I've long been a fan of Mike Rowe, his show "Dirty Jobs," and the fact that he sheds light upon the backbone of our country: the skilled workers who keep pipes clear, lights on, toilets flushing, and walls square, among many other critical services.
What I particularly admire as well is that he is aware of how American public schools, buckling under the pressures of high stakes testing and the pervasive fallacy that "everyone must have a four-year-degree," have all but eliminated vocational education–and where it isn't eliminated outright, it is marginalized or labeled as "alternative" education. On May 11, 2011, Mike testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, highlighting this very reality and how it threatens the very backbone of our economy, country, and communities.
Though I encourage you to follow the link above and read his whole testimony, there is one portion I want to highlight. He says:
In general, we’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.
In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch, that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.
In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a “good job” into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber – if you can find one – is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we’ll all be in need of both.
Throughout his testimony, Rowe refers to the "Skills Gap." This is the very real situation where schools are producing droves of graduates who lack fundamental skills to, as he puts it, do anything that "looks like work."
This is a drum I and others have beaten again and again here at SfS. When we as a system finally realize that more tests, more often, are actually the best way to weaken our country by underpreparing an entire generation for "real work," perhaps we'll value the vocational arts and sciences once again.
As for me, I grew up in a small town just northwest of the very middle of nowhere. For me, school was about FFA, formerly known as Future Farmers of America (which, due to stigma and devaluation of agriculture as a "real" craft, formally changed its name to The National FFA Organization and shifted the wording on its seal from "vocational agriculture" to "agricultural education").
With due thanks to my high school teachers of all disciplines, everything I learned that really mattered came from my FFA experience. I learned the very real-world skills of budgeting, sales, planning, being organized, talking to adults in real business situations, and making well-thought-out decisions. I learned how to weld, how to propagate plants, and how to plan and execute a construction project. I learned about leadership, standing up in front of a crowd (of thousands, in my case) to give a well prepared and articulate speech, and learning how to seek consensus amongst a team of classmates and peers. I went to college on a full-tuition Presidential Scholarship and graduated summa cum laude. But it was my FFA experience which set me on the path of being a good college student and also a teacher.
I did also grow up on a small family farm: 100-plus acres of alfalfa, grass seed, peppermint, and a few others rotated in here and there. While my parents did try to limit the amount of work my brother and I were responsible for (they wanted us to focus on school first; my dad also worked as a high school teacher and coach), we did our share of work loading hay truck by hand, driving tractor, or helping dad in the shop. It was there as well as in the FFA where I learned about real work.
Even though my parents sold our farm around my senior year (the buyers let me continue working the six-acre portion that I managed for my FFA project so I could go on to earn my American FFA Degree), I still, fifteen years later, crave "real work." I like getting outside to be soaked in sweat and caked in mud. It may not be what feeds my family at this stage of my life, but I'm where I am because I learned how to work, not because I learned to pass tests. I truly believe that knowing how to work is more important than knowing how to test. I was always college-bound, but I believe would not have been as successful without my experience as a high school student in vocational programs.
Let's stop preaching about college readiness. Let's stop obsessing about test scores. Let's refocus education on readying young people to enter the real world, not just the college world. People seem to assume that by promoting vocational education we are by default closing off a college track to kids who select a vocational option. Nothing could be further from the truth: it is our system which creates this false dichotomy of vocational versus college-prep, and it need not be this way.
We need to wake up and encourage our kids to get dirty as hard as we encourage them to get into college.
This link below gives me hope that we can do both…9th and 10th graders in this course can still go on to upper division math which gives them the option of a 4-year-college, yet they still gain valid and valuable vocational training and perspectives:
http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/may/21/building-on-homework/
Mark – I recieved the transcript of Mike Rowe’s testimony while I was between sessions and contests at the Washington State FFA Convention this past week. My first thought was everyone I know needs to read this – Mike has hit the nail on the head.
Vocational Education (now called Career and Technical Education Education – also due to a stigma and devaluation of the word vocational) has constantly worked to re-invent itself. Every time we are asked to do something different, we adapt and make changes. One of the current trends is to offer cross-crediting in subjects that we may or may not be comfortable teaching.
Career and Technical Education (CTE) is based on community values and depends on strong guidance from the communities it resides within so it will be relevant for its students. Many of the CTE programs that are not meaningful are those that lack advisory committees of local business people or have advisory committees that are directed by the local school district.
One of the reasons I site for students leaving our program with fewer skills now than in years past is the fear of injury and law-suits. There are many things that we no longer do at the high school level; much of our curriculum has been watered down to meet the requirements of the insurance companies and lawyers advising our districts.
It is my belief that even the students who are college bound need to be able to work. They should have the ability to support themselves as a skilled laborer when something happens and their college education doesn’t get them a job. The other thing to consider is that those students going to college need to be able to support themselves somehow.
There’s nothing wrong with shoveling dirt or cleaning toilets, but it’s not something I’d want anyone to have to do all day, for many years, in order to support oneself or one’s family.
It’s too hard.
I have two sons. One’s 14 and the other’s 12. You never know how kids will eventually turn out, but as it stands now, the 14 year old excels in school. He takes honors classes, plays in the band and wins track races. On the other hand, he shows no interest in home repair or building things. On camping trips he wanders around trying to get a signal on his cell phone.
Our other son endures school. He does OK, but only when he’s pushed; either by us or his teacher. On the other hand, he takes the lead in all home-repair projects. He assembled a basketball hoop. He replaced his brother’s iPhone screen. He lives to build Ikea furniture. Right now he’s at my brother’s house wiring their new sound system.
People are different. Some of them are destined for college and the cubicles that follow. And some of them are destined for “Dirtier Jobs.” We need an education system that supports everyone.
Kristin–the tenor of the last paragraph of my last comment will probably come across wrong– I’m not intending to challenge your statement or your valuing of your student. I meant to show that we cannot prize one “track” over the other as any guarantee of anything…earning power, happiness, whatever.
If we are going to persist in pushing the “college readiness,” I’m fine with that, but we need to acknowledge that “college readiness” does not inherently squeeze out quality vocational education. It does not have to be a this-or-that divergence. The two can and should exist together.
I wasn’t intending to say “this is better than that,” because that’s what I feel is presently happening with “college track.” I went to a very small school, and every student in my graduating class who went on to college was enrolled heavily in vocational classes… I believe that our system has created this false “this or that, choose one” sense that you cannot be both.
What I don’t like is the assumption out there that it must be one or the other… that if a student has a vocational option in school that the door on a four year college has closed. Every kid has to take English, and it can certainly be AP Lit even if they are also taking metal shop. What I don’t like is the premise that anything vocational instantly becomes “an alternative route to graduation” when for so many kids the “standard route to graduation” not only does not prepare them for college but also does not prepare them with workforce skills.
I guess my question for you, Kristin, is why is “shovel-ready” something you don’t want for your students? Is it because that kind of profession is somehow lesser than “cubicle-ready”? If it’s about earning potential, sure there are some “shovel-ready” jobs that don’t pay much–but I graduated with a herd of kids earning English degrees who’ve spent a lot of years earning a pittance, with student-loans to boot.
I would love to see a resurgence in voc-ed. Meaningful voc-ed. I think there’s a lot of people who would be a lot more productive and a lot happier if they felt that a career in the trades was valued as much as a “college career.”
Not everyone was cut out for college. Some people were cut out to be skilled workers. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn, it just means they don’t have to learn the same things as the folks who plan to go on to college.
Well, dang. I just spent three hours grading and it felt like work. It also required a lot of education.
Let’s not participate in the “this is more important than that,” rhetoric. Not that you did, but it was slipping that way.
What I think is that kids can read, write and do math and still be skilled with their hands and bodies. Mike Rowe certainly is.
What we need to fight is the idea that kids are predestined for one or the other. You’re right – we’re being told all kids need to be ready for university. Okay. Let’s make them ready, in case that’s what they want to do after they graduate.
Let’s do that, and let’s ALSO fight harder than we are to bring back vocational ed.
But as I write that, I’m remembering my voc ed classes in high school. They wouldn’t have prepared me for anything.
So, let’s fight for quality vocational ed, let’s fight for an alternative route to graduation that supports skilled labor, or let’s start bringing the community in to establish summer internships, weekend apprenticeships, and youth employment opportunities that connect them to physical labor that could pay.
And I’ve cleaned the toilets of strangers for pay before. Let’s be sure we keep moving in the direction of skilled labor, something someone can actually do without an early death. When I hear about “shovel ready” as something we should imagine as even a remote future for our students, my back aches and my knees hurt.