Murder of The Worker by Godless Industrialism
ASKED the reason for her ZA devotion to jazz, Irene, a young hotel telephone operator, replied that at a jam session she could really be herself. This was one of the most sig.nificant sayings of late. That a
great number of other young people say the same makes it even more significant.
For six hours a day, Irene is a bored young Miss who sometimes gives you the wrong number : only when she has escaped from the switchboard does she resume to live.
In a civilisation bleeding at the roots, one finds not only the gang " deputising for the loss of the family, but also jazz replacing the lost vocation of work.
Coupled with the fact—sup. ported by a mass of evidence— that the effects of formal education are neutralised in a very short time, especially in the case of the 15-year-oId school-leaver, by the social pressures of the world of work and entertainment. it would appear that the genuine problem to he tackled to-day is in the field of true vocational guid. ance in working life; and part of the solution in vocational guidance centres.
TILE ACCENT ON FREEDOM VOCATIONAL guidance works on two levels. In the first place it aims to put the individual in a situation where he will be able to develop freely along his own original lines and have thebest chance of employ ing his newt al
The accent here is on ihr freedom of each unique human person to achieve some measure of self-fulfilment through his work.
Secondly, it aims at helping him to discover that his work is one of the main means through which he achieves his eternal destiny as a son of God. As co-partner with God he carries out his responsibility for the temporal order.
Under ifs two aspects, vocational guidance shows the importance of work as one of the great educational influences forming the full and balanced human person.
To-day almost everyone, even if he is able to exercise real choice in the matter of a job or profession, is conditioned by the prevailing social and economic pressures of our sham, commercial, competitive culture.
Far from determining for himself what manner of man he will