Foreword : embarking on the GCDF journey

Abstract

Career education and guidance is a field that, while many date back to the early 20th century, in fact addresses concerns and preoccupations, as well as dreams and aspirations, that have been with humanity ever since there was a division of labour in ancestral communities millennia ago. Who should do what so that the community thrives? Who is best suited to hunt or to gather, to build or to war, to nourish offspring or to till the land? How should chores be distributed so that, first, basic needs are fulfilled, and then more sophisticated ones are also attended to? And who decides how such distribution should take place? Are different individuals 'called' - by an inner doemon, or by the 'gods' - to serve their community in a particular way, and in so doing find happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment themselves, or are they obliged by force of necessity to take one particular road and not another? And does the child of a sculptor become a sculptor, and that of a blacksmith a blacksmith in turn, or does one strike out on one's own, to find that which suits him or him best?