Butcher, Baker, or Candlestick-maker

Extract

Vocational guidance, as an effective development, has come only since the beginning of the century. But as long ago as 1795 Henry MacKenzie protested against wasting the years of youth at school “improving talents without having ever discovered them.”

Again in 1836, the idea appears in a book entitled “The Panorama of Trades and Professions,” a copy of which has come to the Society, written by Edward Hazen of Philadelphia. The book was “intended for the use of Schools and Families, as well as for miscellaneous readers.” In the preface, Mr. Hazen deplores the fact that “many individuals mistake their appropriate calling, and engage in employments for which they have neither mental nor physical adaptation,…and hence arise, in great measure, the ill success and discontent which so frequently attend the pursuits of men.”