rning
occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely
unfitted or which holds little future beyond a bare livelihood.

THE WORK OF THE VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR

The plan now followed in the technical high schools of the city, by
which one teacher in the school specially qualified for such work is
charged with the duty of advising pupils who leave school and aiding
them in securing desirable employment, could be adapted to the junior
high school, where the need for service of this kind is even greater
than in the technical high schools. Such work requires men who have
had some contact with industrial conditions, and who possess sound
judgment, common sense, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the
local industries. If the curriculum embraces the course in "Industrial
Information" suggested in a previous chapter, the teacher of this
subject might well be designated as vocational counselor for the boys
in the school. A course similar in nature should be provided for the
girls and a woman teacher selected to advise them when they leave
school. Considerable difficulty probably will be experienced in
securing women teachers competent to assume this task, but any
wide-awake teacher who will devote some attention to published studies
of industrial conditions and get in touch with the local organizations
engaged in the investigation of wage earning employments, such as the
Consumers' League and the Girls' Vocation Bureau, can soon acquire a
fund of information that will enable her to offer valuable suggestions
and advice to girls who expect to become wage earners.

The vocational counselor must guard against conventional thinking and
the mass of "inspirational" nonsense which forms the main contribution
to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average
schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school
children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school
literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the
rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first, "Be good;" and
second, "Get ahead." The pupils are told about well-known men who
became famous or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules.
Occasionally there is some prattle about the "dignity of labor," as a
rule meaningless in the light of our current ideas of success. We do
not think of a well-paid artisan as "successful." His success begins
when he is promoted to office work, or becomes