Teaching for the Sake of Vocational Choice in Rural Communities

Abstract

Determination of capacity for economic service on the part of every prospective citizen is quite as important under a theory of democratic organization of society as it is under a theory of state socialism. Equality of opportunity is fully as dependent on such determination as is the efficiency of the state, for in the theory of democracy self-realization in and through vocation for the individual is of equal or greater significance than his efficiency in the production of a margin of utilities for social consumption, whether of commodity or of service. The achievement of efficiency as a productive unit in the social organization is not, as it is under the doctrine of state socialism, the prime objective of selection for economic capacity. Thus, in a country like ours, any means to such determination must place election before selection. Indeed, choice in itself is an essential element in any equalization of opportunities. All that a democratic society can do is to provide for the prospective citizen the basis in experience necessary to make his choice genuine or intelligent. In the light of the foregoing thesis the proposition which has been put forward by many and earnest advocates, that the function of formal education in the rural community is to bond the country boy and the country girl to the soil, is unacceptable. The fact that a child is born on the farm is not at all an indication that he can