Education: Vocational Guidance

"Vocational guidance today is no better than guessing and considerably less honest. . . ."

Such was the challenge flung last week in Cleveland at conferring members of the National Vocational Guidance Association. Challenger was Research Associate Irving Lorge of Columbia's Teachers College. His "proof" was a survey conducted in New York City under Columbia's famed Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike.

In 1921 Columbia researchers gave standard vocational-prediction tests of intelligence, clerical ability and mechanical adroitness to 2,500 schoolchildren, aged about 14. Careers of more than 2,000 were followed, their occupational success at ages...

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