Page 71 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Unit 6: Educational and Vocational Guidance

From the description given above everybody seems to be in agreement that in the present Notes
scientific and industrial age, vocational guidance is a must and a well-organized guidance
service should be established.

6.11 Process of Vocational Guidance

The preceding description of vocational guidance must have made it apparent that it requires
two kinds of information or subject-matter to be collected, the first concerning indispensable
information about the individual, and the second pertaining to knowledge of the industrial or
occupational aspect. In this manner, vocational guidance has two aspects.
(a) Study of Individual
(b) Study of occupational or professional sphere.

(a) Study of an Individual
Before any vocational guidance can be rendered to an individual, it is essential that adequate
information concerning his education, level of intelligence, mental abilities, aptitudes, interests,
physical development, health, nature, personality characteristics and economic status be gathered,
because variation in any of them will necessarily require change in guidance.
(1) Education : Individuals need differing levels of education in order to enter into and succeed
in different professions, as for example, the highest education is required for advocates,
professors, engineers, doctors, and other such professions, whereas a general and lower
level of education can serve the purpose if the profession is clerk, overseer, mechanic,
compounder, teacher, etc. Besides these there are certain other occupations in which the
medium level of education suffices e.g. business salesmanship such in professions only the
basic necessities of literacy must be fulfilled, as much he depends upon practice. It is only
because of this importance of various levels of education being relative and relevant to
different professions but most advertisements for applications for job contain teaching
students at the high school and Intermediate level need only be a graduate while no more
graduate can teach the college or graduate level. Doctors require medical degrees while in
order to qualify as an engineer it is essential that one passes an engineering examination.
(2) Training : Education does not merely imply the degree obtained at the end of a session by
passing a prescribed examination. Now-a-days, most occupational units make it obligatory
on all new entrants to be trained in addition to being educated, and this is being carried to
the extent that only a trained individual is allowed to fill the post of a high school teacher.
Certain occupations need training inevitably, for example, the occupations of an electrician,
stenographer, chemist, compounder, etc. As it is the tendency to employ trained personnel
in industry and other occupations is catching on. In certain professions, individual after
having entered it is oriented for a period of few weeks, and only then he is allowed to
handle work on his own responsibility.
(3) Level of Intelligence : Besides difference in education, different professions require differing
levels of intelligence. For example, the medical, technical, legal, teaching and administrative
professions require the highest intelligence level, while on the other hand, the peon and the
domestic worker can be selected from people with a much lower level of intelligence. Other
professions require only the average level of intelligence, so that evidently, before a person
can be told of the profession that units his natural endowments, it is essential to know the
level of intelligence to which he belongs.

(4) Special Mental abilities : Individuals differ not only in respect of their intelligence but also
in respect of their special mental abilities. For example, all people do not possess mechanical
ability to the same degree and neither is verbal flexibility shared by all in equal degree
flexiblity. Different professions require differing mental abilities, verbal ability being

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