Jesse Buttrick Davis (1871-1955): pioneer of vocational guidance in the schools.

 
  Jesse Buttrick Davis is considered to be the 1st school counselor in 
  the United States because he was the 1st to implement a systematic 
  guidance program in the schools. Through his work in the Michigan 
  public schools, he became an important leader in the development of 
  vocational guidance in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His pioneering 
  work in the Detroit and Grand Rapids public schools laid the 
  foundation for the counseling specialties of career counseling and 
  school counseling. He was also 1 of the founders of the National 
  Vocational Guidance Association (now National Career Development 
  Association) and National Association of Secondary School 
  Principals. 

Jesse Buttrick Davis is widely considered to be the first school counselor in the United States, because he was the first to implement a systematic guidance program in the public schools (Brewer, 1942; Gladding, 2006; Schmidt, 2003). Through his work in the public schools of Michigan, he became one of the primary leaders in the development of vocational guidance in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Brewer, 1942; Davis, 1956b). His pioneering work in the Detroit and Grand Rapids public schools laid the foundation for the professional counseling specialties of career counseling and school counseling.

Values and Beliefs That Contributed to Davis's Achievements

Davis had a bias toward environment over heredity, toward free public schools, against racial prejudice, toward equal access to education for women, and toward the role of humor in education. Although his mother was an elitist, Davis was a man of the people with believed strongly in the free public schools and the critically important role of education in a democracy. He was a very human person, concerned with the rules as well as how to break them. His memoirs are filled with anecdotes that show the humanity of people as he pokes holes through their stuffy facades. Raised by a patrician mother who talked of the "blue bloods" (Davis, 1956b, p. 59), he learned to eschew such attitudes and became a leader in the public schools, designing education "to meet the needs of youth in a democracy" (Davis, 1956b, p. 62).

Davis was also an inveterate "joiner" because he strongly believed in the idea of giving back to his community. "The teacher who does not take his place as an active member of his community is neglecting his duty as a good citizen and is narrowing his own field of thought and service" (Davis, 1956b, p. 230). A list of the organizations in which he held membership and the groups of which he was a leader and an officer would fill too many pages for this article. He walked the walk when it came to leadership and participation in his local and professional communities. Davis valued extracurricular activities as an integral part of a well-rounded education. He gladly accepted the role of mentor, even developing a leaders' club at Grand Rapids Central High School composed of presidents, captains, editors, and so on, of school organizations that met at his house monthly (Davis, 1956b).

When Davis founded the Grand Rapids Junior College and became its first president, his bias toward a more practical education emerged. "As a professor of education, I have often told my classes that when I was graduated from college I was fairly well prepared to live in the Middle Ages" (Davis, 1956b, p. 58). He had a classic liberal arts education that included (both high school and college) 6.5 years of Latin, 4.5 years of Greek, 3 years of German, and 2 years of French; however, he could not speak the modern languages, having read the prescribed standard literature, and could not even read a newspaper in those languages, saying, "I knew practically nothing of the century in which I lived nor of the workaday world into which I was soon to launch" (p. 58).

Much of Davis's (1956b) motivation for innovation in education was in decreasing the amount of time required for students to achieve their educational objectives.