Part 6

Mary Schenck confided to her teacher that she wanted to take up stenography and typewriting because she “knew a girl who had a good job in that line.” A vocational counselor called at her home and talked with her mother. During the visit it developed that Mary’s mother and grandmother were both successful dressmakers and that the girl herself had obtained very good marks in her sewing in the grammar school. In fact, she had made the dresses for her two little sisters for the past two years. As a result of this information the counselor talked again with Mary and suggested that she take up sewing in the school. Mary did so, even going out to work in a shop for a while. Then she started in business for herself. Today she is employing two assistants. Thus by a little common sense and thought a girl was prevented from entering the overcrowded field of stenography in which she probably would not have been very successful and started in a line of work for which she possessed natural ability and real love.

What is a vocational counselor? There are over a hundred of them in the public schools of Boston. They are regular teachers, designated by the school principals to advise and co-operate with boys and girls leaving school for work. Two years ago an agreement between the Boston School Committee and the Vocation Bureau called for their appointment and they have been meeting twice a month ever since to discuss the educational opportunities of the city, the vocational problems of the children and to confer with employers and others interested. Let us see just how their influence is made to count in the lives of children.

Vocational guidance in a school involves three definite objects:

Guiding the child while in the school.

Guiding the child after leaving school.

Following up the child, i.e., ascertaining what becomes of him after he goes into work.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy Massachusetts Child Labor Committee._

THEY NEVER KNEW A VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR.

There is a growing belief among those who are exploring the twilight zone between education and industry that what youngsters like these need is not more help in finding jobs but more and better training before they find them. ]

In the first place the ordinary high or vocational school offers a choice of several lines of work, and it is highly advisable to have the child make a wise choice as to the line he is to pursue. The best way is to have a general course offered at the beginning during the pursuit of which the vocational counselor studies the child and confers with the parents as to the child’s natural ability, etc. This combined judgment of counselor and parent is sure to result in a much wiser choice of work in the school than if the matter had been left to the discretion of the child, who is too immature to see the various occupations in their true relationship. Parents and counselor may meet at the school, or the counselor may go to the home. By going into the home discoveries are often made which could not have come from only seeing the child and parent at school.

During the school course it is often advisable to change a pupil from one course to another. For example, Clara Bartlett had been taking the millinery course with the intention of entering the trade on graduation. Owing to her mother’s death, she found that she must become her father’s housekeeper at the end of the school year. Accordingly, after talking the matter over with the vocational counselor, Clara changed from the millinery to the domestic science course and obtained a very good training in cooking and housewifery. The result was that when her school life was over she was able to enter upon her new work as housekeeper with a marked degree of success.

Sometimes it is necessary for a child to change from one school to another in order that he or she may receive the best training for a particular need. This implies a very close and cordial relationship between the various kinds of vocational schools in the city. Thus a girl who can give only one year to the preparation for a trade should spend that year in a school where she will get intensive work in that trade. If she is not advised, there is danger that she will spend her year in a school which offers a general course in preparation for the trade course, which will then follow in the next two or three years. In other words, it is necessary to take into consideration the girl’s outside obligations and adapt her school life to them as closely as possible.

Again, it is the duty of the vocational counselor to see that the graduates of the school are given the most auspicious start on life’s journey. This may imply definitely organized placement work or it may mean simply making recommendations. If the work of placement is definitely organized it should be done on a broad social basis, for it may mean finding a position for one girl in a millinery establishment and guiding another into a higher institution of learning.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy Massachusetts Child Labor Committee._

HE LEAPED BLINDLY

And his only school now is the school of hard knocks, his only teacher a factory boss. ]

If the work of placement is to be done by the vocational school, great insight into the true ability of the girl under actual business conditions may be obtained by “part time” work. For instance, Susan Williams, who is taking the course in dressmaking, was placed by the school in a near-by establishment where she spent her afternoons and Saturdays. Here she obtained a very definite idea of trade conditions, also earned a little money to help with her expenses and secured for herself by her own desirable personality and excellent workmanship a permanent position on graduation. In the same way Josephine Riley, who was taking a course in designing, was placed by the school in an embroidery shop where she did work in designing on Saturdays during the latter part of her course. She too worked herself into a permanent position for which she had demonstrated her qualifications.

Occasion often arises to provide a girl with an opportunity to earn enough money to keep her in school until graduation. Sometimes the work found is similar to that pursued by the girl in the school. Often it is not, however, for many times the girl can earn more money in some other kind of work. Frances Newton, who is taking designing, can earn more money by acting as assistant in an office on Saturdays than she possibly could in any designing establishment owing to her present limited knowledge of her trade. Thus she is tided over a financial crisis without being deprived of her school work.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy Massachusetts Child Labor Committee_

ONE OF THE “BLIND ALLEY” TRADES

This group is declared to be typical of every city and town in Massachusetts. ]

The third line of work for the vocational counselor in a vocational school is that of “following up.” This is the only way of ascertaining whether schools are fitting the children for those walks of life for which they are attempting to train them. If the school is doing this satisfactorily _we want_ to know it, and if it is not doing it _we ought_ to know it. The child may be followed up by a regular system of reporting by mail, by visits to employes and by alumni meetings. Alumni meetings are particularly profitable when turned into experience meetings at which the children tell what they have been doing with especial emphasis on the relation of their training in the school and their work in the world. In this way schools can keep in touch with their graduates and create a spirit of friendly intercourse even after they leave. The best advertisement a school can have is an enthusiastic body of loyal graduates.

The work of the vocational assistant in a vocational or other school is thus one of adjustment; adjusting children to the right course in school; adjusting them to the right course after they leave school; and adjusting the relationship between the school and the home, and that between the school and the business life.

If this work is needed in a vocational school how much more it must be needed in a regular school! For it is an adjustment which tends always toward keeping the children in school, but if they must leave, insists upon seeing that they are at least given a helping hand toward that new life which is so different from school life and so bewildering to the youthful mind.

There is plentiful testimony that fathers and mothers now turn to the Boston schools as never before for advice and help in their perplexities concerning their children’s future. It has been most pathetic in the past to see how little parents knew of real industrial conditions, and of what educational and vocational opportunities existed in Boston, entirely within their reach. Our experience has been that the vast majority of parents have heretofore known nothing about the various high schools and their specialties, except what they have learned through the vocational work of the school itself. The attitude of the parents when visited in the homes, makes it appear only too clear that practically all welcome such guidance and are anxious to avail themselves of it.

These, then, are pictures of the vocational counselor at work. What is the machinery behind her? Every school in the city has at least one teacher who has given her time freely to this service. In some schools committees of teachers have formed voluntarily to take thought over the dropping out of boys and girls, and to organize that assistance which a school can give to parents and children in administering to the life-career motive. The work of the vocational counselors has been a labor of love. Nobody has expected that the occupational talks to which they have listened twice a month would equip them for effective vocational guidance. But no group of persons can listen to intimate discussions of the shoe industry, department stores, machine industries, stenography and typewriting, mechanical and civil engineering, building trades and needle trades—which have been actual subjects in these meetings—without being better fitted than before to advise and guide those who are making hit-or-miss guesses at work in the fond hope that it will pay well and that it is suited to their particular capacities.

The Vocation Bureau, through whose influence the Boston schools were induced to introduce vocational guidance, does not aim at the placing of individual boys and girls in particular jobs. It endeavors to study the causes of the waste which attends the passing of unguided and untrained young people from school to work, and to assist by experiments to prevent this waste. It aims to work out the problem of co-operation between schools and occupations, for the purpose of enabling both to make a more socially profitable use of human talents and opportunities. It publishes studies of vocations from the viewpoint of their educational and other efficiency requirements. It conducts a training course for qualified men and women who desire to prepare themselves for vocational guidance in the public school system, philanthropic institutions, and business establishments. Its interests therefore lie both in the direction of personal service to the individual and of constructive experiment and research in the field of education and employment.

A capable investigator spends his entire time in studying occupations open to boys and young men, what these occupations require, and what they lead to. From three months to a year is devoted to each study. The result of these inquiries is published in tentative pamphlet form. Such pamphlets have already been published on the machinist, banking, the baker, confectionery manufacture, the architect, the landscape architect, the grocer, the department store, and the profession of law.

In each of these studies it is sought to supply parents, teachers and others interested with the material necessary to an intelligent conception of the occupation, its needs, demands, opportunities, relative desirability and its training, requirements and possibilities. It is further sought to analyze the relation of aptitudes, interests and habits to modern industrial demands, and thus to lay an adequate foundation for a system of training that regards social as well as economic needs.

The Vocation Bureau has constantly borne in mind that a sound development of vocational guidance requires that contact with the employments be more than mere onlooking. To leave the employer out of such a plan, to fail to profit by his criticism and point of view, is to omit one of the most important elements in such guidance. The bureau has therefore been in close touch with a large number of industrial and commercial concerns in sympathy with its purposes. Manufacturers have approved its methods, and have even supported its demands for more thorough-going protection and opportunity for the young worker.

To understand better the employer’s relation to vocational guidance, the bureau organized last year a conference of employment managers. Men representing a score or more of important manufacturing and business establishments have met regularly for informal discussions. In December an employment managers’ association was formed. One of the most important fruits of this close contact is the possibility of formulating plans for organizing the generally chaotic entrance into occupations. It is now planned to undertake some experiments in placement work in co-operation with several social agencies and a group of employers. The bureau believes that the country is ready to undertake through responsible agencies, having in mind primarily the needs of young workers, experiments to point the way to some less wasteful and costly method of bringing together what has been called “the manless job and the jobless man.”

Persons of constructive imagination throughout the country, alert to the needs of coming generations of workers, and interested in the reforms which must succeed if our future citizens are to enter into their inheritance, have come to recognize that a new co-ordinating agency is needed—an agency which shall secure team play in home, school and occupation, to the end that a richer vocational life of all the workers may be realized. It is likely that in the near future there will not only be for the work in the public schools a specially trained vocational counselor, but that there will also be in business and manufacturing establishments a new type of employment manager, especially trained and empowered to develop in the worker not only the efficiency which the employer requires, but also that efficiency which society requires. Through the working together of such employment managers and school counselors, society will gain an important factor in making for its progress.

HOUSEKEEPING CENTERS IN SETTLEMENTS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

MABEL HYDE KITTREDGE

[Illustration:

THE HOME OF A GRADUATE ]

Home-making has not kept pace with our great industrial advancement. The average home-maker of today is less thoroughly prepared for her business in life than the woman of a generation ago. It would seem that she considers the home-making profession of much less importance than such occupations as curling feathers and making shirtwaists. The latter has a commercial value, the former has not; and we have learned to weigh things by their money value. Then, again, competition has become the one incentive to work. Tie badly the million little knots in the willow plume and the next girl in the line gets the job. Feed the baby with poor milk, let the air in the room become polluted, ignorantly buy and ignorantly cook, and no one takes the work from you. Why worry over the way it is done?

There are many reasons why the woman of a generation or two ago was a better home-maker than the woman of today. The home duties today often are only part of the daily work of a woman’s life. The housekeeper today is (in millions of cases) a wage earner as well. She cannot be as single-minded as the old-fashioned mother whose only thought was the home. Schools, newspapers, settlements, the trend of the times, all fill the mind with outside interests. These things are important, but they have a tendency to crowd out domestic responsibilities and make women restless under the homely tasks. Suffrage we will have, and we must interest and educate women until we do have it; but, at the same time, the dishes have to be washed clean, the beds have to be aired and made well, and the babies have to eat nourishing food, or we’ll have an anaemic, poor race to govern when we get the suffrage.

Is it the fault of the home-maker of today if weakness instead of strength is the inheritance of her children, and will it be the fault of the home-maker of tomorrow if she bears and rears a weak race? If household administration is to take its place in the front rank with the other professions of the day, educators as well as women must wake up and realize that the whole housekeeping question is dependent upon scientific management, efficiency, skilled labor, and effective tools.

There are those who say that this training should be taught at home, and in many cases our school children, whether foreign or American, do come from homes where the mothers are good housekeepers according to their light; but the last generation cannot teach the coming one everything. As Samuel Merwin says in a recent book, “the accumulated experience of the ages is the grandmothers, and yet she is authority no longer; since her day science has stepped in. To her mind the gulf between herself and her daughter is nothing but the old gulf between age and youth. She is wrong. It is a million miles wide and if the mother keeps to the old way she risks the life of her child.”

Again, home-making must be made interesting. The man regards his business as a pleasure. He plays it as he plays a game, and he plays to win. And so housekeeping has become a “game, not a duty.” In a natural, enjoyable way our girls should be taught to play the game of household administration. Home duties are not mere duties any longer; the old way of “doing up the housework” made every act an end in itself. Now every act is simply a means to an end; every move is important,—the way the dishes are washed, the beds made, the cooking done, may win or lose the game. In the child’s mind must be a perfect plan; to work out that plan correctly will bring health, order and happiness as the prize.

The world must stop trying to make progress by walking backward. We must make room for a vaster scheme of household economics than the last generation ever dreamed of. The home must be made to catch up with the factory, the store and the office, and we know that in comparison with these industries home-making has lagged behind. Now—suddenly—we realize that feeble-minded children are becoming more numerous, that malnutrition in school children is becoming so great that the highest standard of study is impossible and that street life is taking the place of home life. We wake up and ask what we can do to make the home-maker realize that she is responsible for these things.

But is she?

Educators who admit that life and health are absolutely dependent on the home have failed to find room in the educational scheme to provide this home knowledge. There were in the elementary schools in New York city last year 388,000 girls. Only 43,500 of them were in cooking classes. That means that 344,500 girls in this one year never had a suggestion given them that home-making was a profession worth studying. Only seventh and eighth grade girls are permitted to have cooking lessons, and that means that during the entire grammar school course a few fortunate girls received nine full days of domestic science instruction. I say a few, for out of 560 elementary schools only 170 are equipped for cooking; and for these 170 schools, there are only 135 domestic science teachers—some cooking rooms are closed altogether and others running on half time. A girl is fortunate if she happens not to be in one of the 390 schools where no instruction in domestic science is given, and still more fortunate if she stays in one of the few selected schools until she reaches the seventh grade. There she first learns that home-making is worth studying. But 20,000 left school last year before this grade was reached.

Our public school children may be cash girls, or sales women, or factory hands. These things may or may not be; but one thing is certain, and that is that every girl must live in a home and take her part in home responsibilities.

[Illustration:

A MODEL FLAT

The little children of the neighborhood come in to play before lesson time. ]

The New York board of education would be the first to admit that it is the home more than anything else that gives, to children health or feebleness, life or death, happiness or wretchedness and yet they and we calmly let this neglect go on.

The school lunch committee made an investigation a short time ago to ascertain whether malnutrition was as great an evil as we feared. Two thousand and fifty-one children were thoroughly examined. Half of these from an Irish neighborhood, half from an Italian. They were selected at random from the four lower grades. Two hundred and eighty-three or 13 per cent were found to be suffering from pronounced malnutrition. Their homes were visited. With the exception of eighteen tea and coffee was a part of the daily diet. Sixty families had no prepared luncheon or dinner at home. One hundred and fifty-seven were supplying the wrong or insufficient food and it was found to be more ignorance than poverty that was the cause of this condition.

If we take 13 per cent of 388,000 children we have 29,846 poorly nourished girls who are not even taught that the heavy, dull, sick feeling is due to the wrong kind of food. How can we place other knowledge ahead of this? When we watch this large, half fed army of children marching on to take up a woman’s battle with life it does seem as if we had been asleep to our responsibilities.

We must establish an adequate twentieth century theory of household economics and then we must put this within the reach of every girl in our public schools.