Choosing a Vocation at 100: time, change, and context.(Articles)

The new millennium has brought to the counseling profession a surge of interest in social justice themes. Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and age, as these issues relate to political and economic power, have become common topics in counseling theory and practice. A social justice agenda is not new to the counseling profession, yet what may be new to many is that one of the earliest social justice agendas in 20th century America was originally found in the vocational guidance movement.

One hundred years ago, in 1909, the slim blue volume Choosing a Vocation was published (posthumously) by Frank Parsons. The book is legend and has earned Parsons a place of distinction as the founder of vocational guidance in America. The decision by Mark Pope and Mark Savickas to devote a special section of The Career Development Quarterly to this anniversary is a welcome one. The 100th Anniversary of Vocational Guidance offers a number of opportunities. It provides a chance to recognize those who put vision into reality and animated the vocational guidance movement, it allows for consideration of the larger social factors that provided the soil from which the movement grew, and it offers perspectives on where the profession might be headed.

All too often anniversaries and other celebratory events get funneled into a narrowly defined set of actors and dates that are devoid of a larger context. It is an error in historical analysis that is referred to as internalist history; that is, history focused solely on developments within a field that fails to acknowledge the larger social, political, and economic contexts in which events and individual actions unfold (Leahey, 1986). Avoiding this error of interpretation calls for an approach that Stocking (1965) has labeled historicism--an understanding of the past in its own context and for its own sake. Such an approach requires historians to immerse themselves in the context of the times they are studying.

What people do is imbedded in context, and it is this dynamic and fluid model that makes historical narrative meaningful. The notion of multiple determinants and estimates of their relative impact on historical construction led historian of psychology Laurel Furumoto to christen this "the new history," a signifier denoting that historic research should strive to be more contextual and less internal (Furumoto, 1989).

And it is with this in mind that I explore the admixture of people, places, and events that gave rise to the publication of Choosing a Vocation (Parsons, 1909) and by extension, the vocational guidance movement in America.

A New America

Frank Parsons (1854-1908) was a man of many interests and occupations. At the time of his death in 1908, he had worked as an engineer, teacher, administrator, vocational counselor, social critic, writer, and lawyer. Well educated and socially minded, Parsons was an advocate for the rights and needs of those whom he believed were exploited by industrial monopolies. He was a product of his time, and there was much about his time that he did not like. On the heels of the Civil War, America was rebuilding and expanding west. The railroad made expansion possible, and it stirred in Parsons a distrust and disdain for big business that motivated and informed his work and writings throughout his adult life (H. V. Davis, 1969). His modest tome on vocational choice was but one of a flood of books, articles, and treatises on the state of a nation that seemed to be beset by many woes. Parsons not only pointed out the ills, he also took action to overcome them.

Parsons and his nurturing of vocational guidance emerged and grew alongside the rise of an industrial economy and urban order that was unlike anything ever seen or known before, It is difficult to imagine the magnitude of change that took place in America at the beginning of the 20th century. Consider that in 1900, automobiles, airplanes, electricity, and indoor plumbing were new to most people.

The explosion in technology was matched by the explosion of urban centers. America was being defined by burgeoning industrial cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. These city centers drew people from all over the world in search of a better, more prosperous life. Changes in demographics, culture, and capital were believed to be signs of progress, an advance that depended on human labor and machinery. Mass production appeared as a major achievement of human ingenuity and technological sophistication. However, mass production was useless unless it was efficient. Progress, precision, and efficiency quickly became the central tenants of the new social order that was the progressive movement. Those identified as progressives expressed faith in science and technology, tempered by an equal measure of public concern for others. Progressives, such as Parsons, wanted the government to ensure that societal institutions responded to the needs of all its members. The changing social order provided much fodder for the progressive cause, and followers lobbied for things such as women's suffrage and government regulation of industry (Baker, 2002).

These concerns were partly a product of the poor social conditions experienced by many immigrants. Those who migrated to America's urban centers were often poor and uneducated. Immigrants from other nations did not know the language or the culture. Exploitation was always a concern, but the new city inhabitants were more often focused on other immediate needs such as employment, food, and shelter. The most susceptible members of this already vulnerable group were children. America, a young nation itself, took a significant interest in its youngest citizens.

The Promise of Youth

If people could travel back in time, they would see that many children suffered great injury and injustice in early 20th century America. To be a poor child in the city was a tremendous disadvantage that offered multiple hazards. Factory work could easily lead to injury and death, schools seldom noticed or cared if children dropped out (which many did by sixth grade), and there were few, if any, checks and balances on the physical, sexual, or emotional abuse of children and adolescents. Add overcrowding, stress, and severe poverty to this picture and there are enough risk factors to create all manner of social problems. Such conditions were seen by many as symptomatic of a larger ill--an early and slow ascent into a vicious cycle of poverty, moral decay, and social decline. Organizations such as the YMCA and the YWCA were evangelical responses to these ills, and they did much in the late 19th century to provide a strong measure of Christian charity to the needs of young adults (Savickas & Baker, 2005). As the 20th century began, the vision of industrial excess served as a siren call to those identified with the child-saving movement: a national commitment to protect children from the ravages of poverty, exploitation, and neglect (Davidson & Benjamin, 1987; Levine & Levine, 1992). The impulse toward child saving rallied many individuals and institutions to the protection and defense of children. The new applied psychology fit well with the progressive era theme of social efficiency. The scientific study of mental life encouraged greater understanding of adaptation to everyday life. Psychologists such as Lightner Witmer, E. Wallace Wallin, G. Stanley Hall, Augusta Bruner, William Healy, Maude Merrill, Lewis Terman, and Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley investigated various aspects of the childhood experience, each contributing to the child-saving movement and helping to create a body of knowledge that helped to shape social science policy in the early decades of the 20th century. Children's aid societies flourished, juvenile courts were created, child labor laws were enacted, educational reforms were instituted, and the vocational guidance movement was born (Baker, 2002).

What many wanted most was a chance for children to receive an adequate education, one that would last beyond the primary grades. Children leaving school to drift aimlessly was seen as a waste of human potential and an inefficient use of human resources. The concern over leaving school was embedded within a larger concern about the role of pubic education in American society, a debate that gave rise to a variety of visions for the future of the nation and its youth. Many viewed public education as a failure. They called for public education to complement the world outside of the classroom: to provide tools for coping with the new urban life. For immigrant children, the system struggled to provide thoughtful alternatives, and for Native American and African American children, the system was and would remain limited, segregated, and largely indifferent.

Alternatives were quickly offered. Booker T. Washington advocated for national programs of industrial education for African American children, and philanthropic reformers such as Jane Addams established settlement homes in major American cities (Benjamin & Baker, 2003).

Settlement homes were a vital feature of the progressive landscape at the start of the 20th century (Carson, 1990). Responding to the plight of poor inner-city families, socially minded students, professors, clergy, and artists took up residence in working-class neighborhoods and immersed themselves in the life of the community. These social progressives were committed to enhancing the efficiency of individual adjustment to the new industrial and social order. The settlement home provided a place for neighborhood residents to learn English, complete high school, learn about the arts, and organize efforts to lobby local government for needed services. Of particular importance in the history of vocational psychology was the founding of the Civic Service House in Boston.

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