VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Evening Star, Issue 20862, 4 August 1931, Page 5

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

APPOINTMENT OF OFFICER (Contributed.) A ''forward step lias recently been taken by the Committee for Vocational Guidance in tlie appointment of Mr Thoillas Conly as the first vocational guidance officer in Dunedin. Mr Conly is a well-known Dunedin man, an associate member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. His experience as works manager of a large Dunedin firm has made him a very suitable man lor this: hew position, for one of the duties of the new officer will be to interview employers with regard to the possibilities, and prospects of employment lor boys in their businesses. Another important duty will be to interview hoys and their parents with a view to discovering their desires and capabilities for various classes of work. For this work Mr Conly is also qualified, since, lie has had experience in the King Edward Technical College and as instructor of disabled soldiers under the Ilepatriation Hoard. The vocational Guidance Committee has at present only very limited funds, so that it cannot yet employ a full-time officer. Yet the committee confidently expects that his ■. rrk will be most , valuable at the present time. Some critics of the movement have talked depressingly of the “ bad. times,” but it is in bad times most of all that the advice anrl; assistance of an adviser are most required. There arc still some vacancies occurring for boys, and prospective employers c.j inundated with 'applications' for vacant positions. From the applicants they select more or loss haphazardly their new employee. But when the "bureau at the Y.M.C.A. is in operation there will be available information about boys which will enable the vocational officer to send along to a prospective employer a small hatch of boys with the special qualities required for that class of work. It may ho objected that to do this, properly will be a task far greater than can he- carried out by one man with only a few hours a week at his disposal, But a beginning must bo made somewhere. The Vocational Guidance Committee, which consists of business men, .employees’ representatives, psychologists,* and teachers, ' fully recognises the limitations under which it has to work. It hopes that its bureau will at least make a start on the big task of vocational guidance. With the successful ‘development of its work funds will be secured to extend it, and a stock of information will gradually bo accumulated which will make its work easier in many ways than it will be at first; Its greatest asset will be the sympathetic co-operation of employers, parents, and teachers.