If vocational guidance is to be a controlling social purpose, the
manual training work will have to be made more diversified so that
one can try out his tastes and abilities in a number of lines. And,
moreover, each kind of work must be kept as much like responsible work
out in the world as possible. In keeping work normal, the main thing
is that the pupils bear actual responsibility for the doing of actual
work. This is rather difficult to arrange; but it is necessary before
the activities can be lifted above the level of the usual manual
training shop. The earliest stages of the training will naturally be
upon what is little more than a play level. It is well for schools to
give free rein to the constructive instinct and to provide the fullest
and widest possible opportunities for its exercise. But if boys are
to try out their aptitudes for work and their ability to bear
responsibility in work, then they must try themselves out on the
work level. Let the manual training actually look toward vocational
guidance; the social purpose involved will vitalize the work.
There is a still more comprehensive social purpose which the city
should consider. Owing to the interdependence of human affairs, men
need to be broadly informed as to the great world of productive
labor. Most of our civic and social problems are at bottom industrial
problems. Just as we use industrial history and industrial geography
as means of giving youth a wide vision of the fields of man's work,
so must we also use actual practical activities as means of making
him familiar in a concrete way with materials and processes in
their details, with the nature of work, and with the nature of
responsibility.
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