The Science of Guidance

Many a U.S. schoolmaster each week gets handouts, addressed to the school's "Guidance Officer." Just what a Guidance Officer's duties are has been something of a mystery.

Last week some of the mystery was cleared up. Available for the fall opening of schools was the first comprehensive text on the "applied science" of guidance (Techniques of Guidance; Harper, $3.50). Its author, Arthur E. Traxler, is a conscientious Ph.D. who for the past nine years has been associated with the Educational Records Bureau, academic efficiency experts who think every school should get itself a Guidance Officer. His book was brimful of Guidance. By internal evidence, the Guidance Officer seemed to be a half-robot, half-notetaking middleman on the faculty. His impressive task: to make "each individual understand his abilities and interests . . . relate them to life goals, and finally to reach a state of mature self-guidance." His tools include a panoply of complicated forms and tests.

Dr. Traxler lists hundreds of elaborate tests designed to find out all about a schoolboy by "measuring" his background, attitude, aptitude, achievement and personality. Some of them: the Tweezer Dexterity Test and the Wiggly Block Test, to measure manual skill; the Cardall-Gilbert Test of Clerical Competence; the Meier-Seashore Art Judgment Test, the California Test of Mental Maturity, and the Orleans Geometry Prognosis Test (to predict the ability of pupils who never studied the subject).

Dr. Traxler also discusses the Anecdotal Record. (These are cards that the teacher fills out when Junior spills an inkwell or seems emotionally disturbed. The teacher then turns the card over to the Guidance Officer.) Dr. Traxler quotes an example of a poorly filled-out Anecdotal Record:

"In study hall today, George showed his

great desire to get attention, particularly

from girls, by whispering and clowning for

the benefit of everyone about him whenever he thought the teacher's attention was elsewhere. He seems to be a born troublemaker who will be a bad influence in this school. I think the principal and his counselor should call him in and take strong action before it is too late."

Says Dr. Traxler: "The phrases showed his great desire to get attention, born troublemaker, and bad influence in this school are matters of opinion that have no place in a report of the incident itself. An objective report of what took place would read approximately as follows: "Incident. In study hall today, George whispered frequently and created a disturbance by various antics which attracted the attention of the pupils sitting near him." This is a brief, clear statement of what took place. . . . The interpretation can well be placed in a separate paragraph carefully labeled thus: "Interpretation. George seems to be a boy who wants much attention from other pupils, particularly girls. He manages to get some of the attention he craves, but his classmates seem more annoyed and disgusted than amused."

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