PAPERS OX PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 449 



thousands of potential workers in order that detailed 

 matching of workers and jobs may be carried forward? 

 It is obvious that for the present such practice would be 

 impossible of administration. 



It is a well known fact that for a large number of jobs 

 the learning requirements are almost identical. Beyond 

 this point satisfactory service becomes a matter of in- 

 terest and personal adjustment. Even here there are 

 to be found large number.- of positions which tend to 

 group themselves. Such is obviously true of junior office, 

 sales, assembly, and other large sections of productive 

 labor. Barring the element of work surroundings and 

 the resultant demands and opportunities for personal 

 adjustment, positions within certain group classifica- 

 tions require capacities very much in common. If Mr. 

 Pound in his extended treatment of employment condi- 

 tions did nothing more, he did succeed in pointing out 

 the fact that jobs may be classified on a horizontal as 

 well as on a vertical plane: that a worker of given abil- 

 ity may operate a machine in a fish cannery, in a fruit 

 or vegetable canning plant, in a meat packing estab- 

 lishment, and without serious inconvenience, adjust him- 

 self to production requirements in a plant manufactur- 

 ing automobiles, ail within the space of a few months. 

 If this means anything to educators and employers, it 

 must mean that attention should be centered upon train- 

 ing and production capacity rather than upon specific 

 trade opportunity and requirement. 



Is it not, then, for our less mature workers, a matter 

 of reducing employment requirements to learning de- 

 mands just as we are now classifying instructional ma- 

 terials for mastery by students of varying interests and 

 capacities? Such groupings would make possible effec- 

 tive testing practice in the four major fields of learning 

 rather than in innumerable small units. There is the 

 further advantage that such an adjustment of testing 

 practice for purposes of employment service would lead 

 to more effective classification for training purposes. 

 Training and tests could be made to supplement each 

 other in bringing to the employment office the informa- 

 tion most needed in selecting and in assigning workers 



