As it was 60 years ago in our boyhood, so it is today in 99 out of 100 schools Not a grain of progress that will help the country boy to a  better understanding of the problems of agriculture.

Hoard’s Dairyman, 1895

We’ve come a long way since then, but then we haven’t. It’s taken a long time, over one hundred years for the American school system to really embrace the importance of the CTE curriculum and the concept of CTE Pathways. Teaching students what they need to enter a rewarding and lucrative career is essential today, more than ever. It’s been an integral part of the American experience for a long time. 

In the beginning

An education was not for everyone. For those that did get educated it was a classical education, steeped in Greek and Latin history, the great thinkers and philosophers. It was for the landed class, the ones who would go on to be bankers, lawyers, and politicians. For the average young person, it was off to work. Either on the farm or in an apprenticeship. There was no schooling needed. 

Even as the American experiment began to put an emphasis on public education in the early 1800’s it was a very spartan, and very limited education. Reading, writing and arithmetic, along with the classics, were the fare of the day. Schools were poorly funded and poorly attended. For the young people going on to the trades or back to the farm, schooling held little interest. 

After the creation of the Department of Education in 1867 things began to evolve. As the department’s responsibilities expanded it started to become clear to some people that the current curriculum wasn’t doing what a growing industrial country needed. A classical education wasn’t preparing people to enter an ever changing and growing industrial society. By the 1890’s it was clear that a change was needed. 

As we see in the quote from “Hoard’s Dairyman” magazine in the late nineteenth century, the country was waking up to the fact that there were industries growing that required a specialized type of curriculum. The classics, reading, writing and arithmetic weren’t enough to serve this growing country and it’s industrial needs. 

First Steps

As the industrial revolution grew so did the call from those who wanted schools to help prepare their students for more than just reading, writing, and math. They wanted a school curriculum that would mirror the growing need for industrial workers trained in the skills needed to fuel the countries growth. 

The goal of this new school of thought was to promote industrial education by focusing the public’s attention on the value of an educational system that could prepare the youth to enter the trades. Skills that would lead people into jobs that, at the time, were growing exponentially. The country needed more workers and less thinkers. The society strove to secure funding and to push a new curriculum to schools around the country. 

In the early 20^th century there was a convergence of ideas permeating K-12 education. The idea that we needed to teach students practical skills had several proponents. Businesses saw it as a way to alleviate the shortages in skilled-labor. Many saw it as a way to incorporate the moral values of work, which they felt was being eroded by modern society. Pedagogical reformers saw it as a way to add new teaching methods and philosophies to pique students interest and raise involvement and attendance. 

The state of Massachusetts convened the Douglas Commission in 1905 to study the issue and they came back with a recommendation that the state needed to expand technical and vocational education. This study quickly gained traction and led to the creation, in 1906, of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education.

The leaders of the new organization began to lobby Washington for more emphasis, and more funding, for vocational education. It was time, they felt, to teach kids the skills they needed to make it in the modern world. There were several attempts to create legislation and finally, in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Smith-Hughes Act codifying the creation of real vocational education in America’s school system. 

The new bill funded vocational education in high schools and in the newly created vocational schools. The emphasis at the time was to use this new system to vitalize general education, democratize schooling by adapting it to real needs, promote increased industrial efficiency and national prosperity, decrease labor and social unrest and promote a higher standard of living. Quite lofty goals for a new way of looking at education. 

Most of the advocacy centered on industrial education, agriculture and home economics. The first controversy was what to do with girls. Were they to be trained for jobs or for work at home. Eventually, they got both. It allowed for the creation of the vocational high school, what many people remember as the “Vo-tech” school. 

The Smith-Hughes Act was the law of the land and, like most initial endeavors, ran into some issues. There were concerns about separating vocational students from the student body, that it reinforced different treatment by race and steered “low achievers” into the vo-tech path as a way of keeping up school performance. But it was a good start! 

Next steps

The focus on vocational training had some interesting effects on the country. At the start of World War II the focus on vocational education created a huge workforce of skilled labor that was able to man the intense need to quickly scale up war production. The women of the day were already exposed to the type of training they needed to take on the responsibilities that were one of the most important aspects of our war efforts. The great idea of “Rose the Riveter” was born out of a generation of women already trained in the idea of that type of work. 

Appropriations for vocational education during the war to train defense production topped $100 million by 1945, an unheard of sum at that time. After the war the government continued to fund vocational education and the new G.I. Bill of Rights led to a promise of skilled labor training for any veteran who wanted it after the war. The G.I. Bill also put in a stipulation and funding for training. The push to keep the American industrial machine going was on full force. 

The Korean War and the Cold War also played a role in keeping our country moving forward with ways to train people for work. However, as the fifties came to an end and the space race and computers began to become part of the national zeitgeist, the focus began to shift from vocational education to getting everyone ready for the new frontiers. And that meant college. So while the funding for vocational education stayed constant, the emphasis began to shift and getting people trained for the workforce began to take a back seat. 

Steps back

The times were changing and the needs of the country began to change. During the 1960’s studies were showing that graduates of vocational programs were no more likely to be employed than high school dropouts. Because of the decrease in American manufacturing, the drop in good union jobs, and the need for more high tech training the classic vocational training it was unclear whether students were really benefitting from this type of education.

By the 1970’s the good jobs that required just a high school education were beginning to disappear. Technology and globalization were creating a need for a skill level that required higher education and was making the labor markets more volatile. Entire parts of the economy were being wiped out, or changed so drastically, as to no longer be a viable option. New jobs were coming up that the current educational system couldn’t service. 

As the economy began to shift towards more technical and service oriented jobs, and the jobs were moving from country to country it became apparent that a new way of looking at education came into view. The country was now battling countries in Europe and, more importantly, in Asia for the goods and service necessary for a productive society. These people were working more efficiently and cheaper. 

The focus on education was becoming more about high level math and tech skills and less about the skills that were being taught in the vocational education track. New pedagogy and the emphasis on test scores became the end-all be-all. It was now essential that everyone be college ready upon graduation. By the 80’s and 90’s funding for vocational education began to wane. Stand alone tech schools began to close. Programs were closed. It was now harder to find ways for those students not interested in college to find the skills they needed to get employed. 

By the end of the 90’s vocational education had become the dumping ground for those students who weren’t succeeding in the college preparatory tracks. Students with emotional problems, learning disabilities or severe economic hardships. Vocational education was becoming a quasi-special education. 

Step into the future: CTE Pathways

As we headed into the new millennium of the 21^st Century it was becoming clear that the skills gap in our country was beginning to cause serious economic problems. It was becoming impossible to find plumbers, electricians, construction workers and others with the skills necessary to build and maintain the nations infrastructure. Other careers were now coming on line that were skilled, but didn’t require more than a high school degree. The way was set for the reassessment of vocational education. 

The big sweeping view change went from talking about vocational education to career education. What was necessary wasn’t just a “vocational program” but an intrinsic built-in program that took all student on pathways for specific career opportunities while keeping them all together and giving them the basic skills to be successful out in the working world. 

And that gave birth to the CTE clusters and the CTE pathways. Born in the 1980’s it gained traction and importance as we moved into the new century. So important that the venerable old Association of Vocational Education born in 1906 is now the Association of Career and Technical Education. 

CTE is the way we’ve taken these needs of fulfilling the needs of society and given them the power to make sure that our students are all still learning the things that make for a productive life. They’re getting the life skills along with reading, writing, and arithmetic. They’re learning in a way that is productive and inclusive. And engaging. 

That’s why Career Day has embraced the CTE pathways as the backbone for our program. We allow students to find their strengths and then explore, and learn, in ways that help them to get where they want to go. We’re an excellent supplement for any school districts CTE program. Any organization that wants to expose their students to this way of learning need Career Day.

What needs to happen next is the inclusion in the pathways of the skills necessary to find, get and keep a good job. And to give students the tools they will need to succeed, such as financial literacy, to make a really good life for themselves in this ever changing landscape. 

As we sit at 150 years of growth and evolution in teaching vocational skills it’s great to see that what we once again value the work that is done by everyone.

Sources