Flashback, 1972 at SIU — The Pipe Smoking Days
In the early 1970s, I worked with Dr. Larry J. Bailey, my friend, and mentor, on the Career Development for Children Project (CDCP). Several of us worked on the project to produced a career development curriculum for elementary school children. In 1973 I went to work at McKnight Publishing Company to help produce project materials. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for living, but rather it is a process of experiencing living.
Before leaving CDCP, I prepared a paper titled, “A Theory of the Functional Self.” The paper reviewed self-theory that explores self a being a product of social interactions. From this theory, we have seen that self-information is a developmental process that takes place within the social system. A social system may be a peer group, a single classroom, school, community, occupational establishment, or any other organized group of individuals.
It is also assumed that a social system has two dimensions, the individual and the institution, and the patterns resulting from the interaction of these dimensions are social behavior. The individual’s inferences from his behavior define his self-concept, and a self-concept that has career relevance is the functional self.
The functional self, like the self-concept, is a self-process, a process of being and becoming. It is the functional self’s developmental process that should enable educators to develop a process career developmental curriculum, rather than a content occupational information curriculum. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for a living; rather, it is a process of experiencing living.
— kenne
“I think every man is his own Pygmalion and
spends his life fashioning himself. And in
fashioning himself, for good or ill, he
fashions the human race and its future.”
— I.F. Stone (1971)
Kenne,
What a nice surprise and remembrance. We had a wonderful staff to work with during those years. I think a lot about the CDCP and wish I could do it over. I think our philosophical approach was correct, but we should not have developed grade level materials (nor McKnight). I now think the better approach would have been to develop Awareness and Accommodation multimedia kits and ditch any further materials development.
After procrastinating for way too long, I plan to begin scanning some of the CDCP materials this winter (think Wango from Dango). They remain too innovative to be lost forever. I envision calling on you for help in creating a website. We will talk later.
November 3 can’t get here soon enough…
Larry J Bailey
314-909-4879 H
314-791-5674 C
Larry,
I have boxes of stuff from over the years, most of which I haven’t been through in years. I have project and grant materials from over the years, but probably not a lot from the CDCP years. I did do this blog post in 2009: https://kenneturner.com/2009/08/23/career-development-for-children-project-a-flashback/
I willing to help in whatever way I can, so just let me know.