Posted on 08/12/2017 9:11:17 AM PDT by Lorianne
Paul Beston joins Steven Malanga to talk about the history of the American high school and making high-quality career training central in today’s high schools. This 10 Blocks episode is the second based on City Journal’s special issue, The Shape of Work to Come.
In 1910, less than 20 percent of America’s 15-to-18-year-olds were enrolled in high school. By 1940, that figure had reached nearly 75 percent. The phenomenon became known as the American high school movement, and the impetus for it came from local communities, not from federal, or even state, government.
Today, however, high school diplomas poorly prepare students for finding good jobs. Despite automation and competition from overseas, surveys of businesses consistently show that hundreds of thousands of positions in manufacturing firms go unfilled.
One thing is abundantly clear: career and technical training in the U.S. hasn’t evolved to keep up with the transformation of the modern economy—and many schools have even slashed funding for vocational education.
Paul Beston is managing editor of City Journal and author of the forthcoming book, The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Rule the Ring. His story “When High Schools Shaped America’s Destiny” appeared in City Journal‘s special issue.
Steven Malanga is the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal. His story “Vocational Ed, Reborn” also appeared in the special issue.
Podcast 18:23
Today, however, high school diplomas poorly prepare students for finding good jobs. Despite automation and competition from overseas, surveys of businesses consistently show that hundreds of thousands of positions in manufacturing firms go unfilled.
Can we call a spade a spade? High school does not prepare anyone for a “good job”. High school will hopefully give someone some basic literacy. We hope the graduates are literate enough to read their own diploma. But high school itself does not prepare someone for a particular job.
Neither does college, for that matter, unless someone gets a degree in some specific field which leads to a career field.
High school, at best, will have prepared you to enter the world of work or higher education, but does not, in and of itself, give you job skills or a ticket to a job, just by virtue of having graduated high school.
Yet another reason why education must not be centralized by Fed.gov
Vocational HS’s were a sentence for HS trouble makers. Unruly students were threaten to go there if they didn’t behave. It was the usual progressive education system, where you fired a shot gun hoping that a few pellets would hit the target and there would be some good coming out of it. Not saying that we didn’t have a few motivated hard working trade oriented students, there were some. Especially in the automotive areas, engine repair, rebuilds, and body work. History, Geography, Math, English were still part of the curriculum. However the dealing with the “unruly ones” was still present, and the access to heavy metal tools laying around was not a plus for the instructors who had to tame them. I’m sure today they are a lot more tech oriented than they were in the 50’s through the 80’s, thus opening the door for advance learning. However without the student motivation to do well, it may result in no real change and remain a dumping ground for the unruly ones who make it difficult for those who are there to actually learn. What ever happened to the reform schools for the unruly ones? A uniformed require attendance with former correctional facility guards as instructors would be my vision. (Its OK, I’ve been accused of being far right of Fascist before.)
Vocational education is important, very important. But today’s high schools are all about raising test scores. High test scores = bonuses for administrators, and bragging rights for school board members.
But these national exams do not test for vocational skills. So vocational classes are being cut, and kids who should be in a plumbing program are being forced to take advanced algebra instead.
It’s insane. And it’s another example of how George W. Bush failed America (’No Child Left Behind’).
"Fascist" is not on the right side of the political spectrum.
The PSEO program is a great opportunity. Yes, it’s funded by taxpayers but so are public schools so it probably breaks even.
What I recently learned is that technical programs are also open to high school juniors and seniors as part of PSEO. Tuition and books are covered by the state, but the tools are not. Our son is enrolled in the electrician program at the local community and technical college and will graduate from high school and with his AAS at the same time. Because it’s a technical program we will still need to complete high school work at home. Others who choose to complete their AA in liberal arts will have their college courses count for high school and college credit.
I’m very excited for this as he can begin his career at 18, with zero debt. We will purchase the required tools for him this fall (around $1500) and he will be set.
If he still wants to pursue a Bachelors, he can work his way through college as an electrician.
“making high-quality career training central in today’s high schools”
This is a huge misconception. High schools were never intended to teach vocation. They were designed to teach a student how to understand and accept the mode of learning.
To force a 13-17 year old youth to try to understand a job without the other facets of the learning curve like math, English grammer or the linguistical capacity to utilize the communications skills required to survive, prior to the actual job skill training, is worthless.
And four years of those subjects from grammer to Hamlet, addition to calculus, being trained by a school that consistently passes kids on even they are illiterate, or can’t inclusion anything without a calculator, or remember so many buzzwords, is moronic.
rwood
here we have a thing called Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) or simply "tech" that teaches auto mechanics, welding, i.e. career and technical programs for high school students more of them go on to make a good honest living than half the snowflakes that goto college
All K12 education was ever required to do was establish a minimum - minimally literate & enumerate. Any more and it was icing on the cake! Now it can barely do that! Why? Even for that low level requirement there has to be order, structure & no “excuses/pandering regarding students” for that to take place.
We have 10,000 years (actually more!) of examples from ALL CONTINENTS of teachers(masters) educating (training) students (disciples) from flint knapping, hide tanning, plumbing to theoretical physics. The common thread is structure, order & self discipline (primarily by the student!) & practice. Why one needs “Towers of Cluelessness “ like Colleges of Education to pump out theories of education and learning is beyond me! The history of mankind already tells you how to do it; master - student, order - discipline! Anymore and you introduce inefficiency until we get to the chaotic point we are at now.
I graduated from HS in 1970. Since the age of about 10, I was interested in electronics. My HS offered vocational training in basic electronics and basic electronics repair. It gave me a huge advantage in engineering school and later the USAF. I recently retired (very comfortably I might add) as a Sr. Engineer.
I’m a big advocate of vocational schools.
I got out of high school with auto shop, welding, surveying and basic heavy equipment operation in the 1970s. Those skills helped pay for college and grad school with good paying summer jobs in the oil patch. Vocational skills education can and should work for many students and especially those who are NOT headed to college. We have too many colleges and too many liberal arts college grads now. 70% of the population should not go to college in today’s market - maybe 25-35% actually benefit economically for themselves and the country.
I took machine shop, electric shop, wood shop, and tin shop while enrolled in a normal regents program in a New York state high school.
The high school I attended taught classes in AC/Refrigeration. In Baton Rouge, these people are worth their weight in gold.
Bookmarked....
thanks! Bump
Focusing on “common sense” would be part of the solution. . . but then who is qualified to teach that these days. Teaching from the Book of Proverbs could be starters. Saw this in the hospital gift shop when I was volunteering. . .had to write it down - memory isn’t what it use to be :) I was going to insert it in the church bulletin for this Sunday but decided against it :) “Common sense is like deodorant. . .the people who need it most don’t use it.”
I disagree.
I attended a vocational high school during the first half of the 1970s, as did several of my family and peers.
A "B" average was required to be accepted at my school, along with a recorded history of good behavior, attendance and effort. There were no trouble makers allowed or tolerated.
Graduates from my school were known for being well prepared in their respective trade. We made excellent employees and contributors to our communities. Some of us also joined the armed forces and became outstanding Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines.
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