As I read the Short Takes Feb. 12 ("A Push for Vocational Ed") I was struck by how much we've learned about the value of vocational education now that the growth of our state and national economies is slowed by the lack of skilled workers to produce, build and service things.
The solution, it seems, is to provide more postsecondary training at our community and technical colleges, and to rely on more industry-based training and apprenticeships. Those are good things. There's even talk that more attention should be given to career and vocational education in high schools — also a good thing.
But it seems we never learn, as history repeats itself. The same hue and cry for skilled workers existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In response, the state of Minnesota and local school boards developed 70 high school cooperative vocational centers, and many high school vocational programs in larger schools. I am proud to have been a part of that chapter in our history as director of a large cooperative vocational center at that time.
High school vocational education was highly successful. It helped thousands of young people chart a career path, obtain an entry-level job and matriculate to postsecondary training, if needed. Yet today there are only a few vocational centers and programs. What killed it?
The demise of high school vocational education, as we knew it, can be traced to three things:
• First, the college systems imposed higher math and language entry standards. Kids, even those who were just hedging their bets about maybe going to college, were more limited on the number of electives they could take. Vocational education was an elective.
• Second, due to budget limitations and cutbacks, funding for many of the programs dried up.
• Third, there was constant pressure by teachers and their powerful unions to diminish the impact of vocational education by lobbying to divert vocational funding to regular student foundation aid and by trying to impose unrealistic and unreasonable teacher certification standards for new non-degreed vocational teachers — all in the name of quality, of course. The real reason was teacher job protection.
