The subject-matter is selected, not because of its interest or its utility, but mainly because of its difficulty and its formal character. Parental compulsion, vague social tendencies and impulses, petty personal rivalries, fondness for the teacher, and general cultural aspiration are relied on to facilitate the work of administration and to provide incentive. The "life-career" motive is but little utilized, and tends on the whole to be discouraged as sordid and commercial. But it is nevertheless believed that the grammatical, geographical, historical, and arithmetical elements will in the long run enable the pupil not only to enjoy life but to find it as well, or at least to be of the greatest possible service in the work into which he or she drifts. Only in the case of those who are utterly incompetent to deal with the general subject-matter, the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf, is this formal education willingly abandoned in favor of some definitely serviceable "industrial" training.
Quickly following this effort of the public schools to guide every boy and a few girls into successful careers through general education, came the realization that literary, linguistic, and mathematical information alone is inadequate to this task. It was felt by many that industrial or vocational education, calculated to fit the individual directly for his or her life occupation, should be begun at a much earlier age than that at which the group choosing the professions entered upon their further studies in the higher technical schools. It became obvious that many pupils terminated their public-school education as soon as they had satisfied the minimal requirements of the compulsory education law. These engaged at the earliest possible opportunity in some immediately gainful occupation. The occupations into which they commonly drifted were such as called for only a slight amount of intelligence and promised proportionately little by way of further equipment or promotion. They have come to be called "blind alley" occupations, and refer to such work as that of errand boys, elevator and telephone operators, small clerks, domestic servants, nursemaids, messengers, delivery boys, and teamsters.