TRUE VOCATION

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 20

TRUE VOCATION

" MECHANICAL TOIL" DEPLORED ADDRESS TO VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE ; ASSOCIATION While recognising that the vocational officers were striving to bring about just) those conditions which he stressed in hi# address at the meeting of the Dunedin Vocational Guidance Association on Thursday night, Mf G. W. Parkyn, M.A., lecturer on education at the University of Otago, urged the necessity for still stronger influence in the direction of placing young people at their true calling. • Mf Parkyn mentioned, at the outset, tha necessity on occasions for a mental stocktaking, not only on the part of individuals, ' but by organisations such as the Vocational Guidance Association., In the latter cas»' it was pertinent to ask what were tha basic aims.and. purposes of such organisations. It was obvious from the tenor of thaofficers’ reports,' he' said, that their association considered more than mere hients; if considered the whole future off the young, people who went through it#» hands. Vocational guidance was, therefore, tho art of helping people to make wisa choices in regard to their vocation, and there were several agencies through which this art could be exercised.

Mr Parkyn then proceeded to analysa those agencies, which 'included the home, the tchool, and the organisations referred to. Referring to the significance of work as a factor in life, the speaker dwelt upon the great importance of a person’s work being “ real work ” and not merely, mechanical toil. The person engaged ini brutalising could not be blamed for endeavouring to cut down the time which he was engaged upon it, and to get as much mouev as he could for performing it ini order that he might spend that time and money in activities in which his heart lay and which were really and truly work. The factors which should not he permitted to influence the work of the association were also touched upon by the speakerOne of these was the wrong choice off vocations for children by their parentsAnother was the tendency of a child to! take up some easy job without due regard to its. fitness for that job just because them was a .shortage of children for that particular sphere of work. The rigidity of our educational curriculum was another danger spot which Mr Parkyn examined, and whafl he. termed occupational instabilities was another, the latter being occupation# occasioned by wartime necessities and which would, at the conclusion of the war, vanish and leave those engaged in them unfitted for anything else. ; Finally, there was occupational inadequacy, said Mr Parkyn. There were sol many jobs, in this country and elsewhere, which did not present opportunities for neople to do real, creative work. Instead,' too many had to do sheer brutalising tailThe associatiM could not, perhaps, at tha present time, do anything to imernva matters in this respect, but the aim to bring about a state of society in which mo«il of the labour done by human beings would truly be work should be kept ip viewWhether this desi'-able state of affiairs wa# to be brought about by the greater us# of mechanical aid was difficult to say, but at least the drudgery should be spread over the whole community, and so bringl : t to the stage, mentioned by Bernard Shaw, when “work was play, and- play* was life.” If at the end,of a period ih# association could say it had placed one or more young people in their true vocation and not merely report that “ 36 placement# had been made,” it would have attained what should be its principal aim. A vote of thanks to the lecturer w»* moved ,bv Mr H. P. Kidson and carried with enthusiasm. •y