Wage Earning and Education Part 6

CHAPTER X

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Very few of the army of young people who become wage earners each year take up the occupations in which they engage as the result of any conscious selection of their own or of their parents. They drift into some job aimlessly and ignorantly, following the line of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little future beyond a bare livelihood.

THE WORK OF THE VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR

The plan now followed in the technical high schools of the city, by which one teacher in the school specially qualified for such work is charged with the duty of advising pupils who leave school and aiding them in securing desirable employment, could be adapted to the junior high school, where the need for service of this kind is even greater than in the technical high schools. Such work requires men who have had some contact with industrial conditions, and who possess sound judgment, common sense, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the local industries. If the curriculum embraces the course in "Industrial Information" suggested in a previous chapter, the teacher of this subject might well be designated as vocational counselor for the boys in the school. A course similar in nature should be provided for the girls and a woman teacher selected to advise them when they leave school. Considerable difficulty probably will be experienced in securing women teachers competent to a.s.sume this task, but any wide-awake teacher who will devote some attention to published studies of industrial conditions and get in touch with the local organizations engaged in the investigation of wage earning employments, such as the Consumers' League and the Girls' Vocation Bureau, can soon acquire a fund of information that will enable her to offer valuable suggestions and advice to girls who expect to become wage earners.

The vocational counselor must guard against conventional thinking and the ma.s.s of "inspirational" nonsense which forms the main contribution to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first, "Be good;" and second, "Get ahead." The pupils are told about well-known men who became famous or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules.

Occasionally there is some prattle about the "dignity of labor," as a rule meaningless in the light of our current ideas of success. We do not think of a well-paid artisan as "successful." His success begins when he is promoted to office work, or becomes a foreman.

The inherent difficulty with ideals of success which demand that the worker become a boss of somebody else is that the world of industry needs only a relatively small number of bosses. Theoretically it is possible for any individual to reach the eminence of boss-ship. In real life less than one-tenth of the boys who enter industrial employment can rise above the level of the journeyman artisan, at least before later middle age, because only about that proportion of bosses are needed.

The task of the vocational counselor will consist in putting the pupil's feet on the first steps of the ladder rather than showing him rosy pictures of the top of it. For the great majority the top means no more than decent wages. This, after all, is a worthy ambition, frequently requiring the worker's best efforts for its realization.

THE GIRLS' VOCATION BUREAU

The Girls' Vocation Bureau, for the placement of girls and women in wage-earning employment, has been in operation about six years. At present it is under the general charge of the state and munic.i.p.al employment bureau, although part of the funds for the support of the bureau is raised through private subscription. From July, 1914, to July, 1915, the Bureau secured positions for nearly 11,000 girls and women. Of these approximately 12 per cent were girls under 21. In many instances only temporary employment is secured, although efforts are made to place the girls in permanent positions. More girls are placed in office positions than in any other line of work, but a considerable proportion take employment in factories, domestic service, restaurants, and stores.

A careful record is kept of each applicant's qualifications, home conditions, the names of employers, etc. The Bureau endeavors to keep in touch with the girls after they are placed through follow-up reports and visits by members of the office staff or by volunteer investigators.

This spring every school in the city was visited by representatives of the Bureau in the endeavor to interest princ.i.p.als in the work of placement, and arrangements were made for sending to the Bureau lists of the girls who were expected to leave school permanently. This effort met with slight success, as only about 100 girls were reported from all the schools in the city, although the number of girls leaving school each year from the elementary grades alone is over 2,000. In all cases the girls were visited by a representative of the Bureau and urged to return to school, or if they were determined to seek employment the advantages of registering in the Bureau were brought to their attention.

It is to be hoped that more effective cooperation between the Bureau and the schools can be established and that plans for a placement bureau for boys similar in method and aim to the Girls' Bureau may be realized. The matter of placement is the most difficult part of the vocational counselor's duties, and an arrangement whereby the vocational guidance departments of the various schools might serve as feeders to a central placement bureau would probably in the long run give the best results. Both guidance and placement are new things in the public schools and efficient methods of administration can be worked out only through trial and experiment.

CHAPTER XI

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The future occupations of the children in school will correspond very closely to those of the native-born adult population. The occupational distribution of the city's working population therefore const.i.tutes the best guide as to the kinds of industrial training which can be undertaken profitably by the school system.

2. Industrial training in school has to do chiefly with preparation for work in the skilled trades. Training for semi-skilled occupations can be given more effectively and cheaply in the factories than in the schools.

3. As a rule, industrial training is not practicable in elementary schools, for the reason that the number of boys in the average elementary school who are likely to enter the skilled trades and who are also old enough to profit by industrial training is too small to permit the organization of cla.s.ses.

4. The most important contribution to vocational education the elementary schools can make consists in getting the children through the course fast enough so that two or three years before the end of the compulsory attendance period they will enter an intermediate or vocational school where some kind of industrial training is possible.

5. The survey recommends the establishment of a general industrial course in the junior high school, made up chiefly of instruction in the applications of mathematics, drawing, physics, and chemistry to the commoner industrial processes. The course should also include the study of economic and working conditions in the princ.i.p.al industrial occupations.

6. One or two vocational schools equipped to offer specialized trade training for boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are needed.

At present a gap of from one to two years exists between the end of the compulsory attendance period and the entrance age in practically all the skilled trades, which could well be employed in direct preparation for trade work. Such schools would relieve the first and second year cla.s.ses of the technical high schools of many pupils these schools do not want and cannot adequately provide for. General as well as special courses should be offered, although pupils should be encouraged to select a particular occupation and devote at least one year to intensive preparation for it.

7. The survey favors the extension of the compulsory attendance period for boys to the age of 16. The industries of Cleveland have little or nothing worth while to offer boys below this age.

8. The best form of trade-extension training is that provided in a few establishments which maintain apprentice schools in their plants. This plan is feasible only in large establishments. It will never take care of more than a small proportion of the young workers who need supplementary technical training.

9. Plans for trade-extension training of apprentices depending on the cooperation of employers have met with slight success. The principle difficulty is that the sacrifices they involve are borne by a relatively small number of employers while the benefits are reaped by the industry in general. Either the industry as a whole or the community should bear the cost of such training.

10. The vocational interests of young workers and the social interests of the community demand the establishment of a system of continuation training for all young people in employment, up to the age of 18 years. The cla.s.ses should be held during working hours and attendance should be compulsory.

11. The enrollment in the trade cla.s.ses of the night schools is far below what it should be in a city as large as Cleveland. The relatively small result now obtained is not the fault of the schools, but is due mainly to the fact that the field of vocational evening instruction is treated by the school system as a mere side line of the technical high schools.

12. The survey recommends the organization of all forms of continuation, night vocational, and day vocational training under centralized full-time leadership. Only in this way can there be secured a type of organization and administration sufficiently elastic and adaptable to meet the widely varying needs of the working cla.s.ses.

13. Industrial training for girls will consist in the main of preparation for the sewing trades. Practically no other industrial occupations in which large numbers of women are employed possess sufficient technical content to warrant the establishment of training courses in the schools. The survey recommends a practical course of needle instruction in the junior high school and the introduction in the vocational schools of specialized courses in dressmaking, power machine operating, and trade millinery for the older girls who wish to enter these trades.

14. The present experiment in vocational guidance and placement should be extended as rapidly as possible. Courses in vocational information should be offered in the junior high school and vocational counsellors appointed to advise pupils in the selection of their future vocations and aid them in securing desirable employment when they leave school.

The full measure of success in this work demands better cooperation with outside agencies on the part of teachers and princ.i.p.als than has been secured up to the present time.

CHAPTER XII

SUMMARY OF REPORT ON BOYS AND GIRLS IN COMMERCIAL WORK

Particular attention is given throughout this report to the differences which exist between boys and girls in commercial employment with respect to the conditions which govern success and advancement. The majority of boys begin as messengers or office boys and subsequently become clerks or do bookkeeping work. As men they remain in these latter positions or, in at least an equal number of cases, pa.s.s on into the productive or administrative end of business.

The majority of girls are stenographers, or to a less extent, a.s.sistants in bookkeeping or clerical work. Boys' work may be expected to take on the characteristics of the business that employs them; girls' work remains in essentials unchanged even in totally changed surroundings. Boys' work within limits is progressive; girls' work in its general type--with individual exceptions--is static. Boys as a rule cannot stay at the same kind of work and advance; girls as a rule stay at the same kind of work whether or not they advance. Boys in any position are expected to be qualifying themselves for "the job ahead,"

but for girls that is not the case. Boys may expect to make a readjustment with every step in advancement. Each new position brings them to a new situation and into a new relation to the business. Girls receive salary advancement for increasingly responsible work, but any change in work is likely to be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible if they remain in the same place of employment. If they change to another place, those who are stenographers have a slight readjustment to make in getting accustomed to new terms and to the peculiarities of the new persons who dictate to them. Bookkeeping a.s.sistants may encounter different systems, but their part of the work will be so directed and planned that it cannot be said to necessitate difficult adaptation on their part. The work of clerical a.s.sistants is so simple and so nearly mechanical that the question of adjustment does not enter. These girl workers do not find that the change of position or firm brings them necessarily into a new relation to the business.

Even moderate success is denied to a boy if he has not adaptability and the capacity to grasp business ideas and methods; but a comparatively high degree of success could be attained by a girl who possessed neither of these qualifications. A boy, however, who has no specific training which he can apply directly and definitely at work would be far more likely to obtain a good opening and promotion than a girl without it would be.

The range of a boy's possible future occupations is as wide as the field of business. He cannot at first be trained specifically as a girl can be because he does not know what business will do with him or what he wants to do with business. The girl's choice is limited by custom. She can prepare herself definitely for stenography, bookkeeping, and machine operating and be sure that she is preparing for just the opportunity--and the whole opportunity--that business offers to her. Her very limitation of opportunity makes preliminary choice and training a definitely possible thing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Diagram 1.--Boys and girls under 18 years of age in office work in Cleveland. Data from report of Ohio Industrial Commission, 1915]

The difference between boys and girls begins at the beginning. Boys are given a larger share of the positions which the youngest worker can fill. Diagram 1 ill.u.s.trates this and the figures of the United States Census for 1910 clearly corroborate it. Boys are taken for such work and taken younger than girls, not merely because the law permits them to go to work at an earlier age, but also because business itself intends to round their training. Girls, on the contrary, are expected to enter completely trained for definite positions. This fact alone would in most cases compel them to be older. Furthermore, because boys in first positions are looked upon as potential clerks, miscellaneous jobs about the office have for them a two-fold value.

They give the employer a chance to weed out unpromising material; and they give boys an opportunity to find themselves and to gather ideas about the business and methods which they may be able to make use of in later adjustments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Diagram 2.--Men and women 18 years of age and over in clerical and administrative work in offices in Cleveland. U.S. Census, 1910]

Diagram 2 shows that girls' training, if it is to meet the present situation, must prepare for a future in specialized clerical work; boys' future must apparently be thought of as in mostly the clerical and administrative fields. The term "clerical" as here used, covers bookkeepers, cashiers and accountants, stenographers and typists, clerks and a miscellaneous group of younger workers such as messengers, office boys, etc. "Administrative" covers proprietors, officials, managers, supervisors, and agents, but it does not include salespeople.

The usual commercial course gives impartially to boys and girls two traditional "subjects" which they are to apply in wage earning whatever part of the wage earning field they may enter. These are stenography and bookkeeping. The evidence collected during the survey shows that these are rarely found in combination except in small offices. Of the men employed who are stenographers, the majority are of two kinds: (1) those who use stenography incidentally with their other and more important work as clerks, and (2) those for whom stenography is but a stepping-stone to another kind of position. The only firms which make a practice of offering ordinary stenographic positions for boys are those which restrict themselves to male employees for every kind of work.

Independent stenographic work of various kinds is of course open to the s.e.xes alike. In Cleveland there are a few women in court stenography. The 10 public stenographers' offices were found upon inquiry to include two men and 10 women. No figures regarding convention reporters were obtainable. In the positions of the bookkeeping group also there was some s.e.x difference. The accountants, bookkeepers, cashiers, pay-masters and other persons of responsibility are, in large offices where both s.e.xes work together, much more likely to be men than women; the a.s.sistants who work with these may be of either s.e.x, but girls and women are likely to make up the greater portion. Of the small office this is less generally true. Boys who do machine operating are usually clerks whose machine work, as in the case of stenography, is merely an adjunct to other work; with girls machine operating is either the whole of the position or the most important part of it.

The essential difference between the clerkship which boys for the most part hold and the general clerical work which girls do is that the boys' work is unified and is a definite, separate responsible part of the business, usually in line for promotion to some other clerkship; the girls' is a miscellany of more or less unrelated jobs and is not a preparation for specific promotion.