The Study On The Vocational Guidance During The Period Of The Republic Of China

In 1908, Professor Frank Parsons of Boston University set up the first vocational guidance institution in the world called"Boston Vocational Bureau"and began to devote exclusively to career counseling and guidance. The establishment of this organization and the beginning of its practice was considered to be symbol of the birth of modern vocational guidance. In the period of late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, Chinese society transformed increasingly rapidly from traditional to modern which accompanied with more and more evident changes. On the one hand, newfashioned school education developed rapidly; on the other hand, social occupational structure underwent significant changes. Thus vocational guidance gradually became necessary to social development. Zhou Yi-chun launched a series of activities such as vocational speeches at Tsinghua School in 1916, which was viewed as the beginning of organized modern Chinese vocational guidance.During the period of the Republic of China, the government, association and school independently played different roles and produced different effects in the development of vocational guidance. As for the association, the Chinese Vocational Education Society and the Young Men's Christian Association etc. carried out vocational guidance activities relatively early following the Tsinghua School and expanded the social impact of vocational guidance. In addition, a number of other associations had also carried out vocational guidance. However, Chinese Vocational Education Society was the most positive promotive force of all the associations in this period from beginning to end. As for the government, before 1927 Beijing government of the Republic of China lacked relevant attention to vocational guidance and basically adopted an attitude of disregard and indulgence to it, and then after Nanjing Nationalist Government established in 1927 the government gradually began to pay close attention to vocational guidance. Thus a proposal of vocational guidance was passed at the National Education Conference in 1928 and the Ministry of Education issued related implemented methods in the 30s, attempting to promote vocational guidance form above to below. As for the school, under the advocacy and urge of association and government, all levels and kinds of schools carried out some activities on vocational guidance. The 20s and 30s of 20th century was the period in which Chinese vocational guidance enterprise developed rapidly. During this period, not only all kinds of works on vocational guidance were continuously coming out and some specialized organizations such as vocational guidance department and vocational guidance institutes set up in succession, but also the implementary scope of specific vocational guidance activities had been expanded day by day. After 1937, affected by the war the momentum of Chinese vocational guidance declined compared with prewar condition. However, because of the existence of objective social needs and insistence of some social forces, Chinese vocational guidance still went on difficultly and made some new progress by means of other forms.Limited by social environment and other relevant factors, vocational guidance didn't and also was impossible to solve the employment problem in Chinese society fundamentally in the period of Republic of China. But it indeed played a postive role on solving some problems such as choice of individual vocation, the allocation of social labour force and the match between people and jobs. Although Chinese vocational guidance of this period inevitably existed some shortcomings during the course of development, its success or failure, gain and loss provided some reference to us nowadays on making better use of vocational guidance to solve the employment problems and promote the matching between people and profession.