1. The Meaning of Vocation. At the present time the conflict of
philosophic theories focuses in discussion of the proper place and
function of vocational factors in education. The bald statement that
significant differences in fundamental philosophical conceptions find
their chief issue in connection with this point may arouse incredulity:
there seems to be too great a gap between the remote and general terms
in which philosophic ideas are formulated and the practical and concrete
details of vocational education. But a mental review of the intellectual
presuppositions underlying the oppositions in education of labor and
leisure, theory and practice, body and mind, mental states and the
world, will show that they culminate in the antithesis of vocational and
cultural education. Traditionally, liberal culture has been linked to
the notions of leisure, purely contemplative knowledge and a spiritual
activity not involving the active use of bodily organs. Culture has also
tended, latterly, to be associated with a purely private refinement, a
cultivation of certain states and attitudes of consciousness, separate
from either social direction or service. It has been an escape from the
former, and a solace for the necessity of the latter.
So deeply entangled are these philosophic dualisms with the whole
subject of vocational education, that it is necessary to define the
meaning of vocation with some fullness in order to avoid the impression
that an education which centers about it is narrowly practical, if not
merely pecuniary. A vocation means nothing but such a direction of life
activities as renders them perceptibly significant to a person, because
of the consequences they accomplish, and also useful to his associates.
The opposite of a career is neither leisure nor culture, but
aimlessness, capriciousness, the absence of cumulative achievement in
experience, on the personal side, and idle display, parasitic dependence
upon the others, on the social side. Occupation is a concrete term for
continuity. It includes the development of artistic capacity of any
kind, of special scientific ability, of effective citizenship, as well
as professional and business occupations, to say nothing of mechanical
labor or engagement in gainful pursuits.
We must avoid not only limitation of conception of vocation to the
occupations where immediately tangible commodities are produced, but
also the notion that vocations are distributed in an exclusive way, one
and only one to each person. Such restricted specialism is impossible;
nothing could be more absurd than to try to educate individuals with an
eye to only one line of activity. In the first place, each individual
has of necessity a variety of callings, in each of which he should be
intelligently effective; and in the second place any one occupation
loses its meaning and becomes a routine keeping busy at something in the
degree in which it is isolated from other interests. (i) No one is
just an artist and nothing else, and in so far as one approximates that
condition, he is so much the less developed human being; he is a kind
of monstrosity. He must, at some period of his life, be a member of
a family; he must have friends and companions; he must either support
himself or be supported by others, and thus he has a business career.
He is a member of some organized political unit, and so on. We naturally
name his vocation from that one of the callings which distinguishes him,
rather than from those which he has in common with all others. But we
should not allow ourselves to be so subject to words as to ignore and
virtually deny his other callings when it comes to a consideration of
the vocational phases of education.
(ii) As a man's vocation as artist is but the emphatically specialized
phase of his diverse and variegated vocational activities, so his
efficiency in it, in the humane sense of efficiency, is determined by
its association with other callings. A person must have experience,
he must live, if his artistry is to be more than a technical
accomplishment. He cannot find the subject matter of his artistic
activity within his art; this must be an expression of what he suffers
and enjoys in other relationships--a thing which depends in turn upon
the alertness and sympathy of his interests. What is true of an artist
is true of any other special calling. There is doubtless--in general
accord with the principle of habit--a tendency for every distinctive
vocation to become too dominant, too exclusive and absorbing in its
specialized aspect. This means emphasis upon skill or technical method
at the expense of meaning. Hence it is not the business of education to
foster this tendency, but rather to safeguard against it, so that the
scientific inquirer shall not be merely the scientist, the teacher
merely the pedagogue, the clergyman merely one who wears the cloth, and
so on.
2. The Place of Vocational Aims in Education. Bearing in mind the varied
and connected content of the vocation, and the broad background upon
which a particular calling is projected, we shall now consider education
for the more distinctive activity of an individual.
1. An occupation is the only thing which balances the distinctive
capacity of an individual with his social service. To find out what
one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to
happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true
business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by
circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means
simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working with
the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction. With reference
to other members of a community, this adequacy of action signifies, of
course, that they are getting the best service the person can render.
It is generally believed, for example, that slave labor was ultimately
wasteful even from the purely economic point of view--that there was not
sufficient stimulus to direct the energies of slaves, and that there
was consequent wastage. Moreover, since slaves were confined to certain
prescribed callings, much talent must have remained unavailable to the
community, and hence there was a dead loss. Slavery only illustrates on
an obvious scale what happens in some degree whenever an individual does
not find himself in his work. And he cannot completely find himself when
vocations are looked upon with contempt, and a conventional ideal of
a culture which is essentially the same for all is maintained. Plato
(ante, p. 88) laid down the fundamental principle of a philosophy of
education when he asserted that it was the business of education to
discover what each person is good for, and to train him to mastery of
that mode of excellence, because such development would also secure the
fulfillment of social needs in the most harmonious way. His error was
not in qualitative principle, but in his limited conception of the scope
of vocations socially needed; a limitation of vision which reacted to
obscure his perception of the infinite variety of capacities found in
different individuals.
2. An occupation is a continuous activity having a purpose. Education
through occupations consequently combines within itself more of the
factors conducive to learning than any other method. It calls instincts
and habits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It has an end
in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appeals to thought; it
demands that an idea of an end be steadily maintained, so that activity
cannot be either routine or capricious. Since the movement of activity
must be progressive, leading from one stage to another, observation
and ingenuity are required at each stage to overcome obstacles and
to discover and readapt means of execution. In short, an occupation,
pursued under conditions where the realization of the activity rather
than merely the external product is the aim, fulfills the requirements
which were laid down earlier in connection with the discussion of aims,
interest, and thinking. (See Chapters VIII, X, XII.)
A calling is also of necessity an organizing principle for information
and ideas; for knowledge and intellectual growth. It provides an axis
which runs through an immense diversity of detail; it causes different
experiences, facts, items of information to fall into order with one
another. The lawyer, the physician, the laboratory investigator in
some branch of chemistry, the parent, the citizen interested in his own
locality, has a constant working stimulus to note and relate whatever
has to do with his concern. He unconsciously, from the motivation of his
occupation, reaches out for all relevant information, and holds to it.
The vocation acts as both magnet to attract and as glue to hold. Such
organization of knowledge is vital, because it has reference to needs;
it is so expressed and readjusted in action that it never becomes
stagnant. No classification, no selection and arrangement of facts,
which is consciously worked out for purely abstract ends, can ever
compare in solidity or effectiveness with that knit under the stress of
an occupation; in comparison the former sort is formal, superficial, and
cold.
3. The only adequate training for occupations is training through
occupations. The principle stated early in this book (see Chapter VI)
that the educative process is its own end, and that the only sufficient
preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the most of
immediately present life, applies in full force to the vocational phases
of education. The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times
is living--intellectual and moral growth. In childhood and youth, with
their relative freedom from economic stress, this fact is naked and
unconcealed. To predetermine some future occupation for which education
is to be a strict preparation is to injure the possibilities of present
development and thereby to reduce the adequacy of preparation for a
future right employment. To repeat the principle we have had occasion
to appeal to so often, such training may develop a machine-like skill in
routine lines (it is far from being sure to do so, since it may develop
distaste, aversion, and carelessness), but it will be at the expense of
those qualities of alert observation and coherent and ingenious planning
which make an occupation intellectually rewarding. In an autocratically
managed society, it is often a conscious object to prevent the
development of freedom and responsibility, a few do the planning and
ordering, the others follow directions and are deliberately confined to
narrow and prescribed channels of endeavor. However much such a scheme
may inure to the prestige and profit of a class, it is evident that it
limits the development of the subject class; hardens and confines the
opportunities for learning through experience of the master class, and
in both ways hampers the life of the society as a whole. (See ante, p.
260.)
The only alternative is that all the earlier preparation for vocations
be indirect rather than direct; namely, through engaging in those active
occupations which are indicated by the needs and interests of the pupil
at the time. Only in this way can there be on the part of the educator
and of the one educated a genuine discovery of personal aptitudes so
that the proper choice of a specialized pursuit in later life may be
indicated. Moreover, the discovery of capacity and aptitude will be a
constant process as long as growth continues. It is a conventional and
arbitrary view which assumes that discovery of the work to be chosen
for adult life is made once for all at some particular date. One has
discovered in himself, say, an interest, intellectual and social, in the
things which have to do with engineering and has decided to make that
his calling. At most, this only blocks out in outline the field in which
further growth is to be directed. It is a sort of rough sketch for use
in direction of further activities. It is the discovery of a profession
in the sense in which Columbus discovered America when he touched
its shores. Future explorations of an indefinitely more detailed and
extensive sort remain to be made. When educators conceive vocational
guidance as something which leads up to a definitive, irretrievable, and
complete choice, both education and the chosen vocation are likely to be
rigid, hampering further growth. In so far, the calling chosen will
be such as to leave the person concerned in a permanently subordinate
position, executing the intelligence of others who have a calling which
permits more flexible play and readjustment. And while ordinary usages
of language may not justify terming a flexible attitude of readjustment
a choice of a new and further calling, it is such in effect. If even
adults have to be on the lookout to see that their calling does not shut
down on them and fossilize them, educators must certainly be careful
that the vocational preparation of youth is such as to engage them in a
continuous reorganization of aims and methods.
3. Present Opportunities and Dangers. In the past, education has been
much more vocational in fact than in name. (i) The education of the
masses was distinctly utilitarian. It was called apprenticeship rather
than education, or else just learning from experience. The schools
devoted themselves to the three R's in the degree in which ability to go
through the forms of reading, writing, and figuring were common elements
in all kinds of labor. Taking part in some special line of work, under
the direction of others, was the out-of-school phase of this education.
The two supplemented each other; the school work in its narrow and
formal character was as much a part of apprenticeship to a calling as
that explicitly so termed.
(ii) To a considerable extent, the education of the dominant classes was
essentially vocational--it only happened that their pursuits of ruling
and of enjoying were not called professions. For only those things were
named vocations or employments which involved manual labor, laboring for
a reward in keep, or its commuted money equivalent, or the rendering of
personal services to specific persons. For a long time, for example, the
profession of the surgeon and physician ranked almost with that of the
valet or barber--partly because it had so much to do with the body,
and partly because it involved rendering direct service for pay to some
definite person. But if we go behind words, the business of directing
social concerns, whether politically or economically, whether in war or
peace, is as much a calling as anything else; and where education has
not been completely under the thumb of tradition, higher schools in the
past have been upon the whole calculated to give preparation for this
business. Moreover, display, the adornment of person, the kind of social
companionship and entertainment which give prestige, and the spending
of money, have been made into definite callings. Unconsciously to
themselves the higher institutions of learning have been made to
contribute to preparation for these employments. Even at present, what
is called higher education is for a certain class (much smaller than it
once was) mainly preparation for engaging effectively in these pursuits.
In other respects, it is largely, especially in the most advanced work,
training for the calling of teaching and special research. By a peculiar
superstition, education which has to do chiefly with preparation for
the pursuit of conspicuous idleness, for teaching, and for literary
callings, and for leadership, has been regarded as non-vocational and
even as peculiarly cultural. The literary training which indirectly
fits for authorship, whether of books, newspaper editorials, or magazine
articles, is especially subject to this superstition: many a teacher and
author writes and argues in behalf of a cultural and humane education
against the encroachments of a specialized practical education, without
recognizing that his own education, which he calls liberal, has been
mainly training for his own particular calling. He has simply got into
the habit of regarding his own business as essentially cultural and
of overlooking the cultural possibilities of other employments. At
the bottom of these distinctions is undoubtedly the tradition which
recognizes as employment only those pursuits where one is responsible
for his work to a specific employer, rather than to the ultimate
employer, the community.
There are, however, obvious causes for the present conscious emphasis
upon vocational education--for the disposition to make explicit and
deliberate vocational implications previously tacit. (i) In the first
place, there is an increased esteem, in democratic communities, of
whatever has to do with manual labor, commercial occupations, and the
rendering of tangible services to society. In theory, men and women are
now expected to do something in return for their support--intellectual
and economic--by society. Labor is extolled; service is a much-lauded
moral ideal. While there is still much admiration and envy of those who
can pursue lives of idle conspicuous display, better moral sentiment
condemns such lives. Social responsibility for the use of time and
personal capacity is more generally recognized than it used to be.
(ii) In the second place, those vocations which are specifically
industrial have gained tremendously in importance in the last century
and a half. Manufacturing and commerce are no longer domestic and local,
and consequently more or less incidental, but are world-wide. They
engage the best energies of an increasingly large number of persons. The
manufacturer, banker, and captain of industry have practically displaced
a hereditary landed gentry as the immediate directors of social affairs.
The problem of social readjustment is openly industrial, having to
do with the relations of capital and labor. The great increase in the
social importance of conspicuous industrial processes has inevitably
brought to the front questions having to do with the relationship of
schooling to industrial life. No such vast social readjustment could
occur without offering a challenge to an education inherited from
different social conditions, and without putting up to education new
problems.
(iii) In the third place, there is the fact already repeatedly
mentioned: Industry has ceased to be essentially an empirical,
rule-of-thumb procedure, handed down by custom. Its technique is now
technological: that is to say, based upon machinery resulting from
discoveries in mathematics, physics, chemistry, bacteriology, etc.
The economic revolution has stimulated science by setting problems
for solution, by producing greater intellectual respect for mechanical
appliances. And industry received back payment from science with
compound interest. As a consequence, industrial occupations have
infinitely greater intellectual content and infinitely larger cultural
possibilities than they used to possess. The demand for such education
as will acquaint workers with the scientific and social bases and
bearings of their pursuits becomes imperative, since those who are
without it inevitably sink to the role of appendages to the machines
they operate. Under the old regime all workers in a craft were
approximately equals in their knowledge and outlook. Personal knowledge
and ingenuity were developed within at least a narrow range, because
work was done with tools under the direct command of the worker. Now the
operator has to adjust himself to his machine, instead of his tool to
his own purposes. While the intellectual possibilities of industry
have multiplied, industrial conditions tend to make industry, for great
masses, less of an educative resource than it was in the days of hand
production for local markets. The burden of realizing the intellectual
possibilities inhering in work is thus thrown back on the school.
(iv) In the fourth place, the pursuit of knowledge has become, in
science, more experimental, less dependent upon literary tradition, and
less associated with dialectical methods of reasoning, and with symbols.
As a result, the subject matter of industrial occupation presents
not only more of the content of science than it used to, but greater
opportunity for familiarity with the method by which knowledge is made.
The ordinary worker in the factory is of course under too immediate
economic pressure to have a chance to produce a knowledge like that of
the worker in the laboratory. But in schools, association with machines
and industrial processes may be had under conditions where the chief
conscious concern of the students is insight. The separation of shop
and laboratory, where these conditions are fulfilled, is largely
conventional, the laboratory having the advantage of permitting the
following up of any intellectual interest a problem may suggest; the
shop the advantage of emphasizing the social bearings of the scientific
principle, as well as, with many pupils, of stimulating a livelier
interest.
(v) Finally, the advances which have been made in the psychology of
learning in general and of childhood in particular fall into line with
the increased importance of industry in life. For modern psychology
emphasizes the radical importance of primitive unlearned instincts of
exploring, experimentation, and "trying on." It reveals that learning is
not the work of something ready-made called mind, but that mind itself
is an organization of original capacities into activities having
significance. As we have already seen (ante, p. 204), in older pupils
work is to educative development of raw native activities what play is
for younger pupils. Moreover, the passage from play to work should be
gradual, not involving a radical change of attitude but carrying into
work the elements of play, plus continuous reorganization in behalf
of greater control. The reader will remark that these five points
practically resume the main contentions of the previous part of the
work. Both practically and philosophically, the key to the present
educational situation lies in a gradual reconstruction of school
materials and methods so as to utilize various forms of occupation
typifying social callings, and to bring out their intellectual and
moral content. This reconstruction must relegate purely literary
methods--including textbooks--and dialectical methods to the position of
necessary auxiliary tools in the intelligent development of consecutive
and cumulative activities.
But our discussion has emphasized the fact that this educational
reorganization cannot be accomplished by merely trying to give a
technical preparation for industries and professions as they now
operate, much less by merely reproducing existing industrial conditions
in the school. The problem is not that of making the schools an adjunct
to manufacture and commerce, but of utilizing the factors of industry
to make school life more active, more full of immediate meaning, more
connected with out-of-school experience. The problem is not easy of
solution. There is a standing danger that education will perpetuate
the older traditions for a select few, and effect its adjustment to the
newer economic conditions more or less on the basis of acquiescence
in the untransformed, unrationalized, and unsocialized phases of our
defective industrial regime. Put in concrete terms, there is danger that
vocational education will be interpreted in theory and practice as trade
education: as a means of securing technical efficiency in specialized
future pursuits. Education would then become an instrument of
perpetuating unchanged the existing industrial order of society,
instead of operating as a means of its transformation. The desired
transformation is not difficult to define in a formal way. It signifies
a society in which every person shall be occupied in something which
makes the lives of others better worth living, and which accordingly
makes the ties which bind persons together more perceptible--which
breaks down the barriers of distance between them. It denotes a state
of affairs in which the interest of each in his work is uncoerced and
intelligent: based upon its congeniality to his own aptitudes. It goes
without saying that we are far from such a social state; in a literal
and quantitative sense, we may never arrive at it. But in principle, the
quality of social changes already accomplished lies in this direction.
There are more ample resources for its achievement now than ever there
have been before. No insuperable obstacles, given the intelligent will
for its realization, stand in the way.
Success or failure in its realization depends more upon the adoption of
educational methods calculated to effect the change than upon anything
else. For the change is essentially a change in the quality of mental
disposition--an educative change. This does not mean that we can change
character and mind by direct instruction and exhortation, apart from
a change in industrial and political conditions. Such a conception
contradicts our basic idea that character and mind are attitudes of
participative response in social affairs. But it does mean that we may
produce in schools a projection in type of the society we should like
to realize, and by forming minds in accord with it gradually modify the
larger and more recalcitrant features of adult society. Sentimentally,
it may seem harsh to say that the greatest evil of the present regime is
not found in poverty and in the suffering which it entails, but in the
fact that so many persons have callings which make no appeal to them,
which are pursued simply for the money reward that accrues. For such
callings constantly provoke one to aversion, ill will, and a desire
to slight and evade. Neither men's hearts nor their minds are in their
work. On the other hand, those who are not only much better off in
worldly goods, but who are in excessive, if not monopolistic, control of
the activities of the many are shut off from equality and generality of
social intercourse. They are stimulated to pursuits of indulgence and
display; they try to make up for the distance which separates them from
others by the impression of force and superior possession and enjoyment
which they can make upon others.
It would be quite possible for a narrowly conceived scheme of vocational
education to perpetuate this division in a hardened form. Taking its
stand upon a dogma of social predestination, it would assume that some
are to continue to be wage earners under economic conditions like
the present, and would aim simply to give them what is termed a trade
education--that is, greater technical efficiency. Technical proficiency
is often sadly lacking, and is surely desirable on all accounts--not
merely for the sake of the production of better goods at less cost, but
for the greater happiness found in work. For no one cares for what one
cannot half do. But there is a great difference between a proficiency
limited to immediate work, and a competency extended to insight into its
social bearings; between efficiency in carrying out the plans of others
and in one forming one's own. At present, intellectual and emotional
limitation characterizes both the employing and the employed class.
While the latter often have no concern with their occupation beyond the
money return it brings, the former's outlook may be confined to
profit and power. The latter interest generally involves much greater
intellectual initiation and larger survey of conditions. For it involves
the direction and combination of a large number of diverse factors,
while the interest in wages is restricted to certain direct muscular
movements. But none the less there is a limitation of intelligence to
technical and non-humane, non-liberal channels, so far as the work does
not take in its social bearings. And when the animating motive is desire
for private profit or personal power, this limitation is inevitable. In
fact, the advantage in immediate social sympathy and humane disposition
often lies with the economically unfortunate, who have not experienced
the hardening effects of a one-sided control of the affairs of others.
Any scheme for vocational education which takes its point of departure
from the industrial regime that now exists, is likely to assume and
to perpetuate its divisions and weaknesses, and thus to become an
instrument in accomplishing the feudal dogma of social predestination.
Those who are in a position to make their wishes good, will demand a
liberal, a cultural occupation, and one which fits for directive power
the youth in whom they are directly interested. To split the system, and
give to others, less fortunately situated, an education conceived mainly
as specific trade preparation, is to treat the schools as an agency
for transferring the older division of labor and leisure, culture and
service, mind and body, directed and directive class, into a society
nominally democratic. Such a vocational education inevitably discounts
the scientific and historic human connections of the materials and
processes dealt with. To include such things in narrow trade education
would be to waste time; concern for them would not be "practical." They
are reserved for those who have leisure at command--the leisure due to
superior economic resources. Such things might even be dangerous to the
interests of the controlling class, arousing discontent or ambitions
"beyond the station" of those working under the direction of others. But
an education which acknowledges the full intellectual and social meaning
of a vocation would include instruction in the historic background
of present conditions; training in science to give intelligence and
initiative in dealing with material and agencies of production; and
study of economics, civics, and politics, to bring the future worker
into touch with the problems of the day and the various methods proposed
for its improvement. Above all, it would train power of readaptation
to changing conditions so that future workers would not become blindly
subject to a fate imposed upon them. This ideal has to contend not only
with the inertia of existing educational traditions, but also with the
opposition of those who are entrenched in command of the industrial
machinery, and who realize that such an educational system if made
general would threaten their ability to use others for their own ends.
But this very fact is the presage of a more equitable and enlightened
social order, for it gives evidence of the dependence of social
reorganization upon educational reconstruction. It is accordingly an
encouragement to those believing in a better order to undertake the
promotion of a vocational education which does not subject youth to
the demands and standards of the present system, but which utilizes its
scientific and social factors to develop a courageous intelligence, and
to make intelligence practical and executive.
Summary. A vocation signifies any form of continuous activity which
renders service to others and engages personal powers in behalf of the
accomplishment of results. The question of the relation of vocation to
education brings to a focus the various problems previously discussed
regarding the connection of thought with bodily activity; of individual
conscious development with associated life; of theoretical culture with
practical behavior having definite results; of making a livelihood
with the worthy enjoyment of leisure. In general, the opposition to
recognition of the vocational phases of life in education (except for
the utilitarian three R's in elementary schooling) accompanies the
conservation of aristocratic ideals of the past. But, at the present
juncture, there is a movement in behalf of something called vocational
training which, if carried into effect, would harden these ideas into
a form adapted to the existing industrial regime. This movement would
continue the traditional liberal or cultural education for the few
economically able to enjoy it, and would give to the masses a narrow
technical trade education for specialized callings, carried on under the
control of others. This scheme denotes, of course, simply a perpetuation
of the older social division, with its counterpart intellectual and
moral dualisms. But it means its continuation under conditions where it
has much less justification for existence. For industrial life is now
so dependent upon science and so intimately affects all forms of social
intercourse, that there is an opportunity to utilize it for development
of mind and character. Moreover, a right educational use of it would
react upon intelligence and interest so as to modify, in connection with
legislation and administration, the socially obnoxious features of the
present industrial and commercial order. It would turn the increasing
fund of social sympathy to constructive account, instead of leaving it a
somewhat blind philanthropic sentiment.
It would give those who engage in industrial callings desire and ability
to share in social control, and ability to become masters of their
industrial fate. It would enable them to saturate with meaning the
technical and mechanical features which are so marked a feature of our
machine system of production and distribution. So much for those who now
have the poorer economic opportunities. With the representatives of the
more privileged portion of the community, it would increase sympathy
for labor, create a disposition of mind which can discover the
culturing elements in useful activity, and increase a sense of social
responsibility. The crucial position of the question of vocational
education at present is due, in other words, to the fact that it
concentrates in a specific issue two fundamental questions:--Whether
intelligence is best exercised apart from or within activity which puts
nature to human use, and whether individual culture is best secured
under egoistic or social conditions. No discussion of details is
undertaken in this chapter, because this conclusion but summarizes the
discussion of the previous chapters, XV to XXII, inclusive.