Vocational Education

Vocational Education

The forum on Goals 2000 sponsored by the county Republican Party became mostly an alarmist look at trends in vocational education, particularly in the Fairfax County public schools.

The forum started with an assumption that concern for better preparing students for the world of work after graduation grew out of a study of the educational system in the former Soviet Union. Actually, in the United States it has developed mostly out of concern by American businesses that many graduates of American public schools are not well prepared and require expensive remediation and training.

Concerns expressed at the forum were a decreased emphasis on strong academic education as career preparation and developing desired personality traits receive more emphasis, reduced parental control as guidance counselors take on the role of advising students on career goals, and a fear that all of this is designed to create “happy workers for the state.”

A large committee in Fairfax made up of school employees, parent representatives and business people developed an elaborate proposal called “Securing Our Students’ Future in a High-Tech Global • Economy: Professional Technical Studies” with seven recommendations that were adopted by the Fairfax School Board in early 1995. Those seven recommendations were: 1. Integrate academic and career * ; preparation education so that all students receive academic, technical, and workplace knowledge and skills. 2. Organize courses of study /around four career clusters representing the workplace fields of the ,21st century a) Business and Marketing, b) Communications and the Arts, c) Engineering, Industrial, and Scientific Technology, and d) Health, Human, and Public Services. 3. Require students to be more organized in their ^earch for prospective career pathways. 4. Require a structured work experience for alhhigh school students before graduar tion. 5. Transform vocational education into a discipline called Professional Technical Studies which has established sequences of courses around career clusters. 6. Create four professional technical academies, representing the career clusters, which will offer advanced, technical, and specialized courses for high school students. 7. Develop programs with postsecondary institutions so students’ continuing education can proceed seamlessly after high school.

A careful reading of the two documents shows the concerns expressed at the forum are mostly groundless. Academic requirements are not being reduced and, in fact, are increasing. Parents are to be consulted each year as students look to their futures in selecting courses.

However, the proposal presented to the Fairfax board is very expensive. Questions can certainly be raised about the validity of the neat division of 21st century jobs into four “career clusters.”

High school students certainly do need to consider how they will function in an increasingly technological work environment. But it is not clear that most can reasonably be expected to choose a career and be satisfied with that choice for the rest of their lives. High schoolers should be encouraged to keep as many options open as possible.