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.
