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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the idea of using schools to prepare young people for work blossomed into a major campaign to integrate the school more closely with the economy. Reformers across a wide spectrum of opinion became convinced that in place of the seemingly haphazard manner in which young people left school and drifted into the labor market the school should mediate between youth and the workplace, or as one proponent put it, “act as a transmitter between human supply and industrial demand.” It was the central task of the school, they argued, to train youth for jobs and to direct them into occupations that suited their talents and interests and matched the economic needs of their communities.
1. Quoted in Committee on High Schools and Training Schools, Board of Education, New York City, 1914, “Vocational Guidance,” in Bloomfield, Meyer, ed., Readings in Vocational Guidance (Boston, 1915), 307.Google Scholar
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15. Although published in 1937, the findings in this study are directly pertinent to the period under consideration. Based on data gathered in 1933, it examined the occupational histories of a representative sample of 1,242 male workers in San Jose ages 10 to 65. The age of entry to permanent employment varied by age group and occupation, but the mean age of entry for the entire sample was 17.2 years old. Thus, most of those in the sample, except the very youngest and oldest (6.2 percent of the sample were under 20 in 1933 and 16.2 percent were 55 or older), first entered the labor market between 1895 and 1930, either just prior to or during the period when guidance first emerged and was institutionalized and before the possible effects of the depression influenced the nature of the transition from school to work. See Davidson, Percy E. and Dewey Anderson, H., Occupational Mobility in an American Community (Stanford, Calif., 1937).Google Scholar
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53. Ibid., 297. These responses may well have indicated what educators thought they should have been doing, not what they were actually doing. As we shall see below, much of what passed for guidance in California was quite rudimentary. Californians were not the only ones who indicated that they had at least begun to introduce guidance, however. In the nation as a whole, educators indicated that they had made an initial commitment to guidance. Data collected in a 1927 sample of 522 secondary schools in forty-one states indicated that, according to the principals, 87 percent provided educational guidance, 83 percent provided personal guidance, and 74 percent provided vocational guidance. Similarly, in 1930, when the White House Conference of Child Health and Protection surveyed the status of guidance across the country, thirty-four of the thirty-six largest cities responding had a guidance program while 57 percent of the medium-sized cities had guidance counselors and almost 60 percent of the smallest cities had them, although few rural communities did. See Reavis, William C., Programs of Guidance, U.S. Office of Education, Bulletin No. 17, 1932, Monograph No. 14 (Washington, D.C., 1933), 3–4; and White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, Vocational Guidance (New York, 1933), 43.Google Scholar
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59. Howard Bell's 1938 study of youth in Maryland also indicated the limited impact of guidance on vocational choice. In a survey of 13,528 Maryland young people ages 16 to 24, Bell found that less than one quarter reported having any contact with guidance counselors. Of those out of school, less than 20 percent recalled having received any advice. See Bell, Howard M., Youth Tell Their Story (Washington, D.C., 1938).Google Scholar
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63. Ibid., 304–5. This situation was not unique to California. The 1932 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection found that the nation's largest city school systems had one counselor for every 3,340 students. The ratio was lower in smaller cities but still imposing. In medium-sized cities, the ratio was one full-time counselor for every 1,503 students and in small cities one for every 1,595. See White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, Vocational Guidance, 44.Google Scholar
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79. Nationwide the proportion of the labor force engaged in clerical occupations increased from 2.2 percent to 8.2 percent between 1890 and 1930, the proportion engaged in trade from 8.3 percent to 12.5 percent, and the proportion in professional occupations from 3.9 percent to 6.7 percent. In California, the proportion of the labor force in these three occupational categories in 1930 was even greater. In 1930, 10 percent were in clerical occupations, 17.5 percent in trade, and 9.4 percent in professional service. See Kantor, Harvey, “‘Learning to Earn’: The Origins of Vocational Education in California, 1900–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1985), ch. 6. On the formalization of educational requirements for entry to the professions, see Kett, Joseph F., Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York, 1977), ch. 6; and Collins, Randall, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York, 1979).Google Scholar
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