VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 



6106 



VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 



Without such special agent, this is a difficult 

 part of the work, because teachers are so re- 

 mote from the actual workaday world that 

 they know little of the conditions of industry 

 and how to cooperate in the placement of young 

 workers. 



Spread of Work in Vocational Guidance. Sta- 

 tistics indicate that approximately 100 high 

 schools, representing forty different cities, had 

 in 1916 definitely-organized schemes of voca- 

 tional guidance through vocational bureaus, 

 vocational analysis, "trying out" vocational 

 . courses, regular visits to industrial plants and 

 systematic courses in vocations. Most of these 

 cities reported definite results. At least 145 

 cities in thirty different states have introduced 

 some form of work in vocational guidance in 

 their high schools. 



In addition to the public schools, such or- 

 ganizations as the Association of Collegiate 

 Alumnae, the Women's Educational and Indus- 

 trial Union, the Y. M. C. A, the Y. W. C. A., 

 chambers of commerce and municipal authori- 

 ties are carrying on the work of vocational 

 guidance through bureaus and departments es- 

 tablished for that purpose. 



In 1913, at the third national conference on 

 vocational guidance, a National Vocational 

 Guidance Association was organized. This as- 

 sociation publishes and distributes among the 

 members a monthly Vocational Bulletin. Some 

 vocational-guidance state associations or sec- 

 tions of the regular state teachers' associations 

 have been started, and the training of teachers 

 for the work of vocational guidance has been 

 inaugurated, at least for the summer terms, in 

 about ten of the leading American colleges, 

 universities and higher technical schools. 



Vocational Guidance and Industry. Success 

 in business means the minimum waste in time 

 and in physical and productive energy. Eco- 

 nomic losses occur through incompetent and 

 unprepared employees, through unscientific 

 methods of employment and labor upheavals. 

 Employers are awakening to the fact that they 

 have a large part in eliminating this waste by 

 cooperating with the schools in vocational 

 guidance, by using scientific methods of em- 

 ployment and by keeping accurate account of 

 the loss of the industry through change of em- 

 ployees. 



In some of the large concerns, a separate em- 

 ployment division is maintained, and the "hir- 

 ing and firing" are no longer left to the whim 

 of a foreman with little training in handling 

 people. Through such special employment di- 



vision, in touch with the entire business, work- 

 ers failing in one department may be trans- 

 ferred to another and their aptitude thus be 

 given a complete test. In this way does the 

 industry rightly supplement the school in the 

 work of vocational guidance. 



In the Eastern part of the United States a 

 school has been established to train employers 

 in problems of training employees and testing 

 their capabilities in different lines of work. 

 Great corporations and department stores are 

 either creating schools within their own domain 

 for training and guiding the youth they em- 

 ploy, or they are cooperating with the schools 

 to that end. A superintendent of a certain fac- 

 tory recently stated that not more than one in 

 six of those employed remained in the work for 

 twelve months, a distinct loss to employer and 

 employee. Tests for discovering the skill with 

 which certain types of work may be done have 

 been devised for use in industry, with the re- 

 sult that, after eliminating the unfit, the num- 

 ber needed to turn out a certain amount of 

 work is reduced to fifty or sixty per cent, the 

 work itself improved, wages advanced and the 

 workday shortened. 



Only from industry itself, from the employ- 

 ers and employees, can accurate data on pres- 

 ent-day vocations be ascertained. When indus- 

 try appreciates how vocational guidance can 

 lessen its economic losses, this cooperation will 

 be more freely given. 



Vocational Guidance and the Parent. There 

 is no greater influence in the life of a child 

 than that exerted by the home. The attitude 

 of parents toward children in the different 

 stages of growth determines in large measure 

 not only their fitness for a definite part in the 

 world's work, but the wisdom with which they 

 choose such part. 



Fortunately the type of parent who insists 

 on "making a lawyer of John" or a "music 

 teacher of Mary" is fast disappearing, and a 

 step in advance has been made by the parents 

 who incline toward letting the sons and daugh- 

 ters follow their own aptitudes in choosing life 

 careers. Yet, when such aptitudes are inter- 

 preted as pointing to vocations that are of the 

 parent's choosing, and education is directed in 

 those lines, the conditions are not greatly im- 

 proved. 



Very young children think and talk about 

 what they expect to do when they are men and 

 women, and they frequently express in their 

 "play" what appear to be vocational interests. 

 But the period at which the real vocational in- 



