I. Foreword 1. The term "vocational" comprises all occupations recognized Scope of in the census list, including agricultural, industrial, commercial, the term homemaking, and professional callings. . . . II. The Need for Vocational Guidance "vocational." for vocational 3. Education is provided to enable pupils to understand their The need environment, and to extend, organize, and improve their individual and coöperative activities, and to prepare them for making more guidance. wisely the important decisions which they are called upon to make throughout life. III. Aims of Vocational Guidance 6. The purposes of vocational guidance are: (a) To help adapt the schools to the needs of the pupils and the community, and to make sure that each child obtains the equality of opportunity which it is the duty of the public schools to provide. (b) To assist individuals in choosing, preparing for, entering upon, and making progress in occupations. (c) To spread knowledge of the problems of the occupational world and the characteristics of the common occupations. (d) To help the worker to understand his relationships to workers in his own and other occupations and to society as a whole. (e) To secure better coöperation between the school on the one hand and the various commercial, industrial, and professional persuits on the other hand. (f) To encourage the establishment of courses of study in all institutions of learning that will harmoniously combine the cultural and practical studies. 7. All vocational guidance should help to fit the individual for vocational self-guidance, and also for the coöperative solution of the problems of occupational life. V. Studying the Occupations 15. Teachers, counselors, or investigators should be given time to study occupational needs and opportunities, or definitely appointed Its aims. The study of occupational questions. The choice of a vocation. Some dangers to be guarded against. The necessity of connecting the man and the job. for that purpose, and should prepare information so obtained for use by teachers, pupils, and parents. 16. The class for the study of educational opportunities, common and local occupations, and the problems of the occupational world, should be carried on before the end of the compulsory school age. Such study should be provided for all students in junior high and high schools. It should give the pupil an acquaintance with the entire field of occupations, and a method of studying the occupations wherewith he can meet future vocational problems in his life. The study of occupations should be offered in continuation schools, evening schools for adults, and colleges. VII Choosing the Vocation 21. Occupations should be chosen with service to society as the basic consideration, and with personal satisfaction and remuneration as important secondary considerations. 22. Scientific vocational guidance should discourage and supplant any attempt to choose occupations by means of phrenology, physiognomy, or other disproved and unproved hypotheses. 23. Alluring short cuts to fortune, as represented by certain advertisements in current magazines and newspapers, should be condemned and supplanted by trustworthy information and frank discussions with children. 24. The choice of an adult occupation should not be made too early or too hurriedly and should be made by the person after his study of occupations and his try-out experiences. It should be an education process by progressive elimination. Provision should be made for reconsideration and rechoice. Care should be taken that the choice be made by the individual himself. . . . 100. Connecting the man and the job1 From the standpoint of industrial reform, the movement toward vocational education and guidance is doubly beneficial. In the first place, it increases the number of trained workers in the community, and thus increases the productivity of particular classes; in the 1 From John B. Andrews, Labor Exchanges. Senate Document No. 956. Washington, 1915; pp. 3, 8-10. second place, it may decrease the number of unskilled workers. But even though the workman has been trained to perform work valuable to the community, his training may be wasted unless he can find the position for which he is fitted. An essential part of the democratic program of industrial reform, therefore, is the connecting of man and job. In the following selection, Mr. John B. Andrews suggests a national system of labor exchanges, to aid in this connecting-up process: of our labor market. It is apparent to any one who knows anything about the subject Condition that our labor market is unorganized, and that there is a tremendous waste of time and energy in the irregular and haphazard employment of workers. It is this very great social waste which we are just beginning to appreciate, but every method for overcoming it so far tried in America has been painfully inadequate. . . . system of [What is needed is a national system of employment bureaus. We need a national This system] should comprise three main divisions: (1) The central office at Washington, (2) a number of district clearing houses, employment and (3) the local labor exchanges. Let us briefly sketch the special functions of each. bureaus. of a proposed central office: general supervision The central office, from its vantage point in the National Cap- Functions ital, and as an integral part of the Federal Department of Labor, would have the task of organizing the entire system, coördinating its various elements, and supervising its operation. The first activity in connection with such a national bureau is the establishment of the and conducting of public labor exchanges. These should be built whole field, up, with careful regard to existing state and municipal bureaus, as rapidly and in as many parts of the country as finances will permit. . . . ordinate A second large duty of the Federal bureau would be that coöperation of coöperating with, encouraging, assisting, and to some extent reg- with subulating all the public employment offices conducted by other sub- offices, divisions throughout the country-state, county, town or village. The lack of coöperation, the failure to interchange information of vital importance to workmen and employers, is one of the sad features of the public employment bureau situation at the present time. Here is a great field for the standardizing activities of a Federal bureau. . inauguration of district clearing houses, and publicity work. Nature of the district clearing house. Functions Summary and conclusions. A third duty of a Federal employment bureau would be the division of the country into districts and the inauguration therein of district clearing houses. Fourth among the duties of the central office would be to carry on a campaign of the fullest possible publicity on the condition and fluctuations of the country's labor market. . . . The information of labor supply and demand thus secured could then be compiled and published in a number of attractive ways which opportunity and ingenuity will suggest. ... The district clearing houses already mentioned are quite distinct from the local labor exchanges, and must not be confused with them. The clearing house finds no positions. Its functions are to exchange information between the local exchanges, and between other correspondents in its district, to receive daily reports from all public exchanges within its jurisdiction, and reports from private agencies at least weekly, and to compile and publish these data for its district. It also carries on an interchange of information with the clearing houses in other districts. . The functions of the ultimate units in this system, the local labor exchanges, may all be summed up in the words, "bringing together workmen of all kinds seeking employment and employers seeking workmen." The good superintendent of a public employment office will not wait behind his counter for employers and employees to hunt him up and to use his office as a medium for coming together; he will take active steps in the process. By judicious telephoning, issuing circulars, newspaper advertising, newspaper publicity, and in other ways he will constantly bring his office to the attention of those who should use it. . . . Thus the jurisdiction of the projected Federal bureau would extend throughout the country over every organized interstate agency for the securing of employment or of workers. Not only its own and other public officers would be amenable to its regulation, but also private money-making enterprises and philanthropic bureaus, in so far as their activities transcended state borders. In addition to its regulative activities, it would operate exchanges on its own account, build up a clearing-house system for employment information, and publish and distribute that information as widely as it could. In short, in the words of Mr. Frank P. Walsh, an advocate of the system, it would "do everything possible to aid in securing the fullest application of the labor force of the country." . . . 1 101. The purpose of labor legislation 1 be necessary. One of the essential features of our industrial system is the large The restriction of degree of liberty which the individual enjoys in his economic reindustrial lations. As a general proposition, it is desirable to restrict this liberty may liberty as little as possible; at the same time, we are coming to realize that legal restrictions upon personal liberty may be necessary if the rights of the individual and the rights of the community are to be safeguarded. When careless or unscrupulous employers tolerate harmful conditions of employment, or when ignorant or careless employees enter employments which react to their injury, it is time for the state to enact regulative legislation. In the following selection Professor Carlton explains the purpose and forms of labor legislation: Society is slowly coming to the realization of the fact that equal treatment of unequals often results in gross injustice. Strong, well-organized workers may not need protective laws, the professional man may not, although he usually wishes legal enactments as to professional requirements for entrance into the profession; but the child and unorganized or poorly organized men and women workers certainly are at a disadvantage in bargaining with wellorganized capital. Legal protection is necessary in order to insure fair, or even decent, treatment. ... Necessity of legal protection for certain groups. pose of lation. The police power of the state furnishes the legal basis for labor Fundamental purlegislation; but the fundamental sanctions are social and economic rather than purely legal. . . . Long working days, speeded-up workers, labor legisinsanitary shops, dangerous machinery, all tend to render workers and their descendants weaker and more inefficient, and to lower the physical, mental, and moral stamina of the race. name of human progress, it is the duty of society through its executive machine, the government, to reduce and finally to remove the evils now apparently inseparably connected with modern in In the 1 From Frank Tracy Carlton, The History and Problems of Organized Labor. D. C. Heath & Co., 1911; pp. 278–280. |