Introduction to Vocational Education
Vocational Education, the training of persons for specific occupations. In a broad sense, vocational education includes the learning of any kind of profitable and useful work. A more specialized meaning of the term—and the meaning used in this article—excludes training for professional occupations (such as law, medicine, registered nursing, library science, engineering, and teaching) and for other occupations requiring a bachelor's degree or a higher degree.
In a complex and technologically advanced society, it is essential that training be offered in many different types of work. Retraining is also important, as new methods and tools are introduced. New occupations are being created by discoveries and inventions. The introduction of automation and computers into industry and commerce has eliminated many unskilled and semiskilled jobs, and has created the need for persons with the ability to build, sell, install, and service the new equipment.
Vocational education trains youths and unemployed persons for jobs and helps workers update or extend their job skills. Besides teaching job skills, vocational education aims to establish sound attitudes and work habits and to help persons understand and appreciate their jobs.
Types of Vocational Education
The main areas of vocational education include the following:
Vocational Agriculturetraining for jobs on farms and for occupations in such fields as processing food, marketing farm products, and repairing farm equipment.
Home Economics Educationtraining for homemaking and for occupations in such fields as child care, food service, and interior decoration.
Business Educationtraining for distributive and office occupations. Distributive education covers such subjects as merchandising, warehousing, and exportimport trade. Office education includes such subjects as typewriting, bookkeeping, use of business machines, and shorthand.
Trade and Industrial Educationtraining for such occupations as carpenter, automobile mechanic, printer, tool and die maker, electrician, plumber, barber, beautician, or sheet-metal worker.
Technical Educationtraining for technical or semiprofessional occupations. Technical training normally covers one to three years of study beyond high school. It is generally more theoretical than other vocational training, but less theoretical and more specific than professional training. Technical and semiprofessional occupations include such jobs as data processor, X-ray technician, electronic technician, draftsman, practical nurse, dental assistant, food service manager, cartographer, production control supervisor, illustrator, and construction estimator.
Agencies Offering Vocational Education
Vocational education in the United States is available through a wide variety of schools and agencies. The federal government gives financial aid to public secondary schools and some public postsecondary schools for certain fields of vocational education. The government also provides funds that each state may use for any training programs below the professional and bachelor's-degree level.
Public high schools are the main source of vocational education. They offer high school students full-time programs, as well as work-study programs that alternate class-work with part-time employment in a cooperating business or industry. A number of high schools also offer evening and weekend classes for young people who have dropped out of school and for adults.
Regular, or comprehensive, high schools require students to take certain general courses for graduation, but often offer vocational courses as electives.
Technical high schools prepare students for further study in scientific and engineering fields. They require students to take shop-work and mechanical drawing in addition to the general courses required in regular high schools.
Vocational high schools train students for specific trades and industries. They require students to take intensive shopwork, as well as general courses. Some require the same general courses as regular high schools.
Area vocational schools are public vocational schools serving more than one school district. Most offer vocational programs from the ninth through the twelfth grades, but some offer one to three years of additional schooling. Area vocational schools usually do not provide any general courses.
Technical institutes are public or private postsecondary schools offering one-, two-, or three-year vocational programs in engineering and science fields.
Other institutions providing vocational education include armed forces schools, private correspondence schools, private vocational schools, and colleges with one-, two-, or three-year vocational programs, including junior and community colleges.
A number of business firms, industrial firms, and labor unions provide training for workers. Joint employer-union committees manage apprenticeship programs in some trades. County agents of the Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture give agricultural and horticultural advice to farmers and other persons requesting it. The Extension Service is also involved in vocational education through 4-H Club programs, which are directed by county agents. Various public and private agencies carry on vocational rehabilitation programs for persons with disabilities.
History
Vocational training in some form has always been a part of human life. Apprenticeship was the earliest—and, for centuries, the only—form of organized vocational training outside the home. It was practiced in ancient civilizations, and became a recognized part of medieval craft guilds.
The Industrial Revolution, which began about 1750 in England, destroyed the old apprentice system. Power-driven machinery was concentrated in factories, replacing home industries and small shops. Many machines were so easily operated that children were hired, at low wages, to run them. Craftsmanship declined, and occupational training was considered unimportant.
As more complicated machines were developed, the need for skilled labor grew. In the early and mid-1800's, Great Britain, Germany, and a number of other European nations responded to this need by establishing public vocational schools.
In the United StatesVocational training developed slowly in the United States, mainly because the country's great natural resources could be tapped by unskilled workers and because European immigrants supplied many of the needed trade and industrial skills.
The first important development was the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted public lands to the states as a source of funds for establishing agricultural and mechanical (engineering) colleges. For several decades, land-grant colleges provided vocational training in farming and the mechanical arts, but eventually the content of their curriculum advanced to the highly skilled and professional level. Manual training was introduced into secondary schools in the 1880's, but for the sake of broadening education rather than occupational purposes.
As American business and industry grew, the need for skilled labor became urgent. In 1906 Massachusetts established the first state program of secondary vocational education. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 provided federal funds for public education below the college level in agricultural, home economics, trade, and industrial subjects. Other acts in the following 20 years increased funds for those fields, provided aid for the vocational rehabilitation of disabled persons, and authorized funds for distributive education.
After World War II, thousands of veterans received federal aid for vocational and other training through the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill of Rights). The George-Barden Act of 1946 increased federal support to vocational education. Amendments to the act, passed in 1956 and 1958, provided federal support for training programs in the fishing trades, in technical occupations necessary for the national defense, and in practical nursing.
The Vocational Education Act of 1963 and its amendments of 1968 greatly increased federal funds for vocational education. Most of the funds were used for teacher salaries, curriculum materials, and school construction.
During the 1960's, vocational-training programs for the poor, such as Job Corps and Neighborhood Youth Corps, were important elements in the federal government's Antipoverty Program. During the 1970's and 1980's, the problem of growing welfare rolls spurred the federal government to develop vocational-training programs specifically for persons receiving welfare.