LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
CHILDREN'S VOCATIONS
Snt,—Secondary school curricula are clearly destined for immediate post-war reform ; either by internal change or by the creation of new and parallel types of secondary schools. Many will welcome the opportunity for a syllabus offering more frequent contacts with daily life. There is, however, a tendency among some educationists and in certain sections of the Press to reproduce this desire for change in a qualitatively different form, and to demand vocational education from the age of t3. Such a policy is based on the tacit assumption that a child's vocation is, or might be, soundly selected at that age.
Present tests aim at intellectual grading rather than at the assess- ment of different aptitudes ; a child of first-class mechanical ability and fair second-rate intellectual ability will generally find his way into a " grammar-school." They might well be replaced by appropriate aptitude-tests. Even so, the discernment of aptitude for educational purposes is not vocational selection. Aptitude is only one factor in vocational choice ; interest is equally important ; while other personal ambitions, financial prospects, desire for safety, family circumstances, all enter into the final decision. Psychologists confirm that the adolescent normally undergoes several changes of viewpoint about his future occupation ; there is considerable variation in different cases, but, on an average, a sound choice, even in general terms, is hardly reached before the age of 16. Herein lies the strongest point of the case for prolongation of the school-life until reasonable vocational selection becomes possible.
One may make a reasonable guess that a high percentage of boys with mathematical and mechanical abilities will enter an occupation of the engineering-group. Precisely in this field junior technical schools with an apparent vocational bias have had considerable success ; but as an analogy this case may be deceptive. There is little general correlation between school-subjects and particular careers. The Spens report itself remarks that other types of school, apparently similarly conceived, have hardly succeeded in establishing a distinctive curriculum. The attempt which has been made in some areas to divide children at 13, sending those who are destined for professions or clerical occupations into " grammar-schools " and those who express a preference for commerce or selling-type posts into junior commercial schools is foredoomed to failure. Where the distinction has been made mainly on the basis of intellectual grading, it is hardly complimentary to the commercial community ; the distribu- tive end of business can give many professions points both in being go-ahead and in remuneration.
Administrative convenience has led to the establishment of junior technical and commercial schools in the same buildings, and often with the same staff, as are used for genuinely vocational evening- classes. We must not thereby be led into a wrong view of the function of these junior schools ; which must necessarily be to provide a training equivalent to that of the " grammar-school," with a different curriculum, but equally without specific vocational bias.
In the " grammar-school " there may be a strong case for vocational or semi-vocational work after 16 ; and for a broadening of the pre- Certificate curriculum. But there is none for treating the pre-Certifi- cate syllabus as in any way vocational. Resistance by reactionary elements to any reform whatever in the " grammar-school" has some- what obscured what is in fact the much stronger case—that not even the most ardent supporter of reform can show that sound vocational choice at 13 is a practicable possibility.—Yours faithfully,
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