vocation is sometimes made. Vocational training must be broader than training for one mechanical process; the younger the children the broader should the schooling be, even if specific training for the calling be left till after the young people have entered the occupation.

In the third place, vocational preparation should include a study of the economic, political, and social problems connected with industry and commerce. Many a farmer who has failed was efficient in everything but the problems of transportation and commission; the industrial worker should know something of wages, taxation, labor organizations, scientific management, unemployment, the factors in personal and social efficiency, blind alleys in industry, employment agencies, and welfare work.

COOPERATION FOR GUIDANCE IN THE OCCUPATION

During the past few years the schools, the workers, and the employers have joined forces for investigations and improvement in a way never before thought possible. Vocational surveys, parttime schemes, continuation schools, extension and short courses, apprenticeship agreements, more practical methods of teaching, and new insight into working conditions, on the part of teachers, are some of the results. Let us note first the findings in regard to young workers.

(1) THE YOUNG WORKER

Investigations have shown that even in the states which do not tolerate the grosser forms of child labor, schools and occupations are to blame for the continuance of distressing conditions. It has been shown that in many instances the school fails to attract the child— he leaves because neither he nor his parents think that the schooling is worth while. Economic pressure seems to be less a controling factor than it was formerly thought to be. Hence the duty of the school to satisfy the desire for “worth-while” education.

Again, it has been shown that the working child under sixteen is usually in a "blind-alley" occupation, often a mere errand boy, —and finds himself several years later with no worthy calling and no preparation for any. Other disadvantages in children's work are the necessity for their hunting work (this is especially to be regretted in the case of young girls), the seasonal character of much of the work for the young, the difficulties due to inefficiency and misunderstandings, and the wandering from job to job in the vain

hope that better conditions of employment will be found. Enlightened employers as well as educational investigators seem to have arrived at the conclusion that neither industry nor commerce needs the services of children under sixteen, and that their place is in the school.

Certain remedies have been proposed and tried; we have space here only to enumerate them: part-time work for those forced to earn money (either a half-day each in school and occupation, or alternate weeks); scholarships for needy children; better working agreements, these to be filed at the school offices; plans for opening "blind alleys"-for offering training to every young worker for promotion to a better occupation; progressive raising of the compulsory school age. It seems clear that vocational guidance cannot be effective without creating or at least working for better opportunities for boys and girls, hence the counselor is interested in furthering all movements for putting the school and work experiences of the young on a sounder basis.

(2) THE PROBLEMS OF EMPLOYMENT

The vocational counselor is interested, too, in coöperating with employers, the employed, and legislative and executive officials in the progressive improvement of conditions of labor. If the school is to prepare boys and girls for a life in industry and commerce, then it must be deeply interested in the question of wages, fatigue, hours of labor and steady employment. Some firms hire thousands annually, in order to keep a force of hundreds. They must be shown how to reduce this "labor turnover," and men interested in vocational guidance are assisting in the work. Employment departments are being put in charge of intelligent and responsible managers, and plans have been instituted for analyzing jobs, hiring help, transfers, promotions, handling of complaints and constructive suggestions, and training employment managers.

The modern movement for "scientific management" must be safeguarded in its service to society-the counselor must inform himself regarding this problem. The apparent conflict between personal ambition and community service must be solved through the aid of painstaking vocational guidance. School pupils must be trained for coöperative endeavor. Progressive business houses are making increasing effort to use the opinions of the employes in

determining the policies of management, and to turn over to them the social or welfare work of the establishments.

Both children and adults need guidance in seeking employment, and the counselor must join in the movement for public employment agencies and labor exchanges to take the place of the wasteful and unreliable commercial agency. Not only does the vocational guidance movement concern itself with these problems of employment; but it maintains also that the coming generation of workers should be equipped to contribute intelligently to their solution. The life-career classes, and the plans for vocational education, should include a discussion of these problems.

(3) DANGERS TO BE AVOIDED

Vocational guidance has not been free from certain misconceptions and questionable practices. The present utility of psychological testing for vocational guidance has been greatly exaggerated. In spite of extravagant claims, it is doubtful if any set of laboratory tests yet devised is of general, practical value for our purposes. Again, many sincere persons try to advise pupils by first classifying them into "types. Human nature is complex, however, and no simple pigeonholes will serve in vocational guidance. Besides, the theory that there are types of mind has been much discredited. through recent investigations, and no counselor can afford to use it. Again, there has been in some schools an unwarranted use of record blanks with long lists of questions involving self-analysis beyond the abilities of the children. Teachers, too, have tried to analyze individual children, labeling one as "attentive," another "observant," another "dull," "persistent," "orderly," or "slow." It is now beginning to be seen that persons cannot be ticketed in this naive manner, that the disorderly boy in one kind of activity is likely to become orderly in another, and that even a moral quality as honesty may, by the same person, be exhibited in one situation and be lacking in another. In other words, the theory of formal discipline or general training must not deceive the teachers; there are few if any mental qualities which, when present in one activity, may be credited to an individual as a general characteristic. A boy's perseverance in baseball does not guarantee his perseverance in arithmetic. Some teachers attach too great importance to mere physical characteristics, or to such vague and

unmeasured hypotheses as "the influence of heredity, "innate qualities," "native ability," and others. All reliance on such data, together with phrenology, "character analysis," and study of physiognomies, had best be left to the charlatan. Life is too complex for such short cuts, scientific study of vocational guidance problems is necessary, and there is no easy way.

Again, overconfident advice must be avoided; it has been proved unsafe to attempt to tell a boy just what he can or cannot become. Then, too, unsocial influence has no place in vocational guidance. School people cannot afford to interest themselves in helping boys and girls merely to "get ahead of the other fellow," in the "race for success," nor to glorify mere will-power unchecked by social viewpoint, nor to encourage questionable forms of "salemanship," as these propositions are advertised in some current magazines. Moral and social ideals must not be lost sight of. The student himself must by no means be passive in all this program of activity. He must progressively awaken to a realization of his opportunities, and must develop a desire to reap only the rewards of such honest service as he can fit himself to render. Without the student's awakening, vocational guidance is of little or no effect.

CONCLUSION

Such, in brief, are the main currents of interest and accomplishment in the movement for vocational guidance. Though the guidance is to be offered to each pupil in the schools, and to each young person at work, it will be seen that effective aid can be given only as schooling and conditions of employment are gradually improved. At the present time many school systems are making children aware of occupational opportunities, and preparing them for effective labor. There is taking place a reëxamination and readjustment of school methods (this volume is one of the evidences), and teachers are now as never before coöperating with intelligent laymen in the solution of perplexing problems of employment. The progress in these fields of educational and economic endeavor during the past decade gives hope enough for the future. The movement which we are discussing in this paper aims to contribute its best thought to these streams of conscious evolution, and, at the same time, to derive from them the means for a more efficient "vocational guidance of youth," in school and in occupation.

EDUCATION FOR LIFE WORK IN NON-PROFESSIONAL

OCCUPATIONS

BY FREDERICK G. BONSER, PH.D.,

Associate Professor and Director of Industrial Arts, Teachers College,
Columbia University.

Changes, both vocational and social, have laid new responsibilities upon the school and offered new opportunities for greater service in life preparation. We have become conscious of these changes and their significance, and the need is now as well recognized and appreciated for vocational education in the non-professional callings as in the professions.

The breaking down of the apprenticeship system, the development of specialization and piece work, the difficulty in securing more than a few relatively simple manipulative skills or operations in employment itself, the fact of constant change in industry and commercial life calling for flexibility and adaptability in workers— all of these facts and factors have been much discussed, and they are too well known to require more than passing mention as causes for the widespread interest in vocational education. Changes in social attitude have also come about which are largely the resultant of vocational changes and changes in economic relationships. The subordination of the many workers to the one employer, the frequent exploitation of workers by employers, the occasional injustices suffered by employers at the hands of organizations of workers, the development of large and powerful capitalistic corporations on the one hand and of labor combinations on the other, and the frequent injury of the long-suffering consumer or the innocent bystander have all contributed to develop a collectivistic attitude which expresses itself in new forms of social responsibility and social control. The public support and direction of vocational education has come to be regarded in several states as a social responsibility, and now the federal government has adopted a policy of national aid in its support and development.

The early entrance of boys and girls upon vocations and the consequent neglect of the larger demands of citizenship in their