Vocational guidance

“ When educators conceive vocational guidance as something which leads up to a definitive, irretrievable, and complete choice, both education and the chosen vocation are likely to be rigid, hampering further growth. In so far, the calling chosen will be such as to leave the person concerned in a permanently subordinate position, executing the intelligence of others who have a calling which permits more flexible play and readjustment. ”

“ This record, made by trained investigators, will enable vocational guidance directors to tell the child what he is fitted to be, and thus to help the schools and colleges to know how best to train him, that is to say, to provide what he will need to know to do his life work, and also those cultural studies that his vocational work may lack, and that may be required to build out his best development as an individual. ”

“ The crowning work of an economic educational system will be vocational guidance. One of the greatest handicaps to all classes to-day is that 90 per cent of the people have entered their present employment blindly and by chance, irrespective of their fitness or opportunities. ”

“ It conducts a training course for qualified men and women who desire to prepare themselves for vocational guidance in the public school system, philanthropic institutions, and business establishments. Its interests therefore lie both in the direction of personal service to the individual and of constructive experiment and research in the field of education and employment.
A capable investigator spends his entire time in studying occupations open to boys and young men, what these occupations require, and what they lead to. ”

“ Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the concern of the school.
Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some idea of the goal to be reached. ”

“ It is further sought to analyze the relation of aptitudes, interests and habits to modern industrial demands, and thus to lay an adequate foundation for a system of training that regards social as well as economic needs.
The Vocation Bureau has constantly borne in mind that a sound development of vocational guidance requires that contact with the employments be more than mere onlooking. To leave the employer out of such a plan, to fail to profit by his criticism and point of view, is to omit one of the most important elements in such guidance. ”

“ The limitation of the method is that joinery and cabinet-making cannot help a boy to try himself out for metal work, printing, gardening, tailoring, or commercial work.
If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And, moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work out in the world as possible. ”

“ But if boys are to try out their aptitudes for work and their ability to bear responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.
There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial problems. ”

“ The author believes that there is special need of attention to vocational guidance today. “Following this great world war, civilization will take on an aspect of general reconstruction, and hence the man of the future will need an equipment that will fit him to take his place in a society with difficult problems to solve and big tasks to perform.” (Preface) The book is divided into seven parts: The need of vocational guidance; The importance of specializing; The need of a broad foundation; Choosing a vocation ”

“ The responsibility of power."
The books in the bulletin were arranged in accordance with the foregoing outline, which takes the pupil through the whole four years of high school work. Principal Davis' statement of the aims and methods of vocational guidance as it is being carried on in Grand Rapids is sufficiently clear I think, and does not require any additional explanation. It should be clearly understood, however, that vocational guidance is altogether different from vocational education and from industrial education, subjects with which it is sometimes confused. ”

“ Some of these occupations may appear out of the way, and even romantic, to the girl who is choosing her work, or who is already at work in some paid employment. But in every case, the pioneer worker needs special training and experience. New work requires more originality, perseverance, and if possible better preparation than may be necessary in standard employments. ”

“ From the point of view of vocational selection we may expect the principle of the graded intelligence scale to become increasingly valuable as more and more norms are established. The first definite contribution of vocational psychology is thus not so much toward the guidance of the individual worker as for the guidance of the employer who may be required to select from a number of applicants those whose general intellectual equipment is most adequate. ”

“ Fifth, we will further improve public services for employment. We will improve the release of employment information and provide more effective career and employment guidance. We will vigorously develop vocational training. We will increase policy support for skills training for rural migrant workers and urban residents experiencing employment difficulty. ”

“ The untrained girl who naturally falls into the service group has a rather poor outlook for congenial and successful work as conditions exist. With ability which she perhaps does not possess, and with training which she cannot afford, she would naturally become a teacher, a nurse, a private secretary, a librarian, or a social worker. Without training, she finds little except domestic service open to her; and domestic service finds little favor with girls, or with students of vocational possibilities for girls. ”

“ As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care, with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts. ”

“ The social and educational need for vocational training is equally urgent. Widespread vocational training will democratize the education of the country: (1) by recognizing different tastes and abilities, and by giving an equal opportunity to all to prepare for their lifework; (2) by extending education through part-time and evening instruction to those who are at work in the shop or on the farm. ”

“ Please understand that I do not mean vocational training can be totally dispensed with; I mean only that it should be done on the job. It should be done as preparatory to work; and as preparatory to work, it should be compensated. ”

“ And in so far as all education is a preparation for such a life, all education is vocational. But within vocational education, which, as we have seen, is the whole of education, we may distinguish "general" education from "occupational" education; and the question we have to answer becomes, Ought education in the elementary school to be general or occupational? ”

“ To-day we no longer use the term vocational education in this rather general sense, but restrict its use to the specific training of individuals for some useful employment. Training for law, medicine, the ministry, teaching, engineering, scientific agriculture, nursing, and commerce are examples of vocational education in its higher ranges. ”

“ The Commission estimated that a million new young people were required annually by our industries, and that it would need three years of vocational education, beyond the elementary-school age, to prepare them for efficient service. ”

“ To remedy lack of occupational skills and employment difficulties, vocational skills training programs are provided. The education and training centers regard vocational skills as an important channel to improve the trainees’ employability. ”

“ Indeed, so great is the need and so increasingly serious is it becoming, as our industrial and commercial life grows more complex and the demand for conservation and efficiency more exacting, that progressive men and women in our universities and schools and elsewhere have undertaken a study of the vocational problem and are earnestly working toward a solution of it in vocational bureaus, vocational schools, and other ways, all together comprising the vocational movement. ”

“ The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations. The principle stated early in this book (see Chapter VI) that the educative process is its own end, and that the only sufficient preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the most of immediately present life, applies in full force to the vocational phases of education. ”

“ All the employer has a right to demand is that the school give the young worker a general pre-vocational training which will introduce him to the special trade work. The graduate of the elementary school should have been through a well rounded course which not only cultivated a general intelligence, but discovered, by submitting him to many different kinds of activity, his particular flair or knack, and thus enlisted his interest in further training for a particular vocation. ”

“ Those who remain in the primary schools until fourteen will be of roughly two grades; those whose ability fits them for work of some skill in trades or in the humbler ranks of business, and those of very low intelligence who are naturally destined for unskilled occupations. The former will pass from the elementary schools into some form of vocational training; the latter will go straight into industry and will receive no further teaching other than what may be given in some kind of continuation class. ”

“ A glance at the list of courses shows at once that while the vocational motive is given first importance, the schools also aim to provide instruction in cultural subjects which have only an indirect vocational application. ”

“ Fortunately, there are dozens of State and national groups committed to quality education in vocational specialties, and these groups are attuned to economic trends and supportive of professional educators in the technical-vocational fields. ”

“ Besides further democratizing education by extending its advantages to those who work in the shop and the office and on the farm, vocational education tends to correct many of the evils of modern industrial life. It puts the worker in possession of a great body of scientific knowledge relating to his work which shops and offices cannot give, and it keeps him, for several years after he becomes a wage earner and at a very impressionable period of his life, under the directing care of the school. ”

“ In the early days of the nation’s life the absence of any definite plan for public vocational education of young people was not a serious matter. Industrial life was relatively simple, and the family lived close to its sources of supplies. ”

“ The Growth of Industrial Training.—The movement that is perhaps most widely discussed to-day is the introduction of vocational training into the systems of education. Social reasons for industrial education. There is now an especial need for this type of training. Since the industrial revolution and the development of the factory system, the master no longer works by the side of his apprentice and instructs him, and the ambition of the youth can no longer be spurred by the hope that he may himself some day become a master. ”

“ Organized labor at first looked with suspicion upon the movement, but is now more favorably disposed toward it. Vocational education should be clearly distinguished from manual training, which is merely a general education in the principles of skilful hand work without regard to any particular vocation or trade. Vocational education does not turn out a fully-trained worker, but only one who has practically finished the apprentice stage. ”

“ But I plead for a sense of proportion, that as long as the world is either so poor or its wealth and opportunities so unequally distributed, a certain minimum of vocational training shall be insured to all. ”

“ Have we even begun to realize that every person should have definite vocational training with such distinctive purpose back of it that it will produce the skill, knowledge, ideals, and general experience that function in distinct callings? ”

“ But there is a great field for the practical arts in general education,—a field which no scheme of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each has its place. Vocational training is fitting young persons for profitable employment in chosen vocations. Practical arts in general education consists of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household and taught in the school for the purpose of developing capacity to deal with concrete things and of arousing social and industrial interests in the workaday world. ”

“ But the methods of industrial and occupational training have been found to solve only one aspect of the vocational problem; and it is more and more coming to be realized that a thorough understanding of the aptitudes which the individual brings to his work is as important as the knowledge of the opportunities which the environment affords. ”

“ Throughout the survey the objective held constantly in mind was the formulation of a constructive program of vocational training in the public schools. In outlining the field of inquiry a clear distinction was drawn between those kinds of general education which have a more or less indirect vocational significance, and vocational training for specific occupations in which the controlling purpose is direct preparation for wage-earning. ”