COOPERATION IN VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.

Reuel H. Sylvester, Ph. D., Des Moines Health Center,
Des Moines, Iowa.

Scarcely a day passes but there come to the psychological laboratory of the Des Moines Health Center, persons who are, or who have been, cared for in a state institution. A lot of our correspondence has to do with these persons, so I am continually in touch with a number of the superintendents and members of the staffs. As the result,when planning this paper, I thought of many things that I would like to say. After thinking over a number of points and sorting them out, I had no difficulty in choosing this subject, "Cooperation in Vocational Guidance'. It touches nearly all of our mutual problems.

Most of the correspondence has to do with determining what to advise, or how to assist discharged persons individually to make a living and to get on in the community. Back of this we must have information as to their records in the institutions, their achievements there, their weaknesses and their abilities as seen by those who had charge of them there. Most important of all is our learning what was done there by way of directing toward a vocation and of planning ahead for them. Occasionally we get a communication on this unsolicited and our Cooperation is sought. We in turn, send many reports to institutions, but there should be more information passed back and forth. It should cover vocational guidance both within the institution and outside.

I would mention first the disciplinary cases. Through Mr. Hoeye and Mr. Culp, who personally bring boys to us and send communications or come in for conferences quite frequently, we get very good contact with boys from this community, who are at Eldora, or who have been paroled or are about to be paroled. The public school truant officers, the juvenile court staff and others concerned are also in personal contact. Through conferences concerning certain boys and girls we are able completely to perfect synopses of the cases and to reach proper conclusions as to what may be expected of each individual a year from now, five years from now, and in adult citizenship. Without this rather complete cooperation in these custodial and vocational plans, there is every liklihood of disaster in many cases, but by pooling our information and opinions success is often assured. Nearly every case that goes to Mitchellville or to Eldora needs vocational guidance based on the cooperative efforts of a half dozen agencies along with the state institutions.

There is opportunity for much cooperative effort with Rockwell City, Anamosa and Fort Madison. I have in mind at this moment three

persons in our city and county jails who are likely to be sent to penal institutions, but who have much of good in them and, who, if fortunately managed and directed will eventually become good citizens. When they enter the state institutions the information that we have concerning each and the vocational possibilities that we see in them should go into the hands of the prison staff. They would probably find some wrong estimates but I believe that the main facts would be corroborated. At the close of their stays in the institutions we should take up their cases again with intelligent information as to their achievements and we would thus be in a better position to assist them.

Those from our community going to hospitals for the insane often have records rich in valuable information concerning them in the files of some of our welfare agencies. Such information should reach the institution and follow through, if possible, in the cases of those who are resto ed to health and returned to the community. The same agencies need the hospital record in continuing their protective interest. The whole record should have been developed as rapidly and as definitely as possible along the line of determining the best vocational future and of preparing for it. I need not go into detail as to the obvious importance of cooperation of local agencies with Glenwood and Woodward. Unfortunately many of the children there are not capable of entering any vocation, but the state endeavors to provide intra-institutional vocations for all who have even sniall abilities and to cooperate in directing the few, who return to their communities. The need of fold ageats from these institutions is most urgent. Through our well established correspondence local agencies and your superintendent help to work out each others problems much more is accomplished for the children and their parents than any institution or agency could do alone. I need not mention the fact that handling the parents is more difficult and in some cases is as important as handling the children. When one looks upon vocational guidance in the broad sense of its determining what the child will be doing five years from now, fifteen years from now, etc, the opportunity for cooperation in vocational guidance seems to be almost unlimited, so far as these institutions are concerned.

The need for careful planning as to the vocation of patients discharged from Oak iale is obvious, they must be in vocations favorable to good health and free from unhygienic aspects. With regard to children of the orphans home, the problem is indirectly vocational guidance, but primarily that of placing each child in the type of home and with people of the grade of intelligence most suitable for him.

Summarizing what I have said regarding some of the institutions, we may conclude that vocational guidance is of vital importance to all excepting, perhaps the veterans' home at Marshalltown. The plan of having institutions under one board of control makes for cooperation among yourselves in the cases of patients going from one institution to another. Through these conferences and in other ways, undoubtedly, you work more closely together than do independent institutions and agencies.

I am using our experience in Des Moines as representative and typical of the relation of Iowa communities in general to the state institutions under the board of control. The need for cooperation in vocational guidance is just as urgent and just as promising with regard to other communities as it is here.

Vocational guidance has come into prominence only recently, a few years ago leading sociologists and psychologists began to recognize the fact that some people have made serious mistakes in selecting a profession or business or line of work, that they are misfits in their present vocations, but that they would have been happy and successful in the right ones. Much has been said recently about round pegs in square holes.

As occurs with most new ideas, the situation is greatly exaggerated. Some enthusiasts advocate that all young people should be formally ex amined as to their abilities and their vocations. Everything should be determined for them. This would be done during the last years in high school, and in lower school grades for those who are not to complete school. It is assumed, that examiners through the use of standardized tests could determine which boys should be lawyers, which should be physicians, etc. This is for the most part absurd, there are no tests that alone determine these matters and there never will be. Where such vocational guidance is necessary the examiner gives much consideration to the individual's inclinations, studies his records of achievements and failures, gets estimates of teachers, parents and others, and makes what use he can of his own impressions of the boy or girl. The formal tests are but a small part of it.

Fortunately their vocational guidance is not necessary except in unusual cases. Most people would make good in any of several vocations. The ordinary successful business man would probably do as well or almost as well in other lines of business or in a profession; likewise a succesful physician or lawyer would probably be successful as an engineer, or a banker or almost anything else. In my opinion success in any vocation, except the highly specialized ones depends largely on one's ability to get on with people, to handle those under him and to manage his affairs with general prudence.

I am frequently asked to apply tests and to offer vocational advice in the cases of boys and girls who are showing good all around ability and succeeding in their grammar school and high school work. An instance is that of a mother who wished her seventeen year old boy to become a physician. His father is a prominent farmer and live stock dealer. He employs more than twenty men, buys cattle from western markets, feeds them a few weeks and ships them on to Chicago. The boy is doing splendid work in high school, is taking chemistry as રી major, working at it and reading along medical lines during vacation months. After ascertaining that the boy has superior mental ability and that he is well rounded in his abilities, not a genius type and not lacking in any mental endowment, I advised the mother that further examinations by me would be useless and that rather than narrow him so early

to the medical field, she had better leave his development to broader lines, at least until he has had two or three years in college. I suggested, also, that he was being deprived of a wonderful opportunity of learning his father's business, that instead of spending so much time in the laboratory he should be helping to handle the employes and to manage the business with his father. To attain the greatest success as a physician, except perchance in highly specialized research, he would need ability at managing his business, and at handling employes on his staff, in his office or in his own hospital. In other words, he should be at the age of seventeen laying a broad general foundation instead of narrowing to one vocation.

As I have said, I believe that most people would make good in any of several vocations. As a matter of fact, few adults ever give a thought to the possibility of having chosen some other profession. They are satisfied in pushing ahead in their own lines and are better off than they would be if disturbed and in doubt.

Some people are disappointed in not having realized earlier ambitions, but are seldom unhappy about it, or giving it serious thought. There are a very few well endowed who have erred in their choice of vocations and are misfits in their present work, but these cases are exceptions. Ordinarily a person, who has normal intelligence and good health can pretty safely follow his inclinations and the turns of cireum

stances.

While vocational guidance is needed for only a comparative few, it is needed for them badly. I have attempted to show that special vocational guidance for people in general is not practical or necessary, but I do not intend thereby, to minimize the importance for individuals who are lacking in intellingence, defective physically, peculiar, or hampered in some other way. Such individuals are barred from almost all vocations and it is a difficult task, indeed, to determine where they belong. Most of those with whom I deal professionally, and many of the persons in our great Iowa institutions under you are primarily problems of this kind.

I am speaking largely from the viewpoint of the health center. I must now mention a new undertaking in vocational guidance, a private service. Next week I shall begin studying and schooling one-half dozen almost grown-up boys, who have failed to make good in high school and who present serious problems as to how they will best get through the world. Almost all of them are short in reading ability and in arithmetic and some have peculiar personal characteristics or weaknesses. One I always got on well until late in his high school course when a serious illness occurred that kept him in the hospital for two years and left his eyes in such a condition that he must not attempt to study or to read much. In this school we shall make a thorough, but rapid analysis of his ability and limitations, ascertain what we can of his preferences and natural inclinations, study his record, his achievements and failures and at the end of four or six months we hope to direct him properly as to vocation. With all of these boys we shall make similar studies,

and looking ahead as best we can to what each will be doing five years from now and twenty-five years from now, we shall direct them to the highest and best vocations that we find them capable of following. Next spring, I shall open this service to younger children who are more seriously hampered mentally than are these boys with whom we shall begin. What is my message today? It is a plea for cooperation. My emphasis is on cooperation rather than on vocational guidance. I am not advocating the adoption of a plan of vocational guidance. Rather I am calling attention to its importance in the cases of misfits and other institution type persons and my main contention is that we need much more to cooperate in working out vocation advice and guidance. We are falling short often because we do not use what information we could get. It is extremely unfortunate that in the record files of one institution or agency there is often valuable information that is never made available to other agencies. We should systematically send reports back and forth on simple printed forms with ample room for free informal statements. They would carry much valuable information even in a routine manner. Usually a little passing of information leads to calling for more and to the establishment of a rich cooperative relation.

It must be contiually realized that any person or agency in attempt. ing to give individual vocational advice and direction must have an adequate record from the places where the individual has been cared for or employed, and must have the estimates of those who were in charge of him and were familiar with his work. The great personnel system of the United States Army is efficient at placing men in the kinds of service for which they are best fitted, not through formal tests and measurements but through a splendid system by which it secures records of what the men have done and of what various interested persons think of their qualifications and abilities.

I know but little of your relations to each other, but I am sure that closely associated as you are, you set a good example of cooperation in planning for those of your inmates who go from one institution to another, and that your experts in this field or in closely allied fields are given the support of the right kind of cooperation in every line of their service. I urge that more and more emphasis be placed on cooperative passing between state institutions and local agencies everywhere, information and estimates of persons who are difficult problems as to vocation.