CHAPTER XVIII
_THE FARM BOY'S CHOICE OF A VOCATION_
Turn which way you will upon the great broad highway of life and there you will always be able to find the wrecks and broken forms of humankind--men and women who have failed in their life purposes. Strange to say, that particular aspect of the science of character-building which has to do with the substantial preparation for vocational life has been very much neglected. By what rule do men succeed in their callings and by what different rule do other men fail? Are some foreordained to success and others to failure? Is there an inherent strength in some and a native weakness in others? Is there a type of education and training which specifically fits and prepares for each of the native callings? None of these questions has been thoroughly gone into with a view to finding out what were best to be done and what best to leave undone. So, we blunder away, hit or miss, in the vocational training of our boys and girls.
SHOULD THE FARMER'S SON FARM?
In attempting to give helpful suggestions to farm parents relative to their boy's vocation, perhaps this question will first demand an answer. The tentative reply to it is this: The farmer's son, or any other man's son, should follow that calling for which he is best suited by nature and in which he will thereby have the greatest amount of native interest; provided it be practicable to prepare him for such calling. Some farm boys are destined by nature for mechanical pursuits, others for social or clerical work, others for captains of industry, and so on. Likewise, the city boys may reveal in their natures a great variety of instinctive tendencies and interests which will be found of great worth in guiding them into a successful life occupation.
Yes, the farmer's son should by all means take up his father's business; provided that at maturity he may have both native and acquired interest in the same and that to a degree predominating any other native or acquired interest.
IMPATIENCE OF PARENTS
It can be proved that the country boy matures more slowly than the city boy. For example, at the age of sixteen, he is behind the latter in height, weight, school training, and sociability. But while the city boy matures more rapidly, the country boy makes up for the loss by a longer period of development. It is the author's firm belief that this fact of slow growth proves a tremendous advantage to the country youth in that it allows for greater stability of character, and especially for a greater amount of courage and aggressiveness in form of permanent life habits.
But one might well wish that all rural parents could realize the evil consequences of being impatient with the son in respect to his choice of a life work. Many a good boy yet in his teens is hounded and driven about by the continuous nagging of his parents, who ignorantly believe that he should have his future destiny all planned and ready for its realization. As a result, this same good boy is often driven to desperation and to the point of leaving the home place--of breaking away from the affectionate ties that bind him to parents, and of seeking the position wherein he might earn a living. As a matter of fact, few young men have any very clear or reliable vision of their future life at the age of eighteen, or even twenty. Many of the best men in the world are faltering and uncertain even as late as twenty-five. However, if the relatives and friends would only exercise all due patience, offering only such helps and suggestions as can be given, and trusting the future finally to throw upon the problem a light from within the youth himself--then, we may be assured, practically every man will finally come to some line of effort that will bring him a comfortable living.
WHAT OF PREDESTINATION?
The old-fashioned idea of a boy's being marked by the hand of destiny, "cut out for" some particular calling in life, still has a place in the minds of the masses. The kindred belief that some men are "natural-born failures" has also wide currency. A third superstition is the very common opinion that others are "just naturally lucky." All these traditional opinions are the outgrowth of ignorance of human nature such as may be dispelled by means of a course of instruction, or a carefully arranged course of home reading, in modern psychology.
None of the foregoing superstitions would be worthy of our attention were it not for the gross injustice which they entail upon children. Parents everywhere--in both city and country--are dealing with their children upon the assumption that one and all of these fallacies are true. "My oldest boy just naturally has no luck," said the father of three sons and two daughters. "He changes around from one thing to another and fails every time." But what of this particular boy's early training? Was it the same as that of the others? Did he enjoy equal advantages? Did his parents when married really know anything about rearing children? or, did they really mistreat their first-born through ignorance and use him as a sort of practice material from which they learned how to do better by the succeeding ones?
Until the foregoing inquiries about the "unlucky" son's boyhood life be fully answered, we cannot reasonably permit ourselves to condemn him. There is nothing more in predestination than this; namely, it can be shown that the child is born with not a few latent abilities--aptitudes for doing and learning this and that--and that one of these aptitudes is likely to have correlated with it more than the average amount of nerve development in the corresponding brain center. As a result, that particular aptitude will require less training than the others and will tend to predominate over them as maturity is approached.
The reply of the psychologist to the statement that some men are "natural-born failures," is this: Few if any of those possessed of ordinary physical and mental qualities at birth are necessarily so. Excepting the feeble-minded and the like,--whose marks of degeneracy are usually apparent to all,--it may be asserted on the highest authority that none are "natural-born failures" to any greater extent than they are "natural-born successes"; but that they have within the inherited nerve mechanisms many possibilities of both success and failure.
THREE METHODS OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING
We should be willing to overlook almost any other interest in this discussion for the sake of inducing in the farm father the belief that his young boy is a potential success--the belief that this boy is furnished by nature with the latent ability to shine somewhere in the broad field of human endeavor--provided he be rightly trained and disciplined during his growing years. Here, then, is probably the greatest of all the human-training problems; namely, the vocational one.
Roughly speaking, there have been three methods of vocational training.
1. _The apprentice method._--First, historically there has been the apprentice method, the youth being "bound out to learn a trade." The chief faults of this traditional way of teaching the boy to be self-supporting were these: it made no allowance for intellectual development, and it gave the father too much authority to choose the calling for the boy.
A modern offshoot of the old-time apprentice course is the trade school which flourishes in many of the big cities to-day. This new institution has one great advantage over its prototype. It offers such a great variety of forms of training that the youth may exercise much free choice. But it preserves one of the serious defects of apprenticeship in its neglect of the intellect of the learner. The modern trade school can never hope to do more than prepare young men and women to make a good living. It is a get-ready-quick institution, and can never be expected to give the student breadth of view and depth of insight into the great problems of human life.
2. _The cultural method._--The second-oldest method of preparing men for a vocation is what has been called the cultural method. It has aimed at high advancement in book learning with the thought of finally enabling the student to enter a professional class comparatively few in numbers and supposed to possess a superior advantage over the great mass of human kind. One fault of this method has been to emphasize learning for its own sake and to defer too long the training of the individual in the material and practical side of his calling.
But the chief fault of this cultural method has been its contempt for common labor and ordinary industry, its theory being that true education prepares one to avoid such practices. If the young man wished to prepare for law or medicine or teaching or the ministry,--one of the "learned professions,"--then the old classical school was at his service. But if he would become a mere artisan or industrial worker, there was no advanced course of schooling available.
3. _The developmental method._--The third and newest method of preparing the young person for his vocational life is in reality a compromise between the first and second. It provides that the learner shall have book instruction and industrial training at the same time, and that both of these are to be regarded as cultural, since taken together they prepare for independence of thought and action, and for the vocation, as well. This new method of preparing young people for their life work would call nothing mean or low. It aims to serve all impartially in their struggle for self-improvement and vocational success. But its motto is the development of head and hand together. It seeks to produce cultured handicraftsmen as well as cultured artists and professional men.
THE FARMER FORTUNATE
Our justification for the foregoing somewhat lengthy discussion of the different theories of education is that of wishing to be certain of bespeaking the father's patience and forbearance in the preparation of his son for the vocational life. The farmer is most fortunate in having ready at hand a large amount and variety of industrial practice to supplement the boy's book lessons. In this respect he probably has a superior advantage over all other classes.
But in guiding his boy gradually toward the vocational life the farm father can easily mistake what is merely a passing interest on the former's part for a permanent one. The carefully kept records of farm boys show that they take up many different lines of work with great enthusiasm, and yet soon tire of them and drop them. These serial and transitory interests are usually mere juvenile responses to the awakening of some new nerve centers. They are not much different in nature from the brief passing interest which the child has in his various playthings.
Now, the chief function of these transitory interests in special forms of work and learning as shown by the young growing boy is this: to furnish the occasions for a great variety of activities and practices for trying him out on all the possible sides of his nature. Not one of these intense boyish interests is necessarily very directly preparatory to his final choice of a vocation, while all are indirectly so. Therefore, if the fifteen-year-old son chances to win in a corn-raising contest, or at a live-stock exhibition, or if he manifests unusual interest in arithmethic, declamation, or nature study, do not regard any of these as necessarily pointing to his best possible vocational work. Presumably, at such an undeveloped age, he is still in possession of some latent interests and aptitudes, one of which may far outweigh any such thing hitherto awakened in his life. Give him time to mature and, if at all practicable, send him on to college.
WHAT COLLEGE FOR THE COUNTRY BOY
It is the opinion of the author that the State Agricultural College, as now situated and organized, is the ideal institution of higher learning for the country-bred youth. It offers him every reasonable incentive and opportunity for continuing in the calling of his father, if he be so inclined, while at the same time it gives instruction in many other departments of learning. Whether the state institution be a separate one or merely a college within the organization of the state university matters little. In either case the young man will be brought within reach of a course in scientific farming, stock raising, horticulture, and the like, either to choose or let alone--and the so-called cultural work will still be there for the taking.
THE FOUNDATION IN WORK
Many rural parents, weighted down with the over-work of the farm, cherish and express a very earnest desire that their sons may find some easier form of earning a living. So they deliberately plan with the boy the "easy" course to be pursued. Said one such farmer: "Wife and I decided that there would not be much in it for Henry except hard work if he settled down on the home place, so we decided to send him to college and educate him for something that offered less work and more pay." So they shielded the son from the heavier duties of the farm and encouraged in every way the boy's thought of an easy way to success.
But one thing these well-meaning parents failed to foresee. That is, when the boy entered college, he began to look for that same sort of royal road to learning. The assigned lessons and tasks soon took the appearance of drudgery and he dodged and avoided them wherever possible. In less than a year the youth had failed at college and was back home. "The confinement of the college did not agree with his health." More than three years have passed since, and the boy has spent the time drifting from one "job" to another and all the while growing weaker in character and integrity.
Here we have but another instance of the old, old story, with its tragic aspects. Yet, nearly all the faltering, vacillating men now drifting about the country might have been saved through careful training in the performance of work. The boy who would be insured success in his coming vocation must be required to buckle down to solid work of a kind and amount to suit his years and strength. He must learn through the character-building experience of toil, not only what it means to stay by an assigned duty till it is performed, but he must also experience the unfailing joy of work well done. He will thus have the advantage of the spur of successful effort and acquire the beginnings of that splendid self-reliance which is a distinguishing mark of all successful men.
CLEAN UP THE PLACE
But there is a sort of drudgery and of ugliness against which the boy's nature instinctively rebels, and it ought to. By this we mean to refer to the actual conditions of over-work and the accompanying run-down appearance that characterizes so many farm homes to-day. No wonder the boys hasten away to the city to find a "job."
Why not clean up the place by cutting away the underbrush and weeds, by planting shade trees and repairing fences and out buildings, by painting and renovating the house and barn?--and all this as an investment in behalf of the children and their possible future interest in the farm home as the best place on earth in which to dwell? All this and more might be urged as means of guiding the thoughts of the farm boy towards the possibilities of his taking up the calling of his father. And while all these material advantages may not serve to overcome the natural tendency of the young man to seek a radically different type of occupation, they will at least make it more certain that his natural abilities for an agricultural pursuit were not left unawakened.
MONEY VALUE OF AN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
The College of Agriculture in Cornell University some time ago made an inquiry into the educational status of the farmers in a certain county of New York. It was found that out of 573 farmers, 398 had not advanced farther than the district school, 165 had attended high school one or more years, and 10 had received a college education. The 398 who had attended district school only were receiving yearly for their labor $318; the 165 farmers of high school education were receiving annually $622; and the 10 who had attended college one or more years were receiving an average of $847 income for their services.
The foregoing investigation is at least suggestive in its results. It tends to prove that there is an actual earning-capacity value in the higher agricultural education. While the matter has never been extensively studied, it can doubtless be shown that the graduates of the agricultural course are receiving much larger incomes than any of the classes named above. In addition it can doubtless be shown that these graduates are better equipped, not only for earning a livelihood, but for substantial citizenship. Of course there are many notable exceptions to this rule, but the rule is, nevertheless, general.
Now, if the farm parent wishes to figure his boy's future on the basis of money-earning capacity, he can easily be shown that the higher schooling in the average case increases such capacity. In addition there is abundant evidence of the fact that the higher schooling gives the young man a much better equipment for serving the society in which he is to live.
A SUCCESSFUL VOCATION CERTAIN
Finally, it may be said that the successful vocational life of the ordinary country-bred boy may be guaranteed as practically certain, provided he have every ordinary advantage of development and training of which he is capable. Train him early in lessons of obedience and work; make his life more wholesome through ample play and recreation; see that he learns how to earn money and how to save a part of his earnings; provide that he attend the public school regularly until at least the grammar grades be finished; give him an opportunity to become personally interested in the business side of the farm life; allow him opportunities to mingle with the cleanest possible society of his own age; and then await patiently his own inner promptings as to what line of work he should take up. A college course may prove necessary in order to help him uncover deeper and better levels that lie hidden in his nature. Then, after he has chosen a calling in this careful and reliable way, with all your might, mind, and soul encourage and support him in his efforts! This is practically the only way to make a big, efficient man and citizen of your boy and to make his calling a _divine_ calling.
REFERENCES
_Vocational Education._ Published bi-monthly. $1.50 per year. The Manual Arts Press, Peoria, Ill.
Vocational Education. John M. Gillette. Chapter VI, "Importance of the Economic Interest in Society." American Book Company.
Vocational Guidance of Youth. Meyer Bloomfield. Chapter II, "Vocational Chaos and its Consequences." Houghton, Mifflin Company. The entire volume is most timely and helpful.
The Problem of Vocational Education. David Snedden, Ph.D. Houghton, Mifflin Company.
New Type of Rural School House. W. H. Jenkins. _Craftsman_, May, 1911.
Vocational Direction, or The Boy and his Job. _Annals American Academy_, March, 1910.
Education for a Vocation. President's address before the N.E.A. Annual Volume, 1908, p. 56.
Vocational Direction. E. W. Lord. _Annals Academy of Political and Social Science_ (Philadelphia), March, 1910.
Social Phase of Education. Samuel T. Dutten. Page 143, "The Relation of Education to Vocation." Macmillan. The entire book is sound and sane.
Income of College Graduates Ten Years after Graduation. H. A. Miller. _Science_, Feb. 4, 1910.
Occupations of College Graduates as Influenced by the Undergraduate Course. F. P. Keppel. _Educational Review_, December, 1910.
Assisting the Boy in the Choice of a Vocation. Pamphlet. Wm. A. McKeever. Manhattan, Kan.