In preference to the study of cultures, a few schools hold that the student's predominant interest in a career provides a sound basis for genuine integration. Each boy and girl is encouraged to find "some field of human activity in which he takes a special interest, for which he feels he has special aptitude and in which he sees adults earning their living in the real world outside school. These fields may be concrete fine arts, business administration, pre-engineering, euthenics -and they may be as conventionally intellectual as mathematics, French, Creek or history."⁶ For the student whose vocational interest is art, science obviously becomes significant in relation to his career. Other subjects take on new meaning as he sees their implications for his work. This desirable result is obtained only when the program of studies is arranged so that adaptation of work to each individual's predominant interest is made possible.

The visitor who wants to see all the members of the senior class of a certain participating school⁷ would have to travel all over town, for many are at work in various places and occupations for two weeks at a time throughout the senior year. They are working at all sorts of jobs, from general clerking to pattern making. These are students who are not going to college. They are trying to make places for themselves in the economic life of the community. The school is trying to help them, first, by arranging for experience on the job; second, by relating their school work to their out-of school experience. In school they are studying labor unions, collective bargaining, social security, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, housing, hospitalization, propaganda, possible uses of leisure time, crime, intelligent buying, and numerous other topics directly or indirectly related to their future work and citizenship in the community. The employer reports to the school concerning the pupil's native ability in the work he is doing, his progress, adaptability, initiative, politeness, ability to get along with fellow workers, willingness to take advice and orders, ability to work independently without waiting for suggestions, and desire to learn and advance. These reports combined with school reports provide the basis for genuine guidance and profitable conference with the student and his parents. School studies come to focus on the student and his career. English, social studies, mathematics, science, the arts are no longer isolated fields of doubtful value. They become related sources of knowledge and understanding as they contribute to the student's purposes of making a living and doing useful work in which he finds growth and satisfaction.

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