SCIENTIFIC VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
Observations of this kind, which refer
to the borderland region between psychology and social
politics, are valid for all modern nations. Yet
it is hardly a chance that the first efforts toward
a systematic overcoming of some of these difficulties
have been made with us in America. The barriers
between the classes lie lower; here the choice of
a vocation is less determined by tradition; and it
belongs to the creed of political democracy that just
as everybody can be called to the highest elective
offices, so everybody ought to be fit for any vocation
in any sphere of life. The wandering from calling
to calling is more frequent in America than anywhere
else. To be sure, this has the advantage that
a failure in one vocation does not bring with it such
a serious injury as in Europe, but it contributes much
to the greater danger that any one may jump recklessly
and without preparation into any vocational stream.
It is fresh in every one’s mind
how during the last decade the economic conscience
of the whole American nation became aroused. Up
to the end of the last century the people had lived
with the secure feeling of possessing a country with
inexhaustible treasures. The last few years brought
the reaction, and it became increasingly clear how
irresponsible the national attitude had been, how the
richness of the forests and the mines and the rivers
had been recklessly squandered without any thought
of the future. Conservation of the national possessions
suddenly became the battle-cry, and this turned the
eye also to that limitless waste of human material,
a waste going on everywhere in the world, but nowhere
more widely than in the United States. The feeling
grew that no waste of valuable possessions is so reckless
as that which results from the distributing of living
force by chance methods instead of examining carefully
how work and workmen can fit one another. While
this was the emotional background, two significant
social movements originated in our midst. The
two movements were entirely independent of each other,
but from two different starting-points they worked
in one respect toward the same goal. They are
social and economic movements, neither of which at
first had anything directly to do with psychological
questions; but both led to a point where the psychological
turn of the problem seemed unavoidable. Here
begins the obligation of the psychologist, and the
possibility of fulfilling this obligation will be the
topic of our discussion concerning the selection of
the best man.
These two American movements which
we have in mind are the effort to furnish to pupils
leaving the school guidance in their choice of a vocation,
and the nowadays still better known movement toward
scientific management in commerce and industry.
The movement toward vocational guidance is externally
still rather modest and confined to very narrow circles,
but it is rapidly spreading and is not without significant
achievements. It started in Boston. There
the late Mr. Parsons once called a meeting of all
the boys of his neighborhood who were to leave the
elementary schools at the end of the year. He
wanted to consider with them whether they had reasonable
plans for their future. At the well-attended
meeting it became clear that the boys knew little
concerning what they had to expect in practical life,
and Parsons was able to give them, especially in individual
discussions, much helpful information. They knew
too little of the characteristic features of the vocations
to which they wanted to devote themselves, and they
had given hardly any attention to the question whether
they had the necessary qualifications for the special
work. From this germ grew a little office which
was opened in 1908, in which all Boston boys and girls
at the time when they left school were to receive
individual suggestions with reference to the most reasonable
and best adjusted selection of a calling. There
is hardly any doubt that the remarkable success of
this modest beginning was dependent upon the admirable
personality of the late organizer, who recognized the
individual features with unusual tact and acumen.
But he himself had no doubt that such a merely impressionistic
method could not satisfy the demands. He saw
that a threefold advance would become necessary.
First, it was essential to analyze the objective relations
of the many hundred kinds of accessible vocations.
Their economic, hygienic, technical, and social elements
ought to be examined so that every boy and girl could
receive reliable information as to the demands of the
vocation and as to the prospects and opportunities
in it. Secondly, it would become essential to
interest the schools in all these complex questions
of vocational choice, so that, by observation of individual
tendencies and abilities of the pupils, the teachers
might furnish preparatory material for the work of
the institute for vocational guidance. Thirdly,-and
this is for us the most important point,-he
saw that the methods had to be elaborated in such a
way that the personal traits and dispositions might
be discovered with much greater exactitude and with
much richer detail than was possible through what
a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil.
It is well known how this Boston bureau
has stimulated a number of American cities to come
forward with similar beginnings. The pedagogical
circles have been especially aroused by the movement,
municipal and philanthropic boards have at least approached
this group of problems, two important conferences
for vocational guidance have met in New York, and
at various places the question has been discussed
whether or not a vocational counselor might be attached
to the schools in a position similar to that of the
school physician. The chief progress has been
made in the direction of collecting reliable data
with reference to the economic and hygienic conditions
of the various vocations, the demand and supply and
the scale of wages. In short, everything connected
with the externalities of the vocations has been carefully
analyzed, and sufficient reliable material has been
gained, at least regarding certain local conditions.
In the place of individual advice, we have thus to
a certain degree obtained general economic investigations
from which each can gather what he needs. It
seems that sometimes the danger of letting such offices
degenerate into mere agencies for employment has not
been avoided, but that is one of the perils of the
first development. The mother institute in Boston,
too, under its new direction emphasizes more the economic
and hygienic side, and has set its centre of gravity
in a systematic effort to propagate understanding
of the problems of vocational guidance and to train
professional vocational counselors in systematic courses,
who are then to carry the interest over the land.
The real psychological analysis with
which the movement began has, therefore, been somewhat
pushed aside for a while, and the officers of those
institutes declare frankly that they want to return
to the mental problem only after professional psychologists
have sufficiently worked out the specific methods
for its mastery. Most counselors seem to feel
instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies
in the psychological examination, but they all agree
that for this they must wait until the psychological
laboratories can furnish them with really reliable
means and schemes. Certainly it is very important,
for instance, that boys with weak lungs be kept away
from such industrial vocations as have been shown
by the statistics to be dangerous for the lungs, or
that the onrush to vocations be stopped where the statistics
allow it to be foreseen that there will soon be an
oversupply of workers. But, after all, it remains
much more decisive for the welfare of the community,
and for the future life happiness of those who leave
the school, that every one turn to those forms of work
to which his psychological traits are adjusted, or
at least that he be kept away from those in which
his mental qualities and dispositions would make a
truly successful advance improbable.
The problem accordingly has been handed
over from the vocational counselors to the experimental
psychologists, and it is certainly in the spirit of
the modern tendency toward applied psychology that
the psychological laboratories undertake the investigation
and withdraw it from the dilettantic discussion of
amateur psychologists or the mere impressionism of
the school-teachers. Even those early beginnings
indicate clearly that the goal can be reached only
through exact, scientific, experimental research,
and that the mere naïve methods-for instance,
the filling-out of questionnaires which may be quite
useful in the first approach-cannot be sufficient
for a real, persistent furtherance of economic life
and of the masses who seek their vocations. In
order to gain an analysis of the individual, Parsons
made every applicant answer in writing a long series
of questions which referred to his habits and his
emotions, his inclinations and his expectations, his
traits and his experiences. The psychologist,
however, can hardly be in doubt that just the mental
qualities which ought to be most important for the
vocational counselor can scarcely be found out by
such methods. We have emphasized before that
the ordinary individual knows very little of his own
mental functions: on the whole, he knows them
as little as he knows the muscles which be uses when
he talks or walks. Among his questions Parsons
included such ones as: “Are your manners
quiet, noisy, boisterous, deferential, or self-assertive?
Are you thoughtful of the comfort of others?
Do you smile naturally and easily, or is your face
ordinarily expressionless? Are you frank, kindly,
cordial, respectful, courteous in word and actions?
Do you look people frankly in the eye? Are your
inflections natural, courteous, modest, musical, or
aggressive, conceited, pessimistic, repellent?
What are your powers of attention, observation, memory,
reason, imagination, inventiveness, thoughtfulness,
receptiveness, quickness, analytical power, constructiveness,
breadth, grasp? Can you manage people well?
Do you know a fine picture when you see it? Is
your will weak, yielding, vacillating, or firm, strong,
stubborn? Do you like to be with people and do
they like to be with you?”-and so
on. It is clear that the replies to questions
of this kind can be of psychological value only when
the questioner knows beforehand the mind of the youth,
and can accordingly judge with what degree of understanding,
sincerity, and ability the circular blanks have been
filled out. But as the questions are put for
the very purpose of revealing the personality, the
entire effort tends to move in a circle.
To break this circle, it indeed becomes
necessary to emancipate one’s self from the
method of ordinary self-observation and to replace
it by objective experiment in the psychological laboratory.
Experimentation in such a laboratory stands in no
contrast to the method of introspection. A contrast
does exist between self-observation and observation
on children or patients or primitive peoples or animals.
In their case the psychologist observes his material
from without. But in the case of the typical
laboratory experiment, everything is ultimately based
on self-observation; only we have to do with the self-observation
under exact conditions which the experimenter is able
to control and to vary at will. Even Parsons sometimes
turned to little experimental inquiries in which he
simplified some well-known methods of the laboratory
in order to secure with the most elementary means
a certain objective foundation for his mental analysis.
For instance, he sometimes examined the memory by
reading to the boys graded sentences containing from
ten to fifty words and having them repeat what they
remembered, or he measured with a watch the rapidity
of reading and writing, or he determined the sensitiveness
for the discrimination of differences by asking them
to make a point with a pencil in the centres of circles
of various sizes. But if such experimental schemes,
even of the simplest form, are in question, it seems
a matter of course that the plan ought to be prescribed
by real scientists who specialize in the psychological
field. The psychologist, for instance, surely
cannot agree to a method which measures the memory
by such a method of having spoken sentences repeated
and the quality of the memory faculty naively graded
according to the results. He knows too well that
there are many different kinds of memory, and would
always determine first which type of memory functions
is to be examined if memory achievements are needed
for a particular calling.
But even with a more exact method
of experimenting, such a procedure would not be sufficient
to solve the true problem. A second step would
still be necessary: namely, the adaptation of
the experimental result to the special psychological
requirements of the economic activity; and this again
presupposes an independent psychological analysis.
Most of the previous efforts have suffered from the
carelessness with which this second step was ignored,
and the special mental requirements were treated as
a matter of course upon which any layman could judge.
In reality they need the most careful psychological
analysis, and only if this is carried out with the
means of scientific psychology, can a study of the
abilities of the individual become serviceable to the
demands of the market. Such a psychological disentangling
of the requirements of the callings, in the interest
of guidance, is attempted in the material which the
various vocational institutes have prepared, but it
seldom goes beyond commonplaces. We read there,
for instance, for the confectioner: “Boys
in this industry must be clean, quick, and strong.
The most important qualities desired are neatness
and adaptability to routine”; or, for the future
baker, the boy “ought to know how to conduct
himself and to meet the public”; or for the
future architectural designer, “he must have
creative ability, artistic feeling, and power to sketch”;
or for the dressmaker, she “should have good
eyesight and good sense of color, and an ability to
use her hands readily; she should be able to apply
herself steadily and be fairly quick in her movements;
neatness of person is also essential”; or for
the stenographer, she must be “possessed of
intelligence, good judgment, and common sense; must
have good eyesight, good hearing, and a good memory;
must have quick perception, and be able to concentrate
her attention completely on any matter in hand.”
It is evident that all this is extremely far from any
psychological analysis in the terms of science.
All taken together, we may, therefore, say that in
the movement for vocational guidance practically nothing
has been done to make modern experimental psychology
serviceable to the new task. But on the one side,
it has shown that this work of the experimental psychologist
is the next step necessary. On the other side,
it has become evident that in the vocation bureaus
appropriate social agencies are existing which are
ready to take up the results of such work, and to apply
them for the good of the American youth and of commerce
and industry, as soon as the experimental psychologist
has developed the significant methods.