Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T13:28:44.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Beyond phrenology: the beginnings of vocational guidance in Queensland through ‘sagax, capax and efficax’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

Denis Arthy*
Affiliation:
Queensland University of Technology
Get access

Extract

Vocational guidance emerged in Queensland in the early 1910s as part of a governmental plan to transform the colonial educational ladder to provide an efficient distribution and coordinated range of vocational outcomes. The central feature of this new educational ladder was the New Scholarship which would provide significantly expanded opportunities for children who had the talent for an education higher than the compulsory level of primary school to participate in secondary, university, agricultural, technical and continuing levels of education. A governmental strategy was formulated to improve the efficiency of these vocational distributions, to facilitate ambition in the family for this New Scholarship and to avoid talent wastage. The guiding strategy was first proposed from within the Department of Public Instruction under the heading of “Sagax, Capax and Efficax’ prior to the First World War. While it was first proposed to be trialled by the Department of Public Instruction at the Central Technical College in Brisbane, the governmental officer charged with the responsibility to provide both the parents and the child with the necessary guidance was the primary school teacher.

Type
Professional Issues
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barlow, A.H. (1905). Twenty-ninth Report of the Secretary for Public Instruction. In Queensland Parliamentary Papers.Google Scholar
Barlow, A.H. (1907). Thirty-first Report of the Secretary for Public Instruction. In Queensland Parliamentary Papers, (1907), v l, p. 1241Google Scholar
Barlow, A.H. (1909). Thirty-third Report of the Secretary for Public Instruction. In Queensland Parliamentary Papers.Google Scholar
Blair, J.W. (1913). Secretary for Public Instruction, Queensland Parliamentary Debates, vol. 116.Google Scholar
Blair, J.W. (1913a). Address by the Hon. J.W. Blair, Minister for Public Instruction, at the Opening of the Teachers' Conference, 13th January, 1913. The Education Office Gazette, Queensland, vol. 15, pp.4-9.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, G.A. (1896). Phrenological and physiognomical chart of character and abilities. Attached to Blumenthal (1896a).Google Scholar
Blumenthal, G.A. (1896a). Letter to the Hon. Minister for Education from G.A. de Blumenthal, dated 28 October, unpublished, filed at History Unit of the Queensland Department of Education, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Brewer, J. (1942). History of vocational guidance, origins and early development. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donzelot, J. (1979). The policing of families. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Irving, T., Maunders, D., & Sherington, G. (1995). Youth in Australia, policy administration and politics: A history since World War II. Melbourne: Macmillan Education Pty Ltd.Google Scholar
Julian, ST. (1922). Letter to editor. The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, April 6.Google Scholar
McDaniels, C., & Watts, G. (Eds) (1994). Journal of Career Development, A Thematic Issue of the Life and Work of Frank Parsons, 20, 4, Summer.Google Scholar
Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 1913, vol. 116, pp. 2560–65.Google Scholar
Queensland Parliamentary Papers, 1914, v l.Google Scholar
Roe, R.H. (1913). Inspector-General of Schools. Queensland Parliamentary Papers, 1913, vol. 1.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (1885). The psychological complex: Psychology, politics and society in England 1869–1939. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Spaull, A. (1982). Australian education and the Second World War. Referred to in Irving et al., (1995). Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Story, J. (1914). Educational pioneering in Queensland. The Education Office Gazette, pp.440–53. Paper read at the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sydney, 1914.Google Scholar