. David Mitchell.
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