Stephen, in my experience, there have been times when deeper was better and times when broader was better. Deeper mattered professionally; I needed to develop a certain level of mastery to be successful in my career (I've been a financial advisor for 40 years). But broader mattered too. Without a sense of curiosity and a desire to learn, it's easy to fall into passively living to be entertained and not care about much except one's own comfort, perhaps family, and a few friends. And I'm finding that that's not enough to live a full, interesting life; that it's important to live life well. So I say embrace both and find the right balance based on where you are in life, knowing that committing to being a life-long learner is really the key.
Definitely. A maturing worker needs to be savvy about when to grow in breath versus depth.
As the conclusion to the main research article says, there's an aspect in which education is consumption. That's education as part of the Good Life and education for its own sake. I'm all for this as well. Though it's questionable whether the public should fund that.
Our local schools have done away with auto, wood, and metal shop and ship vocational students to a county center. Sad to see the old auto shop the ASB room now. Kids were graduating and getting high paying jobs at the auto mall. Academics isn't everything. Good article, Brother!
2. Aging our of shop teachers (there are not many Industrial Arts Student teachers in the Credential programs.
3. Bus them to the county and let them handle "those" kids. Pisses me off. My older brother is a retired Firefighter. He was not the best student, but by his senior year, he was the TA for the Auto, Wood, and Metal Shop teachers in the high school of the district that I teach. He could and still can take anything apart and put it back together and have it work better. In the 70s, he took apart his flip digital clock radio just to see how it worked, and he got it all back together perfectly! I would love to see a trend in the suburban So Cal that brings back these vocational classes to reach all students not just pander to the wealthy University Driven parents. (I guess they are the most vocal in my area)
I taught in a large urban school district that was moving to wall to wall career academies. I also taught in a pocket career academy for about 8 years. My school was 89% free and reduced lunch. Few things about increased career training in schools.
1. Scheduling for schools becomes more difficult with many 1 off electives getting put into place. I had many students who had to give up band or art because their career pathway needed classes during that time.
2. We often joked that our schools just became a free internship for companies around the city. The schools invest incredible amounts of money into these programs and the companies in town benefit but the companies in town don't financially support anywhere near as much as they are getting.
3. Many times the jobs students were getting out of high school were the entry level position they would have easily acquired otherwise, it wasn't as if they were getting a leg up in the job market. Also often career focuses were apt to fall into racial and socioeconomic stereotypes.
4. Overall the idea of education as a place to learn how to learn and learn to appreciate knowledge certainly went away as school became more transactional...I will take this class because it will help me get this job...not about interests or passions...just about the transaction.
I know it is a long list but it is just the tip of the iceberg from my experiences. I spent 13 years in public education and I would say that as the focus shifted from broad to focused, it did more harm than good.
I thought about this for a couple days after you asked...I would say that in my experience the benefits were community engagement and leadership opportunities for students but I also would say that both of those can be done without dedicated career academies.
This result makes intuitive sense and I get the recommendation, but something about it feels icky. As you suggested above, it smacks of “liberal arts for me but not for thee” elitism. It’s easy enough for people like us to say that most people don’t go to college and should accept the trade-off of specializing when they’re 14 even though we’d never accept it for our kids. I’m reminded of my aunt, who supported the Iraq war and said the military is a good place for some kids. I asked if she’d be cool with her son going to war. She said, “MY Jonas? No no no no no.” The gall. Back to specialization: even if it decreases wage inequality, it makes the U.S. even more of a class-based system like England. Maybe we need to accept that that’s what we already are in practice but … ugh.
I feel the same way. It is counterintuitive that the country could get more equality by being more class-based in its tracking. But perhaps kids who go to vocational school would benefit from starting out with a solid job and a strong base, and grow from there.
It's worth noting that the US is quite on the extreme end of the general education scale. I think Americans in particular are sensitive to this because we want to tell kids "you can be anything you want." We don't want to limit them by tracking them early.
One surprising thing I learned from studying for this is that Germany, Austria and other vocation-heavy countries actually had decreasing College wage premiums since the turn of the century. I had assumed the college wage premium increased everywhere.
This is REALLY interesting. I have a brother-in-law who is Dutch and was tracked early on for non-academic career. When he came to the states (and married my sister), my father had a talk with him about "what are you going to do?" Told him that he could do anything. He went back to school and became a respiratory therapist. There's the down side of the European model. The down side of the US model "you can do anything" is the paradox of choice. Too many young people don't have a clue and aren't college material, not because they aren't smart, but because it's not the right place for them. They don't know how to "do" anything. We need more people in the trades.
Thanks Missy. I bet your Dutch friends story is common. In my case, being a jack of all trades has really helped me. But I know that isn't the case for everyone.
I think I was likely one of the last generation of NYC public HS students offered the opportunity to take a shop class. I took metal shop (my HS offered wood, plastics and jewelry). Once I became teacher it was explained to me by my older colleagues that shop and vocational programs were progressively phased out because of greater emphasis on traditional academics and the inability to to offer competitive salaries to shop teachers. The first HS I worked at had an eyeglass program and we were starting a 911 operator program when the city made the decision to phase out the school. The school also had an auto shop that had long since closed. We do still do have vocational high schools (aviation, transit, building and trades, etc.) but nowhere to the degree to which we used to. All that said, I usually have at least a dozen seniors out of 90 every year who know they are going into trades and are I feel are not best served by completing a traditional academic program. I’d imagine that experience is common among HS teachers. Also, I wonder how many students, having not being exposed to the trades, might have discovered a successful career. I think you identify the core of the matter and how we can improve our system: “The German system locates people’s interests earlier, gets them more human capital in the jobs they actually choose, and they spend more years working.” Our educational system need to do THIS better.
Stephen, in my experience, there have been times when deeper was better and times when broader was better. Deeper mattered professionally; I needed to develop a certain level of mastery to be successful in my career (I've been a financial advisor for 40 years). But broader mattered too. Without a sense of curiosity and a desire to learn, it's easy to fall into passively living to be entertained and not care about much except one's own comfort, perhaps family, and a few friends. And I'm finding that that's not enough to live a full, interesting life; that it's important to live life well. So I say embrace both and find the right balance based on where you are in life, knowing that committing to being a life-long learner is really the key.
Definitely. A maturing worker needs to be savvy about when to grow in breath versus depth.
As the conclusion to the main research article says, there's an aspect in which education is consumption. That's education as part of the Good Life and education for its own sake. I'm all for this as well. Though it's questionable whether the public should fund that.
I'll let you economists debate that.
For me, cultivating society-wide curiosity and love of learning is part of serving the greater good.
Well said. How can I argue with that? 😉
Our local schools have done away with auto, wood, and metal shop and ship vocational students to a county center. Sad to see the old auto shop the ASB room now. Kids were graduating and getting high paying jobs at the auto mall. Academics isn't everything. Good article, Brother!
Was that part of a broad shift to more general education? Or some other reason, like funding?
1. A district wide focus on Academic Excellence
2. Aging our of shop teachers (there are not many Industrial Arts Student teachers in the Credential programs.
3. Bus them to the county and let them handle "those" kids. Pisses me off. My older brother is a retired Firefighter. He was not the best student, but by his senior year, he was the TA for the Auto, Wood, and Metal Shop teachers in the high school of the district that I teach. He could and still can take anything apart and put it back together and have it work better. In the 70s, he took apart his flip digital clock radio just to see how it worked, and he got it all back together perfectly! I would love to see a trend in the suburban So Cal that brings back these vocational classes to reach all students not just pander to the wealthy University Driven parents. (I guess they are the most vocal in my area)
I taught in a large urban school district that was moving to wall to wall career academies. I also taught in a pocket career academy for about 8 years. My school was 89% free and reduced lunch. Few things about increased career training in schools.
1. Scheduling for schools becomes more difficult with many 1 off electives getting put into place. I had many students who had to give up band or art because their career pathway needed classes during that time.
2. We often joked that our schools just became a free internship for companies around the city. The schools invest incredible amounts of money into these programs and the companies in town benefit but the companies in town don't financially support anywhere near as much as they are getting.
3. Many times the jobs students were getting out of high school were the entry level position they would have easily acquired otherwise, it wasn't as if they were getting a leg up in the job market. Also often career focuses were apt to fall into racial and socioeconomic stereotypes.
4. Overall the idea of education as a place to learn how to learn and learn to appreciate knowledge certainly went away as school became more transactional...I will take this class because it will help me get this job...not about interests or passions...just about the transaction.
I know it is a long list but it is just the tip of the iceberg from my experiences. I spent 13 years in public education and I would say that as the focus shifted from broad to focused, it did more harm than good.
Matt, is there anything about the career pathways focus that you did think was good?
I thought about this for a couple days after you asked...I would say that in my experience the benefits were community engagement and leadership opportunities for students but I also would say that both of those can be done without dedicated career academies.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Matt. The view from the ground is so important.
And a reminder: you are still in public education!
Love this
This result makes intuitive sense and I get the recommendation, but something about it feels icky. As you suggested above, it smacks of “liberal arts for me but not for thee” elitism. It’s easy enough for people like us to say that most people don’t go to college and should accept the trade-off of specializing when they’re 14 even though we’d never accept it for our kids. I’m reminded of my aunt, who supported the Iraq war and said the military is a good place for some kids. I asked if she’d be cool with her son going to war. She said, “MY Jonas? No no no no no.” The gall. Back to specialization: even if it decreases wage inequality, it makes the U.S. even more of a class-based system like England. Maybe we need to accept that that’s what we already are in practice but … ugh.
Yes, often the districts that you see adopt career education the hardest are the ones with the lowest median income households.
I feel the same way. It is counterintuitive that the country could get more equality by being more class-based in its tracking. But perhaps kids who go to vocational school would benefit from starting out with a solid job and a strong base, and grow from there.
It's worth noting that the US is quite on the extreme end of the general education scale. I think Americans in particular are sensitive to this because we want to tell kids "you can be anything you want." We don't want to limit them by tracking them early.
One surprising thing I learned from studying for this is that Germany, Austria and other vocation-heavy countries actually had decreasing College wage premiums since the turn of the century. I had assumed the college wage premium increased everywhere.
This is REALLY interesting. I have a brother-in-law who is Dutch and was tracked early on for non-academic career. When he came to the states (and married my sister), my father had a talk with him about "what are you going to do?" Told him that he could do anything. He went back to school and became a respiratory therapist. There's the down side of the European model. The down side of the US model "you can do anything" is the paradox of choice. Too many young people don't have a clue and aren't college material, not because they aren't smart, but because it's not the right place for them. They don't know how to "do" anything. We need more people in the trades.
Thanks Missy. I bet your Dutch friends story is common. In my case, being a jack of all trades has really helped me. But I know that isn't the case for everyone.
I think I was likely one of the last generation of NYC public HS students offered the opportunity to take a shop class. I took metal shop (my HS offered wood, plastics and jewelry). Once I became teacher it was explained to me by my older colleagues that shop and vocational programs were progressively phased out because of greater emphasis on traditional academics and the inability to to offer competitive salaries to shop teachers. The first HS I worked at had an eyeglass program and we were starting a 911 operator program when the city made the decision to phase out the school. The school also had an auto shop that had long since closed. We do still do have vocational high schools (aviation, transit, building and trades, etc.) but nowhere to the degree to which we used to. All that said, I usually have at least a dozen seniors out of 90 every year who know they are going into trades and are I feel are not best served by completing a traditional academic program. I’d imagine that experience is common among HS teachers. Also, I wonder how many students, having not being exposed to the trades, might have discovered a successful career. I think you identify the core of the matter and how we can improve our system: “The German system locates people’s interests earlier, gets them more human capital in the jobs they actually choose, and they spend more years working.” Our educational system need to do THIS better.