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. 102)
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. 304.)
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.
