One basic assumption underlying the current vocational theories is populist in nature: that each individual, with adequate motivation, information, and guidance, can move through the educational process to satisfying job goals that allow him or her to express personality characteristics or implement self concept. This assumption cannot be made unless one holds a prior assumption that every job is capable of engaging the human qualities of an individual and that, in the Protestant tradition, each job has the potential of being a "calling." The vocational theorists have reinforced the concept that the job is the primary focus of a person's life. This may have been true during the years of the small farmer and the independent entrepreneur; but under present conditions, where almost all people work for organizations whose survival is dependent on generating profit and operating efficiently, the needs of the individual are subordinated to the goals of the organization.
The implementation of automation throughout the American work world raises questions about the logic of continuing to encourage people to believe that their jobs should be the central focus of their lives. The arguments over whether automation increases or decreases the number of jobs do not address them selves to the critical issue of whether the jobs created can carry the weight of importance consigned to work by vocational psychologists. A recent HEW report (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare 1973) has stated unequivocally: "It is illusory to believe that technology is opening new high level jobs that are replacing low level jobs. Most new jobs offer little in the way of 'career' mobility lab technicians do not advance along a path and become doctors". And earlier in the report: "Many workers at all occupational levels feel locked in, their job mobility blocked, the opportunity to grow lacking in their jobs, challenge missing from their tasks... For some workers, their jobs can never be made satisfying, but only bearable at best". The findings of the HEW Special Task Force have been given added weight through interviews conducted by Terkel (1972) and Lasson (1972) with workers in a wide range of jobs.
Career development is an abstract construct. It permits vocational theorists to hypothesize about factors that appear to affect vocational decision making without regard for the quality of jobs in which people eventually find themselves. Although career development research may result in more efficient means of sorting people into vocational slots, the assumptions about personality expression and self concept implementation in work on which this research is based may encourage workers to expect self fulfillment in jobs that the modern industrial bureaucratic work structure is not designed to meet. As Green (1968) has indicated: "Under the conditions of a society in which automation is fully exploited... such an understanding of work would constitute a cruel hoax".
Trends toward a reduced work week and part time work also pose serious questions regarding the assumption that jobs can serve as a major focus of personal fulfillment, as do the pressure toward early retirement and the shifting of middle aged people out of jobs with which they have identified to jobs in which age is considered less damaging to the efficiency or public image of the organization. Older workers are becoming victims of the youth image and economic demands of a work system that has little sympathy for the needs of the individual.
The Changing Nature of Work
The world of work in America has changed significantly over the past few decades. The proportion of people working on small, privately owned farms, working in rural areas, and working in small businesses is now relatively small in comparison to those working for administrators and managers in the bureaucracies of the large metropolitan centers. Job activities have been reduced to ever smaller units of specialization. White collar and professional workers have been organized into pools or teams, decisions about their work being made at some higher level of management. Academic credentials have been given added importance for entrance into jobs, while the complexity of those jobs has remained the same or actually been reduced. As Berg (1971) has stated: "The use of educational credentials as a screening device effectively consigns large numbers of people, especially young people, to a social limbo defined by low skill, no opportunity jobs in the 'peripheral labor market'". Berg's evaluation is echoed by the HEW report, which notes: "While new industries have appeared in recent decades that need a well educated work force, most employers simply raised educational requirements without changing the nature of the jobs... For a large number of jobs, education and job performance appear to be inversely related".
Holland (1973), in a recent book, has indicated: "The goal of vocational guidance matching men and jobs remains the same despite much talk, research, and speculation. Our devices, techniques, classifications and theories are more comprehensive than in the days of Parsons, the founder of vocational guidance, but the goal is still one of helping people find jobs that they can do well and that are fulfilling" (p. 85). There is no doubt that vocational guidance has remained steadfast in its goal of matching people and jobs, but it is problematic whether vocational counselors can claim that their matches have resulted in placing people in jobs that are "fulfilling." Observations from the field seem to indicate that personal fulfillment in jobs is more mythical than real for the great mass of workers. One would have to assume that Holland's reference to "fulfillment" is connected to the fact that counselors administer and interpret tests that presumably permit some "fit" with the characteristics of persons already on the job. This appears to be a rather flimsy rack on which to hang a person's self fulfillment.
Neither vocational theorists nor counselors have confronted the issue raised by writers such as Jenkins (1973), who has stated: "There is no question that work, and the image of work, has sunk badly for blue collar workers, for organization men, for contemptuous young people, for almost everyone... One can almost conclude that the only force keeping anyone at it is the mythology of the nobility of the thing, however distasteful it may be". The vocational theorists have ignored the growing number of writers who seriously question the myth of the meaningfulness of work in our industrial society. Those who write for a readership of counselors, as a matter of fact, appear to be the principal supporters of the myth, speaking for the status quo no matter how oppressive the working world may be to most individuals. "Even as adults, only a small percentage of Americans have the privilege of feeling that their work is essential or important" (Benet 1971 cited in Jenkins 1973). That is the central issue, which vocational theorists and counselors have avoided. The world of work as they view it no longer exists.
Needed: A New Perspective
Touraine (1974) has pointed out that a new kind of society is being born; it can be called the programmed, or technocratic, society. This new society is served by vocational theorists and counselors whose perspectives of work are drawn from the past, causing their efforts at increasing the effectiveness of moving people into jobs to negate their professed humanistic concern for people.
The counselor continues to assume that vocational counseling can result in a match of the person with a satisfying job, but as Ferkiss (1970) has noted: "The myth of 'the happy worker' is still just that. Where the old centralized rigid processes have been automated with machines taking over routine tasks, working conditions, especially psychological ones, have not improved. Such evidence as exists indicates that the watchers of dials the checkers and maintainers are likely to be lonely, bored, and alienated, often feeling less the machine's master than its servant". And these feelings are not restricted to specific job categories or classifications. They are pervasive throughout the working world, not only among the lower level of jobs but extending up through the white collar and managerial ranks. Their effects generalize, leading workers "to become 'stupid and ignorant' not only on the job, but off as well" (Jenkins 1973).
Braginsky and Braginsky (1974) have argued convincingly that psychologists, either unwittingly or as a means of self preservation, operate within a framework of generally accepted cultural values that are encouraged and supported by those in power to ensure societal stability and their own dominant positions. In accordance with this concept, the prediction and control models used by psychologists are more for the benefit of those with power than for the benefit of the individual whose behavior is being predicted.
Counselors are positioned at the service delivery end of a chain of information, data, and how to do it prescriptions generated by vocational psychologists. They have a direct involvement with the clients who come to them for assistance, and they carry the burden of responsibility for ensuring that their promises about the improvement of human welfare through counseling can be kept. With the values of society in flux, counselors must not only evaluate their own attitudes toward the concept of work as the major source of self fulfillment; they must also test their attitudes against the experiences of workers in a variety of occupations. They need not be passive consumers of the products of academia. They can, through direct communication with the writers and theorists and through discussions within their professional groups, begin to raise questions about the assumptions on which vocational theorizing is based as well as about the perspectives through which conclusions and interpretations of research data are filtered.
Six years ago, Osipow (1969) suggested that perhaps vocational psychologists were not asking the "right" questions, that concern with vocational preference and selection might be of relevance for only a minority of the population, and that we should be placing more emphasis on questions related to those factors in the work situation which encourage satisfaction and permit feelings of worth and human dignity. But beyond these considerations, counselors might begin considering a theoretical model or framework broader than the vocational choice or vocational development models, a theoretical model that is based on general human effectiveness and that does not require a fulfilling job as its core concept.
The connection between work and the confirmation of one's worth as a human being has been severed for the great majority of our population. Other disciplines are already engaging in a search for alternative means by which people can express their individuality and gain a sense of control over some significant parts of their lives. Counselors should be no less involved in this search. Because they are central to the life planning of millions of people, their responsibility for assisting in the search for means other than paid employment through which people can gain meaning from life is all the greater.
