How to choose the right vocation : vocational self-measurement based upon natural abilities the mental ability requirements of the fourteen hundred vocations ... with 720 self-testing questions / by Holmes W. Merton.

  • Merton, Holmes W. (Holmes Whittier), 1860-
Date:
[1917], ©1917
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How to choose the right vocation : vocational self-measurement based upon natural abilities the mental ability requirements of the fourteen hundred vocations ... with 720 self-testing questions / by Holmes W. Merton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    calling. Oftentimes the best training for a misfit calling does not enable a man even to earn his salt in that calling, whereas, the same man might rise to eminence in the vocation which ealled his dominant abilities into play. There are two fundamental facts in relation to efficiency that have not received due attention, either in the present-day agitation for vocational training or in the extended, practical efforts that are being made to give young men and women in- creasingly better preparation for professional and industrial life. The first of these facts is that every vocation re- quires that the man who would suceessfully follow it with ease and enjoyment must have the special mental equipment—some particular faculty or ability or combination of natural talents—that especially fits him to carry on that occupation; the second of these facts is that profound natural fact that every person is better adapted to carry on some one vocation than he is to carry on any other. No boat builder would for a moment think that any kind of sound wood—soft pine, elm, bass— properly finished would serve his purpose, would prove sufficiently hardy to weather the seas. Only the wood that has the inherent enduring qualities is chosen for such precarious use. Men and women differ as inherently and unalterably in their capacities for various accomplishment as kinds of wood differ in degrees of hardihood and other qualities. Before anything like the highest efficiency of