sense, let us apply such
knowledge as we have at hand. This knowledge should be the result of
careful observation, of a careful and prolonged study of all that science
has discovered in regard to man, his origin, his development, his history,
his body, and his mind. Every conclusion reached should be verified, not
in hundreds, but in thousands of cases, before it is finally accepted.
The perfection of such a science requires the united efforts of many
investigators, experimenters, and practical workers, such as teachers,
employers, social workers, parents, and men and women everywhere, each in
his own way and in the solution of his own problems. Were a uniform method
adopted and made a part of the vocational work of our social settlements,
our public schools, our colleges and universities, and other institutions,
also by private individuals in selecting their own vocations; were uniform
records to be made and every subject analyzed followed up, and his career
studied, we should, in one generation, have data from which any
intelligent, analytical mind could formulate a science of human analysis
very nearly approaching exactitude.
As a result of the application of such a uniform method, the principles of
human analysis would rapidly become a matter of common knowledge and could
be taught in our schools just as we to-day teach the principles of
chemical, botanical, or zoological analysis. In the industries, the
scientific selection, assignment and management of men have yielded
increases in efficiency from one hundred to one thousand per cent. The
majority of people that were dealt with were mature, with more or less
fixity of character and habits. Many of them were handicapped by iron-clad
limitations and restrictions in their affairs and in their environments.
What results may be possible when these methods, improved and developed by
a wider use, are applied to young people, with their plastic minds and
wonderful latent possibilities, we cannot even venture to forecast.
While we are accustomed to thinking of unfitness for our tasks as the one
form of maladjustment due to our ignorance of human nature in general and
individual traits in particular, there are other forms which, in their own
way, cause much trouble and the remedying of which leads to desirable
results. These are many and varied, but may be grouped, perhaps, most
conveniently under two or three general headings.
First, there is the relationship between
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