Too many people look at technical education as a place for those too stupid or unsocial to make it in “regular” school or go to college. Yet, I rely on the skills I learned in woodshop and other tech classes all of the time. I have this bias, yet recognize it as such. My students require more technical education, but I know they will not get it because of time, the push for standards, and liability. Tech ed is not valued. This editorial is to address this.
Essential Skills: Tech Ed
Put a student at the controls of a table saw, ask them to hammer a nail, or have them bake a loaf of bread. Watch them. For most, you will see apprehension. Forgetting competence, students today lack confidence in a world that is combining academics with hands-on and can-do.
A lot has been written in these pages on increasing the opportunities students have in attending college. Area schools, in addition to raising the number of students who attend higher education, have now been tasked with helping students gain acceptance into a higher caliber college or university. The recent arguments for more Advanced Placement (AP) courses has not been centered around improving skills or challenging minds—our teachers do well on that score—but on brightening resumes. If we really want to prepare our children for twenty-first century jobs and provide them with a unique educational experience, perhaps we need to take a moment to recognize our local technical centers and programs.
While more and more high school seniors head off to college with little plan and even less money, more and more businesses are reassessing their needs. College was once a gateway that either fostered social networking or taught specific skills, such as engineering. Things have changed. The workplace today requires a background in problem solving and abstract thinking. Many companies are looking at skills and experiences on resumes, not college pedigrees.
If we are going to accept that college is not the only path to success, then we need to recognize that the diversity our modern, local technical centers currently offer is a fit just as valid as the college track. While a generation ago technical education amounted to the mechanics of auto mechanics and pre-apprentice building trade learning, today’s cars, homes and appliances requires extensive technical know-how that is beyond the engineers of that generation ago. More important, as materials and platforms rapidly change with every new discovery and paradigm, tech students today adapt, retool and continue to learn. They need to if they are going to survive.
Today’s technical centers are much more than mechanical and construction. Hannafords Career Center, which takes students from Vergennes, Mt. Abe and Middlebury Union High Schools, has programs in culinary, pre-engineering, video tech, health services and theater. Those students are producing food at our best restaurants, telling stories in new mediums, and will be taking care of us as we age and need health assistance. Some students leave high school with a viable skill and join the workforce, while other go to college for more education.
Much of the bias towards college and away from technical education has to do with past perceptions held by our parents, and now us. Our generation was taught that success was through college, and we continue to pass that prejudice on as we advise our children, students and even our school board. While our tech ed centers have quietly transformed into twenty-first century training grounds, many advocates for education still see them not as an equal, but the option for those not of college caliber.
If you have children, ask yourself if you would push your child to fit woodshop into their schedule as hard as an AP course.
But taking an A.P. course in a subject of mild interest before getting tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a liberal arts or overly specialized science degree and no plan makes less sense than spending time in Hannaford’s forest program before going to college and having an idea of which direction to go while writing those tuition checks. Many of us know this, but many others need to rethink their values. Vermont is home to a great many culinary wizards and master craftsmen who hob knob with professors and wealthy financiers. Tech students go to college. The old stereotypes of the technical school graduate are dated and stale.
In earlier generations people could change their own oil, fix the toaster, and regularly made their own clothes. Children grew up seeing competence. No more. Now, programs like “Rosie’s Girls” instills confidence in middle school girls by teaching them to use tools. Shows on the Food Channel and DIY programs are very popular. Yet, we do not celebrate our existing programs and those students who access them. Few non-tech students have the confidence to just try and bake a loaf of bread, and retry until they succeed. Even fewer have the confidence to sign up for such classes.
If area schools were really interested in what is best for all students, they will mirror the push for higher academic standards with technical ones. Taking such a course is not a cute hobby, but an essential skill. Much is made of how the new generation is tech savvy, but their actual abilities to manipulate programs and use computer tools is quite low and their ability to adapt to different programs and solve glitches is absent. A high school student who cannot drive a nail, bake a loaf of bread or tend a house plant with confidence is not ready to put themselves into debt for a liberal arts degree or take our society far into this new century.
I agree with you, Tom, that technical education is stereotyped and its benefits should be given more consideration. In my high school, AP classes were valued as the best of the best and the “most difficult and mind challenging.” However, after taking AP Bio, AP Government, AP English, and AP Literature, I feel that all those classes did was prepare me for the big AP test so I could get credit at a big university. After hours of studying, note taking, memorizing and frustration I never really learned anything of value. Sure, my familiy saved money because I didn’t have to take a few extra classes but that doesn’t really outweigh the experience I would have gotten from technical classes.
The one information technology class I did take in middle school taught me how to make levitating magnetic cars, explosive catapults, how to market and sell wooden gum-ball machines and how to use an array of online computer programs.
Even though I am not at a medium size university for a liberal arts degree (in science education) I feel that much of that decision was decided by my high school courses. If I would have taken more technical classes and learned different mechanical skills (like you said Middlebury Union High School offered) I think I would have gone to a technical institution. Part of me wonders why I (and millions of other students) don’t save money and go to a technical center to learn a specific needed skill to place me ahead in the workforce. Instead, many of us students are taking out expensive loans to pursue fluffy degrees that don’t provide legit career options.
I think this is a great post that demonstrates the need for technical centers to be noticed and considered by more students who need a tangible degree to succeed.
By: lifeguardsteph on February 26, 2010
at 1:17 am
Technical educational programs afford students an opportunity to develop an essential skill set which they can fall back on long after their high school days. When I was a high school student (approximately 20 years ago) I too, viewed the vocational classes as a place for those who were unfit for the more studious AP college “prep” courses. As hindsight is often 20/20, I now know what an error I had allowed myself to make by holding such a view and limiting myself from participating in such classes.
As a homeowner who depends on his vehicle for transportation to work each day, I often look back and wish that I would have participated in the vocational programs offered by my high school. All too often in the course of the average day, a situation arises where mechanical skills or ability could help me resolve an issue that arises. A noisy fan belt, a leaking faucet, a toilet that won’t stop running are common occurrences which most of experience. Unfortunately, due to a lack of experience or personal expertise, I’m now forced to enlist (hire at a wage that is considerably more than the one I earn with my college degree) the help of my high school peers who I once judged as unfit for classes which involved critical thinking.
My errors in judgment as a student back then are now being made by school districts throughout the country. As our economy struggles, and programs such as NCLB as well as Race to the Top Top determine how school funding monies are or will be allocated, tech & vocational programs are falling by the side. By narrowing our focus on math and science at the expense of all other programs, today’s schools are missing an opportunity to provide students with the opportunity to be prepared for many real world situations that await them after high school.
Tech and vocational programs have just as much to offer students as the math and sciences. School districts need to understand that sacrificing these programs is not the answer. Today’s schools need to rise to the challenge and save these programs by clearly infusing math and science standards into tech and vocational programs. Members of our communities need to make local school board’s aware that it’s not alright to sacrifice these programs at the expense of students who understand that a traditional college education isn’t the only path to success or happiness. Tech and vocational programs have too much to offer students and the community, they have a place in our schools.
By: Chief)) on March 6, 2010
at 4:34 pm
I agree with you on this issue of educational technology whole-heartedly, though maybe for a different reason. As a future teacher I have recently had to sit through classes designed to teach the teachers how to differentiate or teach to different styles of learning. I think this fits with your argument in that by using other ways to demonstrate a lesson, say a more hands on method, or an auditory method for those students who have trouble with visual learning, we are bound to reach more of our students.
As for the push to send everyone down the same path, for everyone to be college bound, that might be the hope but it simply is not realistic. There is no shame in being a mechanic, or providing daycare, or cooking for a living; those are skills typically learned in voc. tech. centers that are being overlooked with the all or nothing attitude that some politicians have adopted.
Students who may show an aptitude for computer science, drafting, or other careers that might start at a vocational schools are not any less intelligent, driven, or focused than those who are college bound. They may choose to to continue on to college. However, their path is different and therefore deemed to be not as good.
It is my opinion that politians need to sit back and re-evaluate before they go too far. After all, who will fix their fancy cars in the future?
By: GVSU Niki on May 16, 2010
at 11:10 pm
There is definitely a stigma attached to programs offered at a local technical or vocational education center. Society views these programs as secondary to attending a four- year university. All through my high school years and first two years attending college, it was ingrained in my head that if I did not attend a large four-year university, that I would not be as successful. However, many of us are realizing that regardless of the four year education we received at a large nationally ranked university, that many of the skills required into today’s job market were not emphasized or even offered. Therefore, many adults are finding that returning to college is necessary to acquire the skills necessary in an ever changing job market. Many middle aged adults are having difficulty operating a computer much less baking a loaf of bread or even constructing a bird house. It is essential right now, for children even at the elementary level to start receiving education in Technical areas. Educational technology should be started early to ensure that students will evolve and learn the skills that they will need in middle school, high school, college or technical school and eventually a full time career. Personally, I want to be confident that when my children grow up and start a life as an adult that they are afforded all of the skills that a technologically advanced society has to offer. In order to achieve this goal the education has to start early and schools need to work to find a way to offer this to all students.
By: Marcy-GVSU on September 24, 2010
at 12:37 am