Part 12 (2/2)
”Mother says it is a very ladylike occupation”
[stenography].
”My music instructor wishes for me to become a concert player, or at least a good music teacher, and I now think I wish the same.”
These answers all show the customary ease of throwing out advice, and also the undue significance attached by girls to these probably inexpert opinions.
Parents often fail in their attempts to launch their children successfully. Sometimes they attempt unwisely to thrust a child into an occupation merely because ”it is ladylike,” or the ”vacation is long,” or ”the pay is good,” regardless of the child's apt.i.tude or limitations. Quite often they await inspiration in the form of some revelation of the child's desires, regardless of the demand of society for such service as the child may elect to supply or the effect of the vocation upon the child's health or character. Undue sacrifice on the part of parents has without question swelled the ranks of mediocre physicians and lawyers and clergymen. It has doubtless produced thousands of teachers who cannot teach, nurses who are quite unsuited to the sick-room, and office workers who have not the rudiments of business ability.
It would seem that truly successful guidance in a girl's search for a vocation can come, like much of her training, only from wise cooperation of school and home. Teacher and parent see the girl from different angles. Their combined judgment will consequently have double value.
As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care, with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts.
The record should cover:
1. _Physical characteristics_: Height; weight; lung capacity; sight; hearing; condition of nasal pa.s.sages; condition of teeth; bodily strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness.
2. _Health history_: Time lost from school by illness; school work as affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation; any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect health and therefore vocational possibilities.
3. _Mental characteristics_: The quality of school work; studious or active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide; studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences, if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis of life work.
4. _Moral characteristics_: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact; combativeness; leader or follower.
5. _Heredity_: Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these, with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special abilities in family noted.
6. _Vocational ambitions_.
7. _Family resources for special training_.
Without some such record as this--and it need scarcely be said that the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special needs--teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly equipped for giving advice as to the girl's future. And yet it is common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the future to which they may lead.
”You certainly ought to go on the stage,” chorus the admiring friends of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution cla.s.s. And sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a worth-while actress.
”Why don't you study art?” say the friends of another girl; or, ”You like to take care of sick people. Why don't you train for nursing?”
or, ”You're so fond of books. I should think you would be a librarian”--quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose her vocation from the great outdoors.
Knowledge of the girl must, however, be supplemented by a wide knowledge of vocations to be of real value to the teacher or parent who is preparing to give vocational counsel. Final choice may be reached only after the girl and the vocation are brought into comparative scrutiny, and their mutual fitness determined. In rare cases the choice may be made by the swift process of observing a great talent which, in the absence of serious objections, must govern the life work. Oftener the process is one of elimination, or of building up from a general foundation of the girl's abilities and limitations, and her possibilities for training sufficient to make her an efficient worker in the line chosen.
A knowledge of vocations presupposes, first of all, a grasp of the essentials of the work, and hence the characteristics required in the worker to perform it. What sort of girl is needed to make an efficient teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker? How may we recognize this potential teacher without resorting to a clumsy, time-wasting, trial-and-error method? These are matters with which schools and vocational guides all over the country are occupying themselves.
Perhaps we cannot do better than to examine somewhat these requirements for some occupations toward which girls most often incline.
THE PRODUCING GROUP
The girl who is by nature a maker of things may be a factory worker, a needlewoman, a baker, a poultry farmer, a milliner, a photographer, or an artist with brush or with voice, or in dramatic work. She is still one who makes things. We see at once how wide a range of industry may open to her.
How shall we know this type of girl? First of all, by her interest in things rather than in people. With the exception of, the singer and the dramatic artist, whose production is of an intangible sort, the girl who makes things is a handworker by choice. The extent to which her handwork is touched by the imaginative instinct of course measures the distance that she may make her way up the ladder of productive work. The girl's school record will usually show her best work with concrete materials. She draws or sews well, has excellent results in the cooking cla.s.s, works well in the laboratory. At home she finds enjoyment in ”making things” of one sort or another. She displays ingenuity, perhaps, in meeting constructive problems. If so, that must be considered in finding her place.
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