all at some particular date. One has
discovered in himself, say, an interest, intellectual and social, in the
things which have to do with engineering and has decided to make that
his calling. At most, this only blocks out in outline the field in which
further growth is to be directed. It is a sort of rough sketch for use
in direction of further activities. It is the discovery of a profession
in the sense in which Columbus discovered America when he touched
its shores. Future explorations of an indefinitely more detailed and
extensive sort remain to be made. When educators conceive vocational
guidance as something which leads up to a definitive, irretrievable, and
complete choice, both education and the chosen vocation are likely to be
rigid, hampering further growth. In so far, the calling chosen will
be such as to leave the person concerned in a permanently subordinate
position, executing the intelligence of others who have a calling which
permits more flexible play and readjustment. And while ordinary usages
of language may not justify terming a flexible attitude of readjustment
a choice of a new and further calling, it is such in effect. If even
adults have to be on the lookout to see that their calling does not shut
down on them and fossilize them, educators must certainly be careful
that the vocational preparation of youth is such as to engage them in a
continuous reorganization of aims and methods.

3. Present Opportunities and Dangers. In the past, education has been
much more vocational in fact than in name. (i) The education of the
masses was distinctly utilitarian. It was called apprenticeship rather
than education, or else just learning from experience. The schools
devoted themselves to the three R's in the degree in which ability to go
through the forms of reading, writing, and figuring were common elements
in all kinds of labor. Taking part in some special line of work, under
the direction of others, was the out-of-school phase of this education.
The two supplemented each other; the school work in its narrow and
formal character was as much a part of apprenticeship to a calling as
that explicitly so termed.

(ii) To a considerable extent, the education of the dominant classes was
essentially vocational--it only happened that their pursuits of ruling
and of enjoying were not called professions. For only those things were
named vocations or employments which involved manual labor, laboring for
a reward in