37?, ,No, - UNT Digital Library

37?,

,No,

HISTORY OF GUIDANCE IN THE UNITED STATES

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By

Anthony Paul Picchioni, B.A. , M.A., M.Ed. Denton, Texas August, 1980

(e) Copyright by Anthony Paul Picchioni

1980

Picchioni, Anthony Paul, History of Guidance in the United States, Doctor of Philosophy (Counseling and Student Services), August, 1980, 390 pp., 1 table, bibliography, 283 titles.

Among the social sciences, guidance is relatively young, having evolved out of the American social experience with its concern for the welfare of the individual. As an independent discipline, guidance is about seventy years old. However, the foundations for guidance are imbedded in the nation's historical past. Beginning with seventeenth-century New Englanders, who stressed religious and economic reasoning, a systematic approach to occupational selection began. By the close of the colonial period, the precedent of freedom of choice of vocation and educational opportunity was well established.

The coming of industrialization brought the rise of a factory environment and a new class, the proletariat. The human misery resulting from urbanization and economic specialization produced the first organized social response in philanthropic bureaus, educational reforms, and success literature. As industrialization accelerated after the Civil War, the economic philosophy of laissez faire was reflected in guidance literature. However, by the turn of the century reformers sought to reestablish the primacy of the

individual. John Dewey advocated scientific educational reforms while George Arthur Merrill and Jesse Davis pioneered the first guidance classes.

In 1905, the primary architect of vocational guidance, Frank Parsons, established the Vocation Bureau, in Boston. He assisted youth and immigrants in selecting jobs, while criticizing the Boston public schools. Parsons set forth the first guidance techniques, and in 1909 the Boston schools began training guidance personnel. In 1913, the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA) was organized and Harvard University offered the first vocational guidance courses in 1916. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 provided federal funds for vocational education. Although by the decade's close guidance was a recognized concept, the movement had lost its independent status, becoming an adjunct of the educational system.

Guidance came under the influence of several parallel movements in succeeding decades. The unprecedented use of tests in World War I created the conditions for viewing measurements as the means by which to create a precise technology for guidance. Clinical methods for treating emotional and developmental needs were borrowed from the mental hygiene movement. While guidance continued to define its function, the second generation of guidance leaders spared the NVGA a premature death by reorganizing, creating greater chapter autonomy.

The impact of the Depression brought a substantial infusion of federal support for guidance. The George-Dean Act of 1936 funded vocational guidance and, in 1938, the Occupational Information and Guidance Service was established in the Department of Education. Carl R. Rogers' nondirective approach to counseling in the early 1940's signaled a revolution in therapy.

By midcentury, guidance had matured; a new organization was created, the American Personnel and Guidance Association, while theoreticians created new guidance models to meet individual needs in an urban America. The reaction to the Russian Sputnik provided guidance with massive federal support in the omnibus National Defense and Education Act of 1958. This legislation transformed guidance and set into motion the conditions for expanding guidance into elementary education. The material affluence and spiritual vacuity felt by millions of Americans in the 1960's provided the conditions for the rise of humanistic-existential guidance. Group guidance and computer-assisted guidance were also implemented in guidance programs. The 1970's saw emphasis placed on the concept of career education and questions surrounding professionalism. Special important issues such as accountability, women's rights, the elderly, and confidentiality challenged the guidance movement to define itself once again in an age of change.

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